Good load for a No.1 Mk.III .303?
- Thread starter CDB18
- Start date
At this point I don't have the equipment for making cast bullets so I'll have to go with a factory bullet...
Thirteen grains of Red Dot over a cast bullet. Smellie will be along shortly to tell you all about this load
You need bullets and powder. I found the heavy round nosed cast bullets were easy to get shooting well. I used 10 to 15 gr of shotgun powder, no filler. Real good and cheap ammo for plinking up to 100 yards.
For jacketed bullets, the flat based bullets work best. i get good results from the 150, 174 and 180 gr flat based bullets. many powders will work well. It depends what your dealer has in stock. All these are good:
748
BLC2
H335
3031
4895
4064
4320
RL15
varget
Given your crude measuring system, one of the first three will measure the best. They are ball powders.
For jacketed bullets, the flat based bullets work best. i get good results from the 150, 174 and 180 gr flat based bullets. many powders will work well. It depends what your dealer has in stock. All these are good:
748
BLC2
H335
3031
4895
4064
4320
RL15
varget
Given your crude measuring system, one of the first three will measure the best. They are ball powders.
My favourite cast load is a Lee CTL312-160-2r or C-312-155-2r cast bullet with a gas check, and 40 grains of BL-C(2) or 40 gr of 4895. That's a rippin fast cast load, around 2300FPS and change, but seems to shoot well out of the no 1 that I used to have, and my No 4 now. It also works for jacketed bullets i've tried it with. For lighter loads, around 25 grains of 4227 with a bullet anywhere from 150-175 grains seems to work well.
Until you get a scale, you'll not get any super consistent loads. Practice with the scoops helps as far as consistency goes, but the little charts are SOMETIMES accurate. You can buy a small electronic scale from your local hippie store that will work, just make sure it one of the ones for "gems". The smaller capacity ones will have a higher resolution (ie, they will measure to .01 grains, instead of .1). I got a decent one for about $25.
Until you get a scale, you'll not get any super consistent loads. Practice with the scoops helps as far as consistency goes, but the little charts are SOMETIMES accurate. You can buy a small electronic scale from your local hippie store that will work, just make sure it one of the ones for "gems". The smaller capacity ones will have a higher resolution (ie, they will measure to .01 grains, instead of .1). I got a decent one for about $25.
LEE makes their Safety Powder Scale for about $25. It's a little squirely to work with until you get used to it, but it is PRECISE.
In an experiment, I used one to weigh the WRITING on a sheet of paper.
They advertise it a 1/20 of a grain accuracy and I think I would concur with that.
FAR more precision than anything your local dope-dealer might even have access to. Our local jeweller uses a digital scale for buying gold and silver; it is accurate to 1/10 of a gram. This is accurate to 1/20 of a GRAIN: 30 times as precise, and for 1/10 of the cost!
Can't go wrong!
For store-boughten slugs, try 40 grains of 4064 with a .312" Hornady 150 Spire Point. Comes out in the .308 class. For better accuracy, seat the slugs OUT so you can see the whole cannelure. My P-'14 really likes this load, shoots under 1 MOA with it all the time. Fact that the rifle still MISSES is down to my eyes!
Use Ed's Famous O-Rings when firing fresh ammo; they help your cases fire-form to fit YOUR chamber, REALLY lengthen case-life.
The C.E. Harris UNIVERSAL LOAD for military rifles is the same no matter what your rifle; it seems to work in them all: 13 grains of Red Dot with a 180 CAST bullet. In the .303, do NOT exceed 14 grains. As Harris published it, you get 538 rounds to the pound of powder. Cating your slugs out of old wheelweights, your loaded ammo comes in at $1.20 a box.... or $2 if you want gas-checks. REALLY hard to beat. Gets 2 MOA, can be used to snipe 200-yard gophers. This is friend BUFFDOG's 300-yard gopher load. Little recoil, quiet and polite, doesn't frighten little old ladies nine miles away; what more can you ask? EXCELLENT training load for new shooters and CHEAP. Do it right and your brass will last 5/8 of forever. Pressures are VERY low, barrel life is nearly infinite.
Have at 'er!
In an experiment, I used one to weigh the WRITING on a sheet of paper.
They advertise it a 1/20 of a grain accuracy and I think I would concur with that.
FAR more precision than anything your local dope-dealer might even have access to. Our local jeweller uses a digital scale for buying gold and silver; it is accurate to 1/10 of a gram. This is accurate to 1/20 of a GRAIN: 30 times as precise, and for 1/10 of the cost!
Can't go wrong!
