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I am preparing to load my first cast bullet loads for my 308. I realize i need to stay under 1600fps per the bullet manufacturer but does the pressure curve matter much here? It might get to 1600 but do it too suddenly and smear my bore. Or not?

Planned on h4198 and or trailboss...

I fooled with a lot of Trailboss when it first came out...it was always adequate but never the best. One mans's opinion. 4198's or RL 7, but most of my experience is with .30-40, '06, 8x57, 32-40,38-55, 45-70.
You might keep an open mind on 'fast' powders, sometimes if your bullet is a tad small for your throat/groove, you can save yourself the heartache of leading with a swift kick in the ass with fast powders and perky primers.
Again, one man's opinion.

Thanks

Not a writer.
In my 308 I've been up to 2450 fps and routinely run 2200 with The NOE version of the Saeco #315 180 gr gc bullet sized to .3115. These are powder coated and water quenched out of the PC oven. Before the PC cycle they run around 15 Bhn. I have used several powders for those loads over 2000 fps, Varget, N202, H4350 and H4831sc. The pressure curve you talked about would favor slower powders in this project.
I've taken several whitetail does with this load, never recovered a bullet, even on a couple that went end to end.I intend to fun some air cooled versions of the same bullet to see how they work. If it ever cools off around here.

This is without gas checks. Just learning to cast and trying different bullets first

It's been shown here before, but...if you're going to get into casting a lot of really good information here: http://www.lasc.us/CastBulletNotes.htm

Too many unknown factors to allow a prognosis. Bullet fit? Bullet alloy and hardness? Gas checked?

Have you read one of the iterations of the Lyman cast bullet manual? If not, do so.

All that said, 1600fps is a walk in the park. 4198 may be your friend, maybe not. I would prefer 4227, RL7, 5744, or my all time fave 4759 but that stuff ain't no more. Trail Boss will get you there but pressures spike quickly when you push it past cowboy action type loads. I don't care for it one darn bit and accuracy always sucked compared to other powders. YMMV though.

As a rule of thumb without going through all the rigamarole of chamber casts and bore slugging, size it to .310", lube it well, and pick a powder from the manual that'll give the desired velocity, and see what happens. At that speed it shouldn't lead unless you're doing something particularly offbeat.

Do yourself a favor and get a neck expander die from either Lyman or RCBS that will expand the neck to accept the larger bullet and bell the case mouth slightly to ease insertion of the bullet. Fairly critical, that. Those dies are cheap. Using a standard neck expanding plug just doesn't cut it- something has to give and it won't be the brass. Your carefully crafted relatively soft cast bullet will suffer as will your accuracy.

Well the plan is to shoot a 150 ish grain bullet at 1500 to 2000fps eventually. Didn't know this stuff was so complicated.

I have been handloading for 15 years but i guess i need to do more research

Not gas checked. 309 diameter

cra1948s recommendation of the lasc is good as is flintlocks on fast powders.

For moderate velocities in numerous 30 cal rifles, and 165g and up weight bullets, i have had very good luck with 4227, 2400, 5744, and sometimes Unique. My best accuracy seems to be around 1500 fps.

If these are over the counter bullets, it may help to get a size that is large enough for you to tailor the diameter to match your rifle. Cast bullets is a whole nother hobby that is fun but requires some work and fiddling around. It helps to have a neck expanding die so you dont shave lead seating a bullet.

No doubt others will chime in with great suggestions.

Not gas checked throws a monkey wrench into the works. Practical upper limits of plain base bullets falls short of your 1600fps goal. There may be/are excwptions but you gotta have your ducks in a row and even then it's not terribly likely that?accuracy with no leading will result.

Plain base .30 bullets: to me spell 1400fps and less and powders like Unique and Bullseye. That's not a bad place to be though. Accuracy is to be expected, and after all a bullet only has to be moving fast enough to punch through both sides of a paper target. Hunting? Yeah it's possible and in the hands of a steely eyed woodsman a light load like that will knock a deer ass-over-tin cups. I'm not always that guy and so I prefer my cast .30 hunting bullets to have a little more moxie.

Ok. These bullets are able to have a gas check attached so maybe i will do that as well

Mr Galt, I would defer to the Gnoaaah on this stuff, but to me a gas check bullet, sans the gas check, is a recipe for failure much above 1,000 fps. There are a lot of sharp edges back there exposed to a theoretical 2,000 degree flame...most alloys melt around 700 ish. As long as your eventual goal is hunting velocities, go with the gas check from the get-go. You need not spend a fortune to begin with...Lee push-thru dies are your friend. You don't need some high dollar lubrisizer until you know what you're doing, and maybe not then. I am not a powder coater, never will be, but if the PC guys are telling the truth about accuracy, then that may get you where you want to be.

