An experiment with the .310 Cadet

Among the things we ran across on a forum was someone using .32-caliber hollow-base wadcutters in this; apparently, at least in some rifles, that base allows the bullet to fit to the bore and give good accuracy.  One guy mentioned it was great to about 75 yards, and worked very well on small game, accuracy fell of rapidly after that distance.

Shouldn't be hard to find some of those, right?

Oh yeah, easy, long as you want at least a thousand.  Smaller amounts?  "Out of stock", "no longer produced", etc.  Finally found a place called Matt's Bullets that sells them in packs of 100(or 500 if you want more).  Some were obtained, and tried out the other day.

This being a new bullet I dropped the standard charge that I use with the 120-grain bullet by 1/2 grain, so these were loaded over 7.0 of 2400, using a CCI small pistol primer.  Cases were 1.130" long.  Five were unsized, five with the first 1/3 sized and the mouth belled just enough to allow the bullet to start.  With the unsized cases, the bullet would slide into the case with thumb pressure, with the sized cases used the seating die.  In the interest of keeping jump to the rifling short I tried chambering some different lengths and found that with the case mouth right at the bottom of the second lube groove it chambered with no difficulty, so started there.

With the unsized cases, used a caliper to seat the bullet to 1.480" overall length, then crimped with the modified Lee die.  With the sized, seated with the die and then crimped just enough to remove the flare from the mouth.

Results at 25 yards, unsized

and sized

I'm pretty sure the vertical stringing in the first was my fault, and I'll put together five more to try again.  The second... can't ask for better than that.  It's possible that sizing the cases gave more consistent hold on the bullet and thus more consistent pressure.