It was above freezing, and supposed to reach the lower 50's, and I was off, so headed out this morning.
A: It never hit 50.
B: Turns out there's a front coming in, and the wind was coming out of the north all day.
C: I knew the sun would be relatively low, but I'd forgotten how much that would affect how I see the sights.
Overall, nice day anyway, though I have to admit I need targets with a bigger bull for 100 yards now; my eyes ain't what they used to be(see subsection B: Getting Old Sucks). I'll write up the results later, the one thing I will go into now is the cast-bullet loads for the M1 Garand.
These, you might remember, used a 150-grain RCBS flat-point gas-check bullet over a charge of IMR4895. They worked out giving about 4" groups at 100. I'm honestly not sure if it's the bullet or me; the aperture and sun were at just the right angle to give a fair bit of glare, which did give me problems in aiming. I'd loaded 16 rounds of 35.0 grains, and in the second clip there were two cases where the bolt didn't go back quite far enough to pick up the next round; all the 36.0 grain loads cycled normally. I'll break it down later and check the gas system to see if any sign of lead fouling.
If the system is clear, I'm going to load some more for next time, and remember my little shade for the rear sight to take care of the glare. I'm also going to measure some of the as-cast bullets for diameter; I'm wondering if using them as-cast, lubing by hand and using the .311 sizer to seat the gas checks might work better. Have to think about that.
I now return you to your regular afternoon.
2 comments:
Have you tried Lee's liquid alox tumble lube system? Quite a few folks including me are getting good results from it.
I just got a sweet little H&R Topper .30-30 break action rifle made in '63. I'll be loading up some 311291's over 1.3cc's of Unique to try out. I'll shoot 'em as cast and tumble lubed. If they don't do well, I'll cast up more and size 'em first to .311 then if those don't work, I'll try .309. The fun in this hobby is there's always a different combination to try. A gunshop owner and shooter I talk with frequently is pressing me to try 2400 as well. Low to med. velocity loads with that take a teeny but less 2400 thanUnique for the same vel. I gotta get a chronograph. The Missus is gonna love it.
Gerry N.
Yep. Use it with as-cast .45 and .38 bullets for .455 Webley and .38S&W; seems to work nicely. And that's what I'm using on the .303 and 7.62x54r bullets; generally speaking the stuff works surprisingly well.
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