For store-boughten slugs, try 40 grains of 4064 with a .312" Hornady 150 Spire Point. Comes out in the .308 class. For better accuracy, seat the slugs OUT so you can see the whole cannelure. My P-'14 really likes this load, shoots under 1 MOA with it all the time. Fact that the rifle still MISSES is down to my eyes!
Use Ed's Famous O-Rings when firing fresh ammo; they help your cases fire-form to fit YOUR chamber, REALLY lengthen case-life.
The C.E. Harris UNIVERSAL LOAD for military rifles is the same no matter what your rifle; it seems to work in them all: 13 grains of Red Dot with a 180 CAST bullet. In the .303, do NOT exceed 14 grains. As Harris published it, you get 538 rounds to the pound of powder. Cating your slugs out of old wheelweights, your loaded ammo comes in at $1.20 a box.... or $2 if you want gas-checks. REALLY hard to beat. Gets 2 MOA, can be used to snipe 200-yard gophers. This is friend BUFFDOG's 300-yard gopher load. Little recoil, quiet and polite, doesn't frighten little old ladies nine miles away; what more can you ask? EXCELLENT training load for new shooters and CHEAP. Do it right and your brass will last 5/8 of forever. Pressures are VERY low, barrel life is nearly infinite.
Have at 'er!
Tagged for interest. One of my projects for this winter is trying to replicate Mk.VII using Hornady 174-grain FMJ and H4895. Aim is to find a load that groups well at approximately Mk.VII velocities so that I can use the leaf sight on my Long Branch as intended...
Service velocity with the Mark VIIz were the same as for the Cordite variety: a 174-grain flatbase bullet at 2440 ft/sec nominal MV.
According to a letter I have from Hodgdons', they have duplicated this with 43 grains of H-4895. They do not publish this load in their books because of the number of people who just want "a little more power" and figure that if 43 is good, then 45 must be better. In fact, 43 is tops, period.
I would rather have ACCURATE ammo than Service-grade and the fact is that the Service performance was arrived at in a typically-British manner, back in 1910. First, they designed the Mark VII bullet to be as accurate as they could with the technology of the period; that this came out as slightly impact-unstable was just a benefit which helped them regain some of the man-stopping capability they HAD had with the Dum-Dum series. They then ran this bullet to find the most ACCURATE velocity they could get with it. This came out at about 2250 ft/sec.
They had an excellent Travelling View program at that time: every rifle in the Army was inspected and gauged at LEAST once every 2 years. But what MIGHT happen if the Travelling View MISSED a rifle?????? So they built up ONE rifle out of absolutely-worn-out parts, all tolerances at or exceeding MAX, and screwed on a brand-new extra-tight absolute-MINIMUM barrel. This was the worst-possible-case which they could theorise. They then built velocities until cases started to separate with THIS rifle. The separations began at roughly 2650 ft/sec.
So they SPLIT THE DIFFERENCE for Service ammo, giving a little more RANGE but a little less ACCURACY.... and this came out at 2440 ft/sec.
To duplicate their ACCURATE load, try 38 grains of 4895 with a Sierra 180 Pro-Hunter SEATED TO THE OAL OF A BALL ROUND. This comes out at 2250 (Royal Laboratory's most-accurate velocity) and your grouping tightens up like a frightened sphincter. GOOD tables in the back of the Sierra book will tell you just how much to hold over.
That is a GOOD load. I like to shoot WITH it but I don't want to shoot AGAINST it!
Hope this helps.
According to a letter I have from Hodgdons', they have duplicated this with 43 grains of H-4895. They do not publish this load in their books because of the number of people who just want "a little more power" and figure that if 43 is good, then 45 must be better. In fact, 43 is tops, period.
I would rather have ACCURATE ammo than Service-grade and the fact is that the Service performance was arrived at in a typically-British manner, back in 1910. First, they designed the Mark VII bullet to be as accurate as they could with the technology of the period; that this came out as slightly impact-unstable was just a benefit which helped them regain some of the man-stopping capability they HAD had with the Dum-Dum series. They then ran this bullet to find the most ACCURATE velocity they could get with it. This came out at about 2250 ft/sec.
They had an excellent Travelling View program at that time: every rifle in the Army was inspected and gauged at LEAST once every 2 years. But what MIGHT happen if the Travelling View MISSED a rifle?????? So they built up ONE rifle out of absolutely-worn-out parts, all tolerances at or exceeding MAX, and screwed on a brand-new extra-tight absolute-MINIMUM barrel. This was the worst-possible-case which they could theorise. They then built velocities until cases started to separate with THIS rifle. The separations began at roughly 2650 ft/sec.