Ok. Thanks

👍👍👍

I second the motion on the use of gas checks. One thing, and as I don't know what configuration your bullet has, but if it is a fairly straight sided ending in a round nose, try inserting it the bullet nose first into the muzzle of the rifle. If the nose is engraved by the rifling or is a snug fit, then the bullet should shoot well. I've noticed that bullets that are loose or a sloppy fit accuracy usually sucks big time. Since the powder maker is it's infinite wisdom no longer make SR4759 (thank you bean counters) I've gone to Accurate 5744 for my general cast bullet shooting. I reserve Unique for light gallery loads. I generally reserve 2400 for my .357 and .44 magnum loads.
Paul B.

I use unique with 165grain bullets for my358 winchester. About 1600 fps.

castboolits.com is a great reference for cast bullet ("boolit") shooters.

Many variables for accuracy in a rifle. Rifling twist, groove diameter, throat diameter, bullet hardness, powder, velocity etc.

I would recommend getting a good assessment of your barrel first. Do a "pound cast" (look it up) technique to accurately measure the THROAT diameter of your rifle/chamber ( 0.000" or 0.0000")

Then lube your bore, and tap the bullet you wish to use through your breach, out to the muzzle. Record GROOVE diameter (0.000", or 0.0000").

Use a tight fitting patch or bronze bore brush, and measure your rifling twist. (1-10"? 1-11"? 1-12"? other?)

A very good starting point for accuracy is to size the cast bullet to THROAT DIAMETER (maybe 0.0005" smaller than throat diameter)- or just small enough diameter to just fit the throat of the chamber. If too big, it won't fit. Too small, it will FIT, but won't give you best accuracy.

You will probably read that you should size your cast bullets to 0.001-0.002" over groove diameter. This is a good start, but is not really what you should target your bullet sizing diameter. This APPROACHES throat diameter, and may even match it (it the diameter matches it, you got lucky). You really want to target fitting just so it snugly fits into the throat. This will save you time in seaching for best accuracy with cast bullets.

watch your MV. Use gas checks. If your twist is 1-10" , you will likely see best accuracy around 1600 fps. If 1-12", you may be able to get good accuracy up to 1800-1900 fps, pending bullet alloy. If you are looking for "high velocity", you should seek even a slower twist of 1-13" or 14" twist, this may get you up to 2400+ fps with accuracy. The issue you run into is "threshold velocity" or "threshold rpm" (look that term up for cast bullets).

castboolits.com has a lot of this info on the website. One person's posts who you should read over there is "Larry Gibson". He has done a tremendous amount of work with high velocity cast bullets and slower rifling, due to the threshold rpm / velocity issue. It is essentially when the softer cast bullet strips from the rifling as it is pushed too fast for the barrel's rifling.

The SAECO 315 ("Eagan bullet") is a good bullet design, as is the 311041. "Ranch Dog" designed molds are excellent hunting bullets, and accurate, and have a large meplat ( flat nose for good energy transfer). Night Owl Enterprises (NOE) make excellent molds of proper diameter. Arsenal Molds is another excellent mold maker, and they will cut the mold to your requested diameter for no extra charge.

Good luck. Throat diameter is the key measurement.

Yup, all that and more. Which is why I said to get Lyman's book and read it.

I've been loading plain base cast bullets for my .35 Whelen for many years, my use was limited to plinking only. When I first started I was using SR 4759, when that powder was discontinued I switched to Unique. 15gr. of Unique and bullets weighing 200, 210, 215 and 225 grains it didn't make any difference 15gr. of Unique was a load that shot very well accuracywise. Cast bullet loading adds what can be a fascinating new dimension to ones shooting, lots to research and experiment with.

The Lyman "Cast Bullet Handbook" is always a good starting point. Back when I was younger and fox were worth a C-note I loaded Lee 170gr gas check bullets out of my 300 Sav. until I killed enough fox to buy a 222 Rem. I shot alot of the bullet for small game along with 158gr SWC and 200gr RN out of my 358 Norma Mag. Cast bullets are fun to work with. A couple years ago I started playing with paper patched bullets for my 9.3x72R but it is still a work in progress as I moved and am still transitioning to the new area of the country and the Paper Patch 9.3 is a low priority project.

