Bolt Action Milsurp Shooters?
- Thread starter Max-4
- Start date
If you do go with the Number 4, you can do yourself a real favour by saving money.
What you do is load DOWN just a little. I'm using 37 to 38 grains of IMR-4895 in the .303; that's 184 to 189 shots per pound of powder, so it's cheaper.
With a Sierra 180 flatbase bullet, this will give you about 2250 ft/sec at the muzzle, which just happens to be the most accurate velocity for the .303 cartridge with this weight of bullet. Seat them to the overall length of a military Ball round; this will crowd the rifling at the leade, just a bit, and give you better accuracy. How accurate? How does one inch sound at 100 yards, if you can hold it? Sounds okay to me. That's with a decent barrel, mind you, and most Number 4s have pretty decent barrels, even a LOT of the Bubba models.
Nice thing is that this also prolongs the life of your brass, so all you have to do is keep it trimmed to length. That's not much of a problem because likely they will shorten on the first firing, anyway. When you reload, be sure you lube the INSIDES of the case-necks before you neck-size or full-length size your brass (neck-size only if you have just the one rifle: better accuracy AND your brass lasts longer). This will prevent 'drag' from the expander button. I find that MANY .303 dies actually lengthen the brass MORE than does actual firing the stuff; you avoid this with the inside-neck lubrication to a great extent.
BTW, you can change butts on the Number 4 to fit the rifle to your own shooting preferences. They were marked B for Bantam, S for Short, either N or no mark for Normal, L for Long, XL for Extra-long and there even was a Canadian butt marked XXL for Extra-Extra-Long, which fits nicely to your 6-foot-9-inch guys or to your average Orangutan. Me, by rights I should use a Normal, but I prefer shooting with a Short; just seems I can hold it better, that's all. You fit your rifle to your own shooting, and that's something that you can ONLY do with a Lee-Enfield, either the Number 4 or the older SMLE.
Most important point: be sure to have fun!
What you do is load DOWN just a little. I'm using 37 to 38 grains of IMR-4895 in the .303; that's 184 to 189 shots per pound of powder, so it's cheaper.
With a Sierra 180 flatbase bullet, this will give you about 2250 ft/sec at the muzzle, which just happens to be the most accurate velocity for the .303 cartridge with this weight of bullet. Seat them to the overall length of a military Ball round; this will crowd the rifling at the leade, just a bit, and give you better accuracy. How accurate? How does one inch sound at 100 yards, if you can hold it? Sounds okay to me. That's with a decent barrel, mind you, and most Number 4s have pretty decent barrels, even a LOT of the Bubba models.
Nice thing is that this also prolongs the life of your brass, so all you have to do is keep it trimmed to length. That's not much of a problem because likely they will shorten on the first firing, anyway. When you reload, be sure you lube the INSIDES of the case-necks before you neck-size or full-length size your brass (neck-size only if you have just the one rifle: better accuracy AND your brass lasts longer). This will prevent 'drag' from the expander button. I find that MANY .303 dies actually lengthen the brass MORE than does actual firing the stuff; you avoid this with the inside-neck lubrication to a great extent.
BTW, you can change butts on the Number 4 to fit the rifle to your own shooting preferences. They were marked B for Bantam, S for Short, either N or no mark for Normal, L for Long, XL for Extra-long and there even was a Canadian butt marked XXL for Extra-Extra-Long, which fits nicely to your 6-foot-9-inch guys or to your average Orangutan. Me, by rights I should use a Normal, but I prefer shooting with a Short; just seems I can hold it better, that's all. You fit your rifle to your own shooting, and that's something that you can ONLY do with a Lee-Enfield, either the Number 4 or the older SMLE.
Most important point: be sure to have fun!
And there is one factor that it seems nobody won't address, and that is the cost of commercial ammo.
You can get .303 almost anywhere, same as you can get .308, .30-'06 almost anywhere. The 6.5x55 is starting to become more common; most decent shops stock it.
But then we come to the 7.62x54R for the Moisin-Nagant and this is where we run right into a brick wall. No North American factory makes the stuff. Right now, we are restricted to surplus, and that is not really good stuff AND it is coming to an end. That leaves us with sporting loads. Sometimes you can get the reloadable stuff out of Bosnia-Herzegovina. It's good ammo and it's reloadable and it runs anywhere from about $13 a box to about %24 a box, depending on where you get it. Then there is Prvi Partizan, from Serbia. Good ammo, a little steamy, nice brass, reloadable, about $25 a box WHEN you can find it. Or you can get it from Northern Europe, and that is where it gets real scary. Last time I priced out Norma (at WSC, by the way) it was $69.95 for 20 shells, plus 7% sales tax, plus shipping from Calgary to wherever you might be. Pay the taxes and it's three and a half bucks a shot. Little steep for me, anyway, but the brass really is nice. Sako also makes it, but I'm afraid even to ask the price on it.
Handloading is definitely the way to go if you want to shoot a fair bit. But if you're going to shoot a Moisin-Nagant a lot, you had BETTER handload...... either that or be related to Croesus.
