Home Forums Reloading Big Game Rifles If Coreloks were available as components?

I found some 180gr RN Corelokts on the classifieds and jumped on them like a duck on a Junebug!

I''ve still got a bunch of them from the days they were available as components...

in 6mm, 6.5 mm, 7mm and 30 cal....

was going thru some of my storage stuff the other day.... 6mm bullets for 7 cents a piece... and 140 grain 6.5 mm bullets I bought for 8 cents a piece...for the 7mm and 30 cal.. had to pony up like 10 cents a piece for some of those....

found some Speer Bullets... 50 TNTs, with the invoice still folded up in one of the boxes... 2,000 of them.... a pair of 1000 round packs.... $60 per thousand...with shipping $132 on the door step...

A few years back in Handloader magazine, a guy by the name Gary Sciuccetti (spelling?) did one of the most comprehensive bullet expansion tests I have ever seen. Very thorough, expensive, time consuming etc....anyway, there was a 2 page foldout with photos and the 2 best looking mushrooms of the whole test was the then terribly expensive .308, 180 gr Bear Claw and the lowly Rem Core Lokt 180 gr .308 round nose. Other people must have seen it too, because you seldom, if ever see 180 RCL RN's at gun shows.

I have always been a round nose fan... in the upper midwest, I use to hunt with an 06, and the only ammo I bought, was either Federal or Remington, with the 180 gr RN or the 220 Gr RN. the later was my most favorite...

Yes, I would load them. I was just looking at cross section and though it could be an optical illusion it looks to me like the jacket is thinner at the base on the pointed version as well. The jacket is thinner on the psp but if that is the case would still be a mechanical lock. In any case they perform well on deer. 165 psp in 30-06 is a particular favorite of mine. As side note for last couple years my son has been shooting corelokt ultra in 270 with excellent performance. Low bc compared to trend these days but excellent performing bullet

Lou

If they were all I had I would kill with confidence.



P

I have a pile of them for a 264 WM I bought last year. They shoot well.

I would.
.458” 405gr RNCLfor the 45-70
.358” 200gr RNCL for the 35 Rem and 35 Whelen
.308” 170gr RNCL for the 30-30 and 308 Win
.308” 180gr and 220gr RNCL for the 30-06
.257” 120gr PSPCL for the 25-06

I wish they were available again as components
Thanks, Tom

Me too!. bought them about 2 decades ago.

Where in WY??

Attention any Rem Model 14 and 141 owners.

Several years ago I tested a couple of dozen bullets in my 30 Rem model 14. Some bullets were more accurate than others, but more importantly, many of the bullets tended to hang up a little or a lot in the process of feeding into and through the tubular magazine and into the chamber. This J.D. Pedersen designed action is relatively complicated, which was typical of Mr Pedersen's designs.

I found that the rounder the nose of the bullet, the smoother it fed. Happily, the Remington 150 gr Round Nosed CoreLoks were both the smoothest feeding bullets and the most accurate in my rifle. The best bullet in this Remington rifle was a Remington bullet. Go figure!

I tried to take advantage of the spiral magazine by testing lots of pointed and semi-pointed bullets. The magazine/feeding issues and the very limited overall length that would feed through the action made the effort futile. Some bullets would work well as a single-shot, or a two-shooter, but overall the rifle worked much better just as it was designed to: with very round-nosed bullets.

I would have saved myself much time, trouble and money if I had known at the beginning what I know now. Maybe this tale will help someone else. I really like the old Remington pump rifles. Accept them for what they are and load for them as they were intended to be loaded and enjoy them.

This matches the experiences of gunsmiths who specialize in M14 and M141 rifles. Most say that the easiest way to get one of these rifles to jam is to use pointed bullets. The consensus is that the spiral design was for reduced friction rather than to use pointed bullets. The fact is that the cartridges chambered in these rifles were NOT originally pointed. As so often happens, one gunwriter makes a poorly-informed false statement and it gets repeated for decades - in this case for over a century.




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They were my go to bullet for 45/70 with the 300gr HP and 405gr RN. I loaded up my last 200gr 358 for the 35 remington. But like others have said outside of those 2 guns there are better options out there.

The last whitetail I shot with a 150 gr Corelok from my 308 BAR went thru the side of a 3" oak tree after killing the buck. 35 yard shot in NY. My buddy did the opposite in Maine, went thru the tree first and dropped the buck, 06 BAR at about 10 yards.

Not too far from Cody

I just bought 1K of the 165 CL from an estate a couple months ago. I'd love to find some .358s, either round or pointed. I'd probably buy all I could.

Only place I've seen them in recent years is on Gunbroker...they pop up time to time:

https://www.gunbroker.com/item/935140454

Somewhere out in my shed I have a can with about 200 of the 150 gr. 7MM Remington CL bullets that I picked up at a gun show to use in my .280 Rem. Never have loaded them into the brass. I'm thinking they might work in a 7x57 as well but as I made a killing on 150 gr. 7MM Nosler partitions are few years back those CLs have just been gathering dust. The 150 gr. Remington factory .280 ammo shoots quite well in my .280 and the original plan was to duplicate the factory load. However, you know what they say about best laid plans. When I found the old two core style Speer Grand Slams shoot so well that I'll stick with them for my elk load. I haven't tried some of the newer single core Grand Slams in that rifle so no idea as to how well they'll shoot.
Most of my deer hunting over the years has been strictly for deer with an occasional elk hunt thrown in. Never saw the need for a premium bullet for deer and still don't think they're all that necessary. For elk though I've mostly used the 225 gr. Barnes TSX in my .35 Whelen. I have taken one elk each with the 30-06 (165 gr. Accubond) and .300 Win. Mag. (200 gr. Speer Hot Core) but the rest of the elk were with the Whelen and the TSX bullet.
Paul B.

200 grain .35 caliber RNSPCL.
150& 170 .30 cal RNSPCL
180 grain .30 cal RNSPCL