So they SPLIT THE DIFFERENCE for Service ammo, giving a little more RANGE but a little less ACCURACY.... and this came out at 2440 ft/sec.
To duplicate their ACCURATE load, try 38 grains of 4895 with a Sierra 180 Pro-Hunter SEATED TO THE OAL OF A BALL ROUND. This comes out at 2250 (Royal Laboratory's most-accurate velocity) and your grouping tightens up like a frightened sphincter. GOOD tables in the back of the Sierra book will tell you just how much to hold over.
That is a GOOD load. I like to shoot WITH it but I don't want to shoot AGAINST it!
Hope this helps.
Dammit, Smellie, you've just saved me weeks of experimentation, grumblemutter .
Thanks!
Seriously, though, I'm not so much aiming for absolute accuracy here as I'm aiming to match ballistics for purposes of learning how to use the leaf sight. I've got occasional access to a 600 yard range, and want to teach myself how to use the sight properly...
.Thanks!
Seriously, though, I'm not so much aiming for absolute accuracy here as I'm aiming to match ballistics for purposes of learning how to use the leaf sight. I've got occasional access to a 600 yard range, and want to teach myself how to use the sight properly...
RememberTheSomme
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
- Location
- Nova Scotia
Smellie,.... your post on the most accurate velocity on a 174gr was determined at 2250ft/sec, reminds me of sighting in a Parker-Hale sporter for a guy while I had my chronograph set up many years back. The Winchester 180gr PPSP's he gave me were going over the screens at 2260fps and a very tight standard deviation, with the 22" sportered barrel. That was a full 220ft/sec lower from Winchester published ballistics for the load, but my god was it a tack driver for a No4. The most accurate LE I have ever fired at 100yards to date. IIRC it was 1 MOA or better! The 2250fps I would have to concur with, and it apparently works in more than one combination of bullet/powder.
Makes you wonder if Winchester were looking at the old data from R^L when they concocted this one.
One never knows, really.
There is a great discussion, complete with spark-gap photos, in the TEXT BOOK OF SMALL ARMS - 1909 (HM Stationery Office, London, 1909, price 1/-) on barrel vibrations DURING firing. These are all using the old Long Lee-Enfield rifle as reference. Interesting point is that the Number 4 uses a barrel which is the precise duplicate of the Long Lee barrel, just 5 inches shorter, so much of what the book offers is applicable to the Number 4.
You would really be amazed if you could see the gymnastics that barrel does s it is being fired!
Using the combat sights on the Number 4 is a skill to learn. Learn it in combination with the discussions and illustrations in SHOOT TO LIVE! (available for free download from milsurps dot com), the brilliant Canadian WW2 marksmanship-training textbook.
I would go with the most ACCURATE load, bearing in mind that CONSISTENCY in loading is more important to many rifles than a single, precise load. Service ammunition used to vary from Lot to Lot and deteriorated at differing rates during differing storage. It was common for the Rangemaster or the team coach to hand out the issue of ammo for a certain target at, say, 300 yards, along with the instruction, "Hold 3 inches high". Holding high, holding low, it didn't matter which: if you know how big the target is, you can judge this very close..... and be right on the money. Your sights are there to get you more-or-less onto the target; they are NOT the be-all and end-all because there are far too many VARIABLES: the individual rifle, the temperature, the lighting, the ACTUAL velocity your ammo is producing, headwinds, tailwinds, barometric pressure and others. They ALL can have a bearing on precisely where that bullet strikes the target. Marksmanship, in part, is the art of doping them ALL into your sighting picture and then SQUEEZING that trigger perfectly.
Ganderite, on this forum, can give you some pointers on how to do it better than I can. He has shot these in the BIG Shoots, as has BUFFDOG and a few others. I had good training but never had the money to attend one of the Big Shoots, so never experienced the very Top Rank of shooting with the Lee-Enfield Rifle.
There is a great discussion, complete with spark-gap photos, in the TEXT BOOK OF SMALL ARMS - 1909 (HM Stationery Office, London, 1909, price 1/-) on barrel vibrations DURING firing. These are all using the old Long Lee-Enfield rifle as reference. Interesting point is that the Number 4 uses a barrel which is the precise duplicate of the Long Lee barrel, just 5 inches shorter, so much of what the book offers is applicable to the Number 4.
You would really be amazed if you could see the gymnastics that barrel does s it is being fired!
Using the combat sights on the Number 4 is a skill to learn. Learn it in combination with the discussions and illustrations in SHOOT TO LIVE! (available for free download from milsurps dot com), the brilliant Canadian WW2 marksmanship-training textbook.