Me, I handload..... and I also have several Moisin-Nagants.
Good luck!
You can get .303 almost anywhere, same as you can get .308, .30-'06 almost anywhere. The 6.5x55 is starting to become more common; most decent shops stock it.
But then we come to the 7.62x54R for the Moisin-Nagant and this is where we run right into a brick wall. No North American factory makes the stuff. Right now, we are restricted to surplus, and that is not really good stuff AND it is coming to an end. That leaves us with sporting loads. Sometimes you can get the reloadable stuff out of Bosnia-Herzegovina. It's good ammo and it's reloadable and it runs anywhere from about $13 a box to about %24 a box, depending on where you get it. Then there is Prvi Partizan, from Serbia. Good ammo, a little steamy, nice brass, reloadable, about $25 a box WHEN you can find it. Or you can get it from Northern Europe, and that is where it gets real scary. Last time I priced out Norma (at WSC, by the way) it was $69.95 for 20 shells, plus 7% sales tax, plus shipping from Calgary to wherever you might be. Pay the taxes and it's three and a half bucks a shot. Little steep for me, anyway, but the brass really is nice. Sako also makes it, but I'm afraid even to ask the price on it.
Handloading is definitely the way to go if you want to shoot a fair bit. But if you're going to shoot a Moisin-Nagant a lot, you had BETTER handload...... either that or be related to Croesus.
Me, I handload..... and I also have several Moisin-Nagants.
Good luck!
Lapua makes brass for the 7.62x54 (it's actually marked 7.62x53). It is excellent, but expensive. Some yrs ago I picked up three 100pc boxes while wintering in Arizona and it was very pricey. I have a M27 Finnish MN which shoots .308 bullets very well. There are bore variations in the Finnish rifles. Some measure .308/.309 and handle .308 bullets. Others are .310/.311.
There are Cdn sources for Lapua brass. Perhaps one of them can supply the 7.62x53.
There are Cdn sources for Lapua brass. Perhaps one of them can supply the 7.62x53.
Quite right, of course: my error.
There also are Sellier & Bellot from Czechoslovakia or part of it, and there is Wolf, direct from Mother Russia. S&B is now Boxer-primed and good brass, but it can be hard to fine. Still, it is decent ammo, if a little steamy for my taste.
WOLF seems to be available in both steel cases and brass cases and now is said to be loading Boxer primers, which is awfully nice for us. I have reloaded steel cases: just be sure you really lube your cases, use a little more elbow-grease on the press handle.
And both S&B and Wolf are very reasonably priced. The problem is FINDING the stuff.
I WISH!!!
But some IS out there and I intend to score 100 of the very next batch I find, just to be on the safe side. My bolt-head arrived from the good folks at Tradex and my 1906 MN wants it installed so that it can go skulking about looking for Bolsheviki. I'll take it to the range and feed it some tin cans instead, Bolsheviki now being an endangered species (except in our universities, mind you).
The really hard part is getting the Supply, the Demand and the Gelt in the same place at the same time.
Good luck!
There also are Sellier & Bellot from Czechoslovakia or part of it, and there is Wolf, direct from Mother Russia. S&B is now Boxer-primed and good brass, but it can be hard to fine. Still, it is decent ammo, if a little steamy for my taste.
WOLF seems to be available in both steel cases and brass cases and now is said to be loading Boxer primers, which is awfully nice for us. I have reloaded steel cases: just be sure you really lube your cases, use a little more elbow-grease on the press handle.
And both S&B and Wolf are very reasonably priced. The problem is FINDING the stuff.
I WISH!!!
But some IS out there and I intend to score 100 of the very next batch I find, just to be on the safe side. My bolt-head arrived from the good folks at Tradex and my 1906 MN wants it installed so that it can go skulking about looking for Bolsheviki. I'll take it to the range and feed it some tin cans instead, Bolsheviki now being an endangered species (except in our universities, mind you).
The really hard part is getting the Supply, the Demand and the Gelt in the same place at the same time.
Good luck!
I love my kar98k. It is a good shooter, very accurate, and very aesthetically attractive. Ammunition isn't quite as common as 30.06, or .303, but it can be found at most gun shops. However, it does become expensive because 8mm surplus is hard to come by.
Those M-1917 (P-17) is an extremely accurate rifle. Also the Polish M-44 is a very accurate rifle just as accurate as any 91/30 In my humble opinion.
A good P.-'17 can be outright scary on the range. I have a pair of original Eddystones and both shoot well when I hold them properly.
I also have about a 1959 BSA top-of-the-line sporting conversion of a P.-'17, original 1917 barel still in place. It has a 1959 steel-tube Weaver K4 mounted and shoots them into an old-style silver threepenny bit at 50 yards, will go shot-for-shot on the 275-metre falling plates if the light is up.
Only thing about a fullstock P.-'14 or P.-'17 as a hunting rifle is that the things are HEAVY in their original configuration, which is why so many of them were butchered into minimal sporters to begin with.
