Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Single Shots Contender Blackout project...

The Rifle:




Bullberry Bbl, 18", 10" Twist

The Bullet:




Accurate Molds Inc. casts at .3105, bore rider, 231 grns. 1/30 Alloy, Sized to .309, Alox Lube

RANGE Day:

COAL 3.10", CCI-400 Primers

1st loads, Preliminary, Starting.

At the 20 yd bench...

1st up - IMR-4198

10.9 and 11.0 grains:



2nd - CFE BLK

10.5, 10.6 and 10.7 grns.




3rd - RL-7

11.1 and 11.2 grns.

You been having too much fun.

Lot of bases covered there. You might benefit from a bit harder alloy, say your 30:1 with addition of equal weight of wheel weights...clip on style.

Good looking bullet, wish I had a suppressor for my Ruger American 300BO. I keep waiting for cost to go down. I’m missing out on some quiet fun.

Yes you are. The one pictured is a Silencerco Harvester 300. The mould is from Accuratemolds.com and is a beauty to cast with.....

How do you like the Ruger? LGS holding my suppressor has one staring me in the face and it’s so tempting but I’m a 6.5 Grendel fan so keep waffling in 300 BO.

Chefcreed - My ruger ranch BO is accurate to very accurate with load work up just beginning. I am amazed at how quiet my sico omega is with 190 to 225 gr jacked bullets and 8-10 grains of various powders ( lil gun and 1680 work best so far). I have not began to work with cast bullets yet. One caution - the ruger rotary mag is plastic junk - in my sample of 2 (I have an American in 223 also).

4227? H110? Blue Dot? With that soft of an alloy, and the powders tried, it looks like the velocities are a bit variable, with some vertical stringing. I'd think about a faster burner, or a slightly harder alloy, or both.

Had some conversation with muffin on the alloy topic. He wasn’t using 30:1, but rather something a bit tougher in the 9’ish range of BHN.

I was thinking something in that range would be better. Seems like I was wrong about hardening the alloy. What sage advice did you give him, Dan?

Second trip to the range.........

Sort of put the CFE-BLK on hold, at least for now...

Pressing on with the IMR-4198 and RL-7

Shot three loads of the 4198, at 11.1gns things are beginning to tighten up:



Next RL-7, which I hope will be THE powder, mostly because I have a bunch and I just like the RL Powders:

Same as the 4198, getting better...


Biggest/Best surprise was the Blue Dot:

Loaded a string just to see where velocities would be, since there isn't any direct load data for this cartridge/powder combo that I could find:

Anyway, right out of the gate they were a bit too zippy, noticeable that the sound barrier was being tweaked.......... DD said keep shootin' the neighbors were bustin caps earlier........
Shot 3, loads as noted............ it seems to like Blue Dot..

Wow, the Blue Dot does look promising. I hope it works as well at a bit lower pressure/velocity. And the ES of the IMR4198 is more what I hoped you'd see. Don't rule out 4227, if you have any. It should be right there in the right burn range.

Good thread! Keep us informed!

Day 3 at the backyard range:

Charge weights in the circle...

First up IMR-4198



Second - RL-7



11.9grns of RL-7 looks promising, except for that one that came out slow......

Loaded some more Blue Dot - backed up to 7.5grns = SUB-Sonic, 7.7 = NOT, now I know!!! DD laughs at me every time I shoot the Blue Dot!

I suspect he's actually experiencing some size envy:

Blackout on the left, DDs Sneezer on the right....

Hey, your pics are AWOL.

Good things come in small packages.

How about now???

I see said the blind man. Nice groupage that.

I’m cutting targets for the 12 bore BP project. My groups will be bigger. -Phfft-

Don’t be jealous mine is bigger.

Day 4 at the range:

All groups 5 shots except for the Blue Dot

Exploring whether adding a crimp serves any purpose.....

First up, again - IMR-4198

NO crimp and a slight taper crimp-



Next was RL-7

Curious, that Crimp/NO Crimp seems to have the opposite effect with this powder-



Finally Blue Dot - NO crimp

Top target is 10 shots-



DD didn't laff at me today when I shot the Blue Dot.....