I would go with the most ACCURATE load, bearing in mind that CONSISTENCY in loading is more important to many rifles than a single, precise load. Service ammunition used to vary from Lot to Lot and deteriorated at differing rates during differing storage. It was common for the Rangemaster or the team coach to hand out the issue of ammo for a certain target at, say, 300 yards, along with the instruction, "Hold 3 inches high". Holding high, holding low, it didn't matter which: if you know how big the target is, you can judge this very close..... and be right on the money. Your sights are there to get you more-or-less onto the target; they are NOT the be-all and end-all because there are far too many VARIABLES: the individual rifle, the temperature, the lighting, the ACTUAL velocity your ammo is producing, headwinds, tailwinds, barometric pressure and others. They ALL can have a bearing on precisely where that bullet strikes the target. Marksmanship, in part, is the art of doping them ALL into your sighting picture and then SQUEEZING that trigger perfectly.
Ganderite, on this forum, can give you some pointers on how to do it better than I can. He has shot these in the BIG Shoots, as has BUFFDOG and a few others. I had good training but never had the money to attend one of the Big Shoots, so never experienced the very Top Rank of shooting with the Lee-Enfield Rifle.
I finally got all the components together from my LGS. I went with 42.4gr of H414 and 174gr. Hornady BT, mainly because that was the only load on the Lee Loader chart in stock. I seated the bullet at the same OAL as the factory S&B ammo I had on had. As you can see the cannelure is well out of the case, which from what I've read is fine.
My apologies for wandering "off track" a little....
.... Perhaps a little off track, but, has anyone any thoughts as regards, specifically, accuracy 'loads for a a P14 ? Or just stick with the standard .303 loads ? I've sold off all my No3s, and retained the P14 in the hope that I can find the time to to wring out it's best accuracy without the pain in the arse of case separation to the same extent as the No3s and No4s ! LOL ! .... Not that it really matters but, it's a an ERA, in good shape BUT set in a P17 Stock. ...... David K
.... Perhaps a little off track, but, has anyone any thoughts as regards, specifically, accuracy 'loads for a a P14 ? Or just stick with the standard .303 loads ? I've sold off all my No3s, and retained the P14 in the hope that I can find the time to to wring out it's best accuracy without the pain in the arse of case separation to the same extent as the No3s and No4s ! LOL ! .... Not that it really matters but, it's a an ERA, in good shape BUT set in a P17 Stock. ...... David K
.. Oh well so much for a "shortcut" ! So,back to the tried and true, load development process. ...... 'Never seriously played with a a P14, so it should be entertaining if nothing else. Now, for the snow and mud to go ! ....... David k
For the Pattern 1914 rifle, try 40 grains of 4064 with a Hornady 150 flatbase Spire Point bullet. Seating is so that the entire bullet cannelure is showing.
It crowds the Leade just a bit, but the rifles really like it.
This produces a single-ragged-hole 6-round group in my Winchester P-'14 (chopped and scoped) at 145 yards.
Velocity is very close to the .308W original spec.
I would not go any heavier than this.
Hope this helps.
It crowds the Leade just a bit, but the rifles really like it.
This produces a single-ragged-hole 6-round group in my Winchester P-'14 (chopped and scoped) at 145 yards.
Velocity is very close to the .308W original spec.
I would not go any heavier than this.
Hope this helps.
This is not a published load so if you use it and blow yourself up, tough beans. There are plenty of proven published loads.
I use the 123-125 gr bullets (.310 or .311) commonly meant for the 7.62x39, powered by 30 gr of H4198. Some will say it's too fast a powder but I find it to be a nice light load, accurate as all get out, and easy on the shoulder and wallet. I use it in my sporterized MkIII Ross with a 24" barrel.
But...as I said before;
This is not a published load so if you use it and blow yourself up, tough beans. There are plenty of proven published loads.
I use the 123-125 gr bullets (.310 or .311) commonly meant for the 7.62x39, powered by 30 gr of H4198. Some will say it's too fast a powder but I find it to be a nice light load, accurate as all get out, and easy on the shoulder and wallet. I use it in my sporterized MkIII Ross with a 24" barrel.
But...as I said before;
This is not a published load so if you use it and blow yourself up, tough beans. There are plenty of proven published loads.
..... Thanks ! Appreciated! This gives me another avenue to pursue........ I think, in theory at least, the P14 should be capable, of as good, if not better accuracy than the Mk3, given the Mauser lock up and the longer sight radius. ... I believe, in the very early stages of WW1, the P14 was used as a limited form of sniper rifle ( Marksman ? ) before sniping really became organized, with formalized training and equipment developed. ...... David K