If you are looking for plinking and paper punching cast bullet, then you can do without gas checks, and keep thing low cost.

Get a flat base ( non-gas check version) of a "micro lube band" ( "tumble lube") bullet, such as a "Ranch Dog" design. Get it at throat diameter for your 308 Win (0.311" diameter will get you close) . Lube with Lee liquid Alox. Keep MV under 1100 fps.( if you keep MV under 1100 fps, you will be subsonic and have a quiet load, that will not destabilize going through the transonic speec level ( passing back through the sound barrier as the bullet slows down. Avoiding the transonic zone translates to more accuracy from not subjecting the bullet to a destabilizing force.

Your cost with this pathway ( plain base, tumble lube) will be the mold, handles, tumble lube, and the lead. Look.at NOE or Arsenal Molds for sourcing your mold.
Arsenal Molds tumble lube / micro band "Ranch Dog" design mold.
http://arsenalmolds.com/products?product_id=107&limit=100

Available in plain base or gas check cavities, or combo. An excellent hunting bullet, and very accurate when sized to the throat, and a well-made mold that can be made to your throat diameter for no extra charge. An incredible value.

fyi "Ranch Dog" is the handle over on castboolits.com of the person who designed this bullet. He is a retired jet airline pilot, who knows a thing or two about aerodynamics.

I you intend to hunt deer hogs, go for the gas check, and get at least a properly sized push through sizer ( which CAN seat a gas check with practice). Start looking for a used lubrisizer and throat diameter sizing / lube die.

+1 to gnoahhh's remarks.

I started down this road 15 years ago, starting with the bullets for my muzzleloader and working my way up. To date, I have cast thousands of bullets. I started a 30-06 project many years ago and it's gone through several iterations, but the 30-06 project is still not complete. It ain't as easy as it looks.

One thing I do know: don't try to shoot a bullet meant for a gas check without the gas check. That's just begging for failure.

Well, I gotta step into the fire so to speak. Different campers use different tents and blah, blah, blah. Short version? YMMV, nothing is engraved in stone and you never know until you try.

One of the things one should accept as truth is that most of the advice tendered here and elsewhere is valid in broad terms. It sets the stage for informed beginnings. To do otherwise is almost guaranteed to result in failure. OTOH, there are circumstances where the anomaly will work just fine. Case in point is my experience with cast flatbase and GC bullets w/o the gas checks.

I started casting about 15 or so years back. My first effort was for an ancient ML built just after the Civil War. .50 caliber slug gun that shot strip patched bullets first cast then swagged into final form. It was successful and brought home a 2d place finish at a match out in Cody, WY a decade back. Then I started tinkering with odds and ends. One of those oddities was a .30-30 Mod 94. Everyone said I needed a harder alloy and this and that and so forth. Keep the velocity down they said. Well, it shot 1" groups at 50 yards with an alloy of 10 BHN at a velocity chronied at a bit over 2150 fps. Good enough for deer, pigs and misc. obnoxious cretins.

I grew up and stepped into the wildcat game with the "legendary" .30 Sneezer. Steve Brooks made me a mould and here ya go....


They shot OK.


But of course I am a fiddler and while the Brooks bullet kills pigs, I had to try something different. Hell, I tried everything different at some point.
Enter the Lyman 311041. Now I'm not comfy with using gas checks in a silencer for what I hope are obvious reasons, so I figured, WTH, let's see what it will do!

All I can say is, uh, WOW!




So ya, I'll use GC bullets w/o the checks now and again. And when I want to impress the ladies I'll use the shiny torpedoes pictured above. That's just the way I roll.

DD

DigitalDan,

I'm not as hard-core a caster as some, but have been doing it for a while. When I decided to work up "rimfire equivalent" cast loads for the .22 Hornet a few years ago, during the Obama rimfire shortage, I ordered a gas-check Lyman mold that drops wheelweight bullets at around 43 grains. Eventually tried it sized and gas-checked, sized without gas checks, and unsized. It shot best as cast....

Is a gas check as important with a powder coated bullet as it is with a lube bullet?

MD, sometimes I think conventional wisdom collides head on with reality, hey?

On occasion!

I tried 'em unsized mostly due to another gun writer who's written a lot about casting bullets. In fact that's how he broke into the business. But many folks firmly believe you MUST size cast bullets for the finest accuracy.

Much is learned from doing, unless you're stupid.

IME, you want to be in the 1,200 fps speed range. Lots options to get you there.