All three powders will certainly do the job.

Will abandon the notion of a taper crimp at this point, might explore a sizing technique or two in the future........

I love ragged holes in the morning.

DD, pulled the expander ball.... gonna try sizing the neck pushing in instead of pulling out............

The Pleasant surprise of the day came from the 22RF contender.....

While I appreciate the flexibility of being able to have one gun and just swap barrels, I choose to view it as an opportunity to own more guns, so I bought a new G2 frame for my RF bbl..........

Had the barrel threaded so that I could use the suppressor on this one too.....

Through some horse trading at the LGS I ended up with a couple of bricks of the Aguila 60grain Sniper Sub-Sonic, which by all calculators should NOT be stable out of a 16" Twist Bbl.... Calculator that I used showed that a 12"twist was marginal...



SOOoooooo, try some WITHOUT the suppressor -



They seem to go pointy end first...... So thread the can on and fire for effect.... 5 shots

Was stupid quiet too. Quieter than Hollywood quiet. Probably wouldn't even wake a dog.

Pfft..... quiet.

Back to the smelting pot and the bench, have allowed the remodeling of two bathrooms interfere with what is important..................

Back to the range tomorrow morning....

Range Day - I think I have settled(for now) on a usable load........

Reduced powder charge for IMR 4198, RL-7 and Blue Dot, for the purpose of moving away from the trans-sonic realm......... also tried a new powder RL-10x..

RL-7 and Blue Dot results were rather underwhelming, RL-10x mixed....

This is the IMR-4198 - 50 yards.

AVG - 1022fps
ExSprd - 29
StndDev - 12

A twist fast enough (1:9) to fully stabilize the 60 grain SSS bullets will enable the bullet to travel to the target nose on. A standard twist rate (1:16) that is just barely fast enough to stabilize the bullet gets you on ‘thin ice’ as far as stabilizing. At that point an imperfect crown or rough bore can throw a bullet into a yaw or destabilizing trip to the target.
I dragged a bunch of 22 rifles to the 50 yard range to find this out. One with 1:16 twist and a nice bore and crown was accurate to 50 yards. A few 1:16 barrels would keyhole at 50. A 1:14 stabilized well with all shots fired.
I was tempted to buy a barrel or liner with 1:9 twist but tired of playing with the 60 grain bullets before carrying out the idea.
Redman still offers 1/9” twist 22 rimfire liners if your itch needs scratching. I’ve been very satisfied with their 17 caliber liners in 17 M2, and have done two of them.

Refined my annealing technique, ended up with what feels like much more consistent neck tension, seated bullets a little longer = the result.

5 shots, 50yds

the white squares mic at .40"

Is this group a product of the 11.2 gr of IMR 4198? I'd like to see you shoot them at 100. Too bad Florida is over 2000 miles away.

HuntnShoot, yep 11.2/4198....

It's pretty cool that you've "solved" this thing so well. Please, shoot them at 100.

I'll see about that, maybe DD will me set up on the front porch of his house, open windows on both sides and just 'shoot through'......

Or I'll make a trip to the local range and pay to shoot...

LOL! I like option 1. Keeping things interesting is the spice of life!

HnS, I may get to the range before the weekend............

What do you 'expect' will happen???

just curious if you had something in mind..

I'm just wondering if they have any stability issues that don't show up at 50 yds. They SHOULDN'T, but I'm just curious.

👍

I wouldn’t mind shootin’ thru the house but Mrs. Dan might. Do remember her middle name “Annie” and why.

So made it to a 100yd range:



Still seeing evidence of either a little wobble, or nose 'slump' tend to think that it is slumping from an alloy that is too soft....

Did a little hardness testing and have come to the conclusion that the 'labels' on my lead inventory may have been 'OFF'....

Got the inventory sorted out, realized that almost all of my first loads from initial workup to this 100yd target were shot with lead and a little tin, way too soft..
Hardened things up a bit, 9BHN and went back to the 100.....



Still seeing the slump or wobble, but seems to be less.... group size shrunk... 11 shots both targets.

