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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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