308 or 309

[hornady]

I have been casting pistol bullets and reloading, for over 30 years, but now I am going to take the plunge into rifle casting, thanks to the Obama Administration and the lack of in stock bullets, My question is. I am looking at the Lyman 311291 mold for 30 30 –308 – 3006 . This is a gas check mold. Will I need to slug all three barrels. can I go with the .309 seizer.or being gas checked should they be .308 these will be used in bolt and lever action rifles. thanks for any help in advance

[shooter357]

You won't need to but you should. I size to .309 for all three.

[Bib]

I can't help with your question but I'd like to pass along my experience in casting rifle bullets. Like you, I had cast pistol bullets sucessfully for many years. I got a 7mm mold to cast for my Thompson/Contender. I found that rifle bullet molds are sized for a different alloy than pistol bullet molds.....I found that when using straight wheelweights, the bullets came out of the mold undersized. When i ran them through the .284 sizer, you could see that the bullets didn't contact the sizer around the whole circumference of the bullet...parts of the bullet were untouched. Accuracy sucked! Rather than trying to find a steady source of linotype, or mixing my own alloys, I gave up and went back to buying jacketed bullets for that caliber.

[hornady]

Thanks for the replies, I also posted on a cast sight. The contention over there is that .309 is to small and that .310 or even .311 would be a better choice. The lyman cast book shows .309 as a standard. But that is with lyman number 2. The mix I want to use is harder at a BHN of 21. Which is what I cast my pistol bullets from. So they would drop out of the .311 mold a little under size. I think I will try the .310 and go from there.

[budman46]

hi hornady,

25 years ago, curious to how well they would group for me, i cast lyman's 200 gr 311299 design using wheel-weight alloy. i carefully inspected, weighed, lubed/sized them to .308" using an rcbs sizer. with 19.0 gr of aa5744, i got 0.5 - 1.0", 5-shot, groups at 100 yds from my .308 win, savage m110 silhouette. the velocities were in the mid-1500s. about 60% of the bullets were culled during inspection/weighing...i don't work that hard any more, accepting bullets that passes a cursory visual inspection.

it's believed that best accuracy is from unsized cast bullets; i don't know how true that is...my work with the savage was pretty impressive to me, but these days i'm happy using bullets lubed with liquid alox and gas-checks seated using a lee sizer up to .003" larger than bore diameter. molds i use give me bullets .001-.003" over nominal bore size using wheelweight/range lead/linotype alloy, so little, if any sizing is performed.

at 1800 fps, 100 yd, offhand groups are "minute-of-coffee-can" from 7mm, .30 cal and 8mm milsurps with no leading and reduced recoil.

using the same criteria, my scoped guns give me about 2-3" bench-rest groups.

btw, tons of good info is available from my favorite cast bullet forum:

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/index.php

[hornady]

Thanks Budman I signed up over there at the cast sight, I have been reading the post for awhile . But just signed up. Like you said they have a wealth of information. Most of the guys over there felt .310 or .311 would be a good place to start. I have a Lyman lube/ seizer. And that is what I will be gas checking with. I was trying to save on lube seizer dies. Just go with one, for 3 riles instead of 2 or 3.