Took the opportunity to perform an 'expansion' test, at 2', so velocity was right at 1020fps, damp sand....

Before: Dia .308


After: Dia .650






Next, will harden things a little more......

Stay tuned

I love splat in the morning.

Great thread! Thanks for keeping me in the loop, Muffin.

I'd say your assumptions are accurate about your alloy being on the soft side. That's some crazy expansion for 1000fps range, 2x+. I could live with 2 inches at 100, were it me, but I'd also try for better.

HnS, I'll work on the 100yd group size for sure, though it isn't really necessary. It is a 'stalking', still hunt rifle, and here in central FL my longest shot on a whitetail is maybe 30 yds, and it'll do that. Not likely that I would try the Texas reverse brain shot or as my MN FIL called it... 'up the vent'.... And I think it will work just fine on pigs as is.............

The things that you think you 'know' about reloading.....

Have had the opportunity to shoot 170, 180, 210 and 230 grain bullets in the Contender 300 Blackout.......... curious thing, to me at least, is that 11.2 grains of IMR 4198 produces 1025 FPS for all of these bullet weights!?!?!? Was not expecting that.

While the 230grainers shot very well, there was the indication of a nose slump or wobble showing up on the target paper, based on the smudge marks, personally I don't think the pigs really care one way or the other. And in the never ending pursuit of perfection took the bore slug to a friends caliper and determined that the bore is closer to .304 than .300, not good for a .300 bore rider............

Ordered up a new mould, sized appropriately, also got them to back off on the cast weight. Bore ride section measures .304, base .311, sized to .309 and weight is right at 210grains. BTW Accuratemolds.com makes really nice molds, I told him how I wanted to modify my existing bullet dimensions and he had the program up and ready to cut a mould in TWO DAYS.......

Anyway, the slump or wobble is gone:

5 shots, 25yds

It also seems that groups are smaller when the bullets are sized base first rather than nose first, 50/100yds will be a better test for that.....

Lead is a good teacher.

No schitt...interesting. Glad to see you moving this project along. You aren't the only one learning some things, Muffin.

I've actually badgered out the bore-riding portion of a few double cavity bullets using lapping compound and a bullet with a screw in the base. I would just buy a new mould next time. It was a 6-8 hour affair to cast, prep lapping bullet, lap both cavities, clean, cast, measure, repeat several times. Both the moulds I did were aluminum, and both had long bore-riding portions. Both ended up being incredibly accurate bullets after the alteration.

Anyone ever done this????

Necessity being the mother-hood of invention, woke up this AM realizing that I am woefully understocked with Small Rifle Primers, and the current climate may mean they become even scarcer. I do, however, have a chitt load, by comparison, of Large Rifle Primers................. what to do???

Decided to sacrifice 10 of my 300 Blackout cases, got out the drill, chamfer/deburr tool, primer pocket uniformer.... and off we go.





It seems to have worked, loads are ready to test, maybe next week sometime..... DD????? A couple of primers seated pretty easy, none fall out, didn't lose any cases.

I do have a few questions:

1) Looked briefly online and couldn't find anything, Is there a handy tool made for this??

2) IIRC the 300 Blackout, at one time, was a wildcat..... Does this take it back to that status???

3) Thoughts?????

You happen to know the primer pocket wall thickness in the extraction groove?

I've never seen that particular variable attempted before. Seems there would be enough brass to be safe with these cast bullets shooting subsonic, but I'd not want to use them with full power stuff. I've got some picked-up 5.7x28 cases I should go measure.

SOOOooooo, got over to DDs range this AM, to shoot several 300 Blackout loads, one of which was the cases modified to accept Large Rifle Primers...........

As pictured several cases showed soot around the primers which is consistent with the number of cases that required very little pressure to seat primers,




this likely a result of the reaming technique and learning curve, about half did not show the sooting..............

Backed off of a previous load by about 20%............. Pleasantly surprised with the result.............

Will likely not persue LRP in the Blackout, but it is there if need be..........


7 shots at 50 yards - 10.0 grains RL-7 and CCI-200 prmrs

That's a cool project and nice to have that in your pocket for that day that it's needed.