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