- Location
- SE corner Sk
Good place to look for rifle load data is https://loaddata.com/
Powder and reloading questions
- Thread starter Shovel
- Start date
Lots of information to sift through for sure. Looked at loaddata site. I'll hold off for now but bookmarked it. I pushed a bullet thru the Marlin. Good news didnt seem to be a bulge. Same pressure right thru. Couldnt see any rifling on the bullet. Was a bit tight. Havent resized the bullets yet so they are whatever the mold is. But I'll probably need longer bullets. The ones I have barely reach the lands. I put one in a brass and on the bolt and chambered it and the bullet wouldnt stay. Just barely in the case. Still waiting for the bullet sizer. Thinking I'll have to go to a 180gr mold. Are there bigger 308 molds?
- Location
- Western Manitoba
I do not own any Micro-groove barrels, but not seeing rifling on the slug would concern me - as if that is a smooth bore - won't be any spin imparted on the bullet at all. That would go a long ways to explain the tumbling that you experience with various bullet lengths / weights. Might be well worth to have a bore scope take a look in there - if it is true that the micro-groove rifling is much shallower than normal, an explanation for not seeing rifling marks on the slug would be that some area along that rifling is filled up with fouling?? Everything that I read and have done says that your slug that comes out is going to be the smallest diameter that it passed through - so even 1" of groove that is filled in a 22" length barrel, would wipe out any rifling marks? You might have a heavy duty cleaning job - to get back to bare clean raw steel for the entire length of that rifling? If you can see that the muzzle end of the barrel is clean rifling - no fouling - maybe tap a slug in there about an inch or two - then back out - and compare that to a slug that you pushed all the way through that barrel, from one end to the other?
A good parallel was made on another CGN post - using a one-solvent-for-all-fouling is like using all-season tires on your truck - not going to be near as good as using summer tires in rain on pavement, or Mud & Snow tires in winter snow on back road, or ice tires on ice. So, despite marketer claims, I do not know of one solvent that will dissolve all the types of fouling - there might be carbon build-up, bullet jacket build-up, or even lead build up - and each needs a different "juice" or technique to deal with it - if it is in there. No doubt many products work fine enough if used at end of every shooting day - I think is much different to go after fouling that has been in there for 20 or 30 or more years.
I personally use foaming WipeOut to go after copper bullet jacket residue - not all on CGN agree with that. There is various marine and automotive products that work very well to dissolve carbon - but they might not do much for bullet jacket copper fouling. I actually do not know what is the "best" juice to remove lead - is possible that might be removed by mechanical means - not dissolved - but I do not know. Not too common these days, but there used to be cupro-nickel jacketed bullets - often they were mil-surp - usually very cheap to buy - hence got used - and that fouling will "weld" to the barrel and withstand most cleaners that go after other contaminants in there. If a rifle fired half dozen rounds of cupro-nickel jacketed bullets in 1950's, that fouling could still be stuck in there - regardless of 100's of rounds fired since then. "Shooting" a bullet down the bore in an attempt to "blow out" crap, is as likely to pound the crap into the barrel walls, as it is to move it out the far end.
I have never done so, but from reading - do not expect to fire a few jacketed bullets, then to fire a few lead cast bullets - I read some people have dedicated rifles for cast bullet shooting - apparently the fouling / residue from one, will stick to or tear up the other bullet material - so is usually not a good idea to plan to go back and forth between jacketed bullets and cast bullets. At minimum, I think, you want to scrub down to bare steel in the barrel, when switching one to the other.
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Some where I vaguely remember reading Marlin Micro Groove barrels don't like cast bullets. There is a forum called Cast Bullets, it might be worthwhile checking out their expertise. I've never shot a cast bullet and only once made a half a$$ attempt at slugging a bore.
Even before the current price silliness, I checked out gunshows for stray boxes of bullets for practice Bang. A story just for fun. I found a couple of boxes of old original Nosler Solid Base Ballistic Tips, (50 count)they were very accurate . My next find was a almost full (100 count) box of Nosler Competition . They shot all over the place. No wonder they were so cheap. Good enough for Bang, though
Even before the current price silliness, I checked out gunshows for stray boxes of bullets for practice Bang. A story just for fun. I found a couple of boxes of old original Nosler Solid Base Ballistic Tips, (50 count)they were very accurate . My next find was a almost full (100 count) box of Nosler Competition . They shot all over the place. No wonder they were so cheap. Good enough for Bang, though
- Location
- Western Manitoba
I had about the same experience with the Nosler Solid Base Ballistic Tip bullets - in my case was .338" 200 grain - I seem to have found a loading with RL-19 powder that those bullets and my 1980's Winchester Model 70 get along with, quite well. One older box here - labelled "Nosler Solid Base Boat Tail" - then "Ballistic Tip" lower down on the label - is box of 100 with red and green Nosler label - Nosler Part # 39595. Newer boxes, I think, that are here say "Nosler Ballistic Tip" - 50 count with the gold colour Nosler label - Nosler Part # 33200. I doubt they have been made for past 25 years or more - since they came out with the Accubonds.
Thanks I'll look thru Cast Bullets. I've done a pretty good clean up. There was a lot of copper and other fouling. I alternated Sweets 762 and Hopes solvent. Sweets took out a lot of blue till a patch came out clean. Then used Hopes. Then Sweets again got some more blue out. Repeated a few times. There are a few strange rings in the bore. About the middle of the bore for a couple of inches. Here are a few pics
Still need to figure out coal
Still need to figure out coal