I'd peruse this site for data. While they don't have .308 loads, they do have '06, which will get you in the ballpark.

Unique and W231 have worked best for me.

http://www.gmdr.com/lever/lowveldata.htm

Sizing a bullet to a certain diameter may be a useless step and harmful to accuracy. It depends on what the diameter the rifle's chamber throat. LUBING is important with a "lubrisizer". SIZING a cast bullet down to a smaller diameter with a lubrisizer may very well be a mistake,

If the "as cast" diameter of the bullet is close to throat diameter, just lube it and try shoot it. The "as cast" bullet may be the right diameter. If you don't have a lubrisizer sizing die equal or larger than your "as cast" bullet, just pan lube the bullet. use a fired case to "cookie cutter" the bullet from the hardened lube. Vio!a! A lubed, as-cast bullet. ( but no gas check).

You don't even have to "pan lube" as-cast bullets. The Lyman bullets I use in my Hornet are lubed by rolling them gently around a little in Lee Liquid Alox, then allowed to "dry."

Five will go into an inch or less at 50 yards, and in fact the cases don't even have to be neck-sized. I just seat the bullets in fired, primed and charge cases. It's one of the easiest, quickest deals I've ever found with bullet casting.

I have gotten decent accuracy in a couple Hornets with #225438 Lyman/Ideal bullets for example, sans gas checks, but I gotta say I got even better accuracy with them, and that's with all three iterations of those molds that I have. (They subtly changed the design of the bullet over many decades, so simply saying "225438" is kind of meaningless.) Just goes to show there aren't many absolutes in this game no matter which direction you turn.

Even during the .22 LR rimfire breech seating experiments I conducted I got better accuracy with checked bullets in the couple rifles I tried- a Ballard and a Low Wall. (I think alloy and size are more important for this application than almost anything else.) Next up are some Ranch Dog plain bases to repeat the experiment. Maybe by then I'll have my new centerfire breech block fitted to a pristine Stevens 44 so I can compare rimfire and centerfire (.22GTC) .22LR in the same gun via breech seating. (Note: I have an embarrassing amount of primed empty .22LR cases for this loony-like way of making/shooting .22LR's.)

You are having WAY too much fun!

As mentioned above the data at [url=https://outonalimbmfg.com/the-solo-scout/][/url] was very helpful to me for both rifles I shoot cast in. I buy mine from Rim Rock.both with gas check for speed and with out for range fun. It all started after I saw a post on, "The Load" mentioned here then stumbled on an article Rocky Rab wrote. John B has covered it also in print. Seafire here on the campfire had a lot of info on moderate loads also.
Low and Slow is a very fun way to get your rifle out and enjoy the range.
I have had very good accuracy with Blue Dot with out gas checks in an 06 and a 308.
A chronograph is a nice thing to have to keep an eye on where you are at with the real speed in your barrel.
I don't hot rod lead in my rifle, but have been known to in the 357.

gnoahh,

I am just reporting my results, with MY Lyman mould, in MY rifle.

But have also had some other contrary-to-popular-opinion results with other cast bullets. One was with a .38-55, with the not untypical groove diameter of around .377. Tried different alloys and sizing techniques, but eventually got the best results with using as-cast bullets with a little more pure lead in the alloy--which resulted in a little larger average diameter.

Again, learned that trick from a guy who started his gun-writing profession by really getting into casting bullets, and like some other gun writers made his inroads by testing long-held assumptions.

Not a gunwriter either,

Getting good accuracy with cast bullets in rifles, especially .30 caliber rifles, is a lot more simple than most want to make it.

In the .308, 7.5x55 and 30-06 I've used Bullseye, Red Dot, Unique, AA#7 and 2400 with pretty much equal success. If you pinned me down to one powder for just target shooting, it'd be Red Dot, it's amazing in .30 caliber rifles.

With a plain-base commercially cast bullet you're obviously going to be target shooting rather than hunting, so don't worry about setting velocity records. With my Swiss K-31 7.5x55 I loaded a 150 gr. plain-base flat nose bullet to just under 1100 fps using B'Eye or Red Dot and ultimately attained an Expert classification at our local High Power (reduced course) matches with said load. My most accurate .30 caliber cast loads generally run 1400-1500 fps. If you're looking for much over 2000 fps, you may as well go back to jacketed bullet as that's getting close to the practical upper limit of lead bullets.

I don't obsess over sizing either. .309" has pretty much worked for me in these calibers.
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