But there are a few real prizes still out there. Right now, I'm looking for the wood and parts to restore s/n W305: a rifle from the second pre-production lot built by Winchester. It was butchered but not too badly to preclude a resto, sits now on my rack. Bore is very nearly new; I doubt it has been fired 100 rounds, so we'll see what it will do, later this summer, perhaps.
I also have about a 1959 BSA top-of-the-line sporting conversion of a P.-'17, original 1917 barel still in place. It has a 1959 steel-tube Weaver K4 mounted and shoots them into an old-style silver threepenny bit at 50 yards, will go shot-for-shot on the 275-metre falling plates if the light is up.
Only thing about a fullstock P.-'14 or P.-'17 as a hunting rifle is that the things are HEAVY in their original configuration, which is why so many of them were butchered into minimal sporters to begin with.
But there are a few real prizes still out there. Right now, I'm looking for the wood and parts to restore s/n W305: a rifle from the second pre-production lot built by Winchester. It was butchered but not too badly to preclude a resto, sits now on my rack. Bore is very nearly new; I doubt it has been fired 100 rounds, so we'll see what it will do, later this summer, perhaps.
I don't really want to 'hog' anybody's thread, but there is one observation I must make.
I started handloading 46 years ago because I had a brand-new-unfired Kar. 98k ($27.50) and ammo was $5.25 for 20 rounds and I was making $1.27 an hour, less taxes, contributions and union dues. So I 'wasted' a week's pay on handloading equipment and 300 rounds of '06 brass (wartime) that somebody had run through a Browning. It is now 46 years later and I still have the tools that I 'wasted' all that money on... and they still work just fine.
If it were not for handloading, I would have missed out on the vast majority of 46 years of fun with Rosses, Lee-Enfields, Carcanos, Mausers of many types, Noisy Maggots, Arisakas, Mannlichers and one or more of just about every battle rifle made between 1900 and 1950.
Nice thing is that once you have the basic equipment, you can change over to a 'new' calibre for reasonably cheap. Now that I have the dies (Lee Precision) and the brass (Tradex, from Partizan), my two old Berthiers are about to get a workout; powder, primers and slugs I already had in stock. The cost changes very little (comparatively) from one calibre to another. Lay in primers and brass, a fairly quick IMR-type powder and whatever type of slugs you need. .303 slugs work just fine in 7.65 Argy and Turk, also in the Moisin-Nagant, .323 works okay in most 8mms..... you buy the materials and just fill up whatever casings you want this weekend.
And it's fun, too, knowing that YOU can get a World War One-reject junker to turn in 1-inch groups..... or just hit the damned tin can anywhere.
See you at the range.
I started handloading 46 years ago because I had a brand-new-unfired Kar. 98k ($27.50) and ammo was $5.25 for 20 rounds and I was making $1.27 an hour, less taxes, contributions and union dues. So I 'wasted' a week's pay on handloading equipment and 300 rounds of '06 brass (wartime) that somebody had run through a Browning. It is now 46 years later and I still have the tools that I 'wasted' all that money on... and they still work just fine.
If it were not for handloading, I would have missed out on the vast majority of 46 years of fun with Rosses, Lee-Enfields, Carcanos, Mausers of many types, Noisy Maggots, Arisakas, Mannlichers and one or more of just about every battle rifle made between 1900 and 1950.
Nice thing is that once you have the basic equipment, you can change over to a 'new' calibre for reasonably cheap. Now that I have the dies (Lee Precision) and the brass (Tradex, from Partizan), my two old Berthiers are about to get a workout; powder, primers and slugs I already had in stock. The cost changes very little (comparatively) from one calibre to another. Lay in primers and brass, a fairly quick IMR-type powder and whatever type of slugs you need. .303 slugs work just fine in 7.65 Argy and Turk, also in the Moisin-Nagant, .323 works okay in most 8mms..... you buy the materials and just fill up whatever casings you want this weekend.
And it's fun, too, knowing that YOU can get a World War One-reject junker to turn in 1-inch groups..... or just hit the damned tin can anywhere.
See you at the range.
ginseng503
CGN frequent flyer
- Location
- N. Ontario
You might want to consider the Swedish Mauser I have up at the EE. Nice pics too!
http://www.canadiangunnutz.com/forum/showthread.php?t=479603
http://www.canadiangunnutz.com/forum/showthread.php?t=479603
Being a devotee of the SMLE and the Ross, perhaps I shouldn't say this, but Swedes are sweet, no mistake.
A lot of good things come out of Sweden, including some of their women and those so-very-accurate Mausers that don't seem to know how to kick.
Just watch out for the big guy with the bushy beard, the iron hat with the horns and that big battle-axe by his side! He might want to keep some of both for himself!
A lot of good things come out of Sweden, including some of their women and those so-very-accurate Mausers that don't seem to know how to kick.
Just watch out for the big guy with the bushy beard, the iron hat with the horns and that big battle-axe by his side! He might want to keep some of both for himself!
