.303Br with Cast/Preliminary Results

[kent9497]

10X

Check out David Southall's articles on .303's with oversize bores here:

Cast Bullets in the Lee Enfield Rifle

While I haven't had the tumbling problem David Southall says that fillers can help fix that.

Also, most moulds for .303's seem a little undersize for old military bores but at least one outfit makes moulds specifically for oversize .303's:

CAST BULLET ENGINEERING Bullet Moulds Molds

kent9497

[conifergreen]

About six months ago there was an ad in our local paper that read" Canadian made British .303 military ammo for sale". So I gave the guy a call. He lived in a city not too far from here. He told me that it was older ammo and that there were 48 cartridges per box. He thought it might be from the late 1940`s or 50`s. So I agreed to buy a couple of boxes for $25 dollars per box. His wife brought it to town here and so I met with her and purchased a couple of boxes. As it turned out, this was older RCMP ammunition, still in the original boxes, seals still intact. I opened up a box and the stuff looked brand new. So I was happy. About a week went by when I realized that this was quite a find. He told me that he had three more boxes for sale. When I called him back, he told me that he had sold the other three boxes to a friend of his. After doing more research and reading some of the info on this web site, I realize I really really let a great oppurtunity slip through my fingers. This is RCMP FMJ ammunition. I don`t have the boxes in front of me right at this moment and they are locked away in my steel ammo boxes but I can post what it says on them later if anyone is interested.
The fellow who sold them also told me that he had at one time owned unissued Long Branch number 4`s that he had bought still in the shipping boxes and packed in grease. He had sold them a few years earlier. I groaned when I heard that.
But now I am wondering what I should do with this ammo. This is rare and precious stuff in my mind. Should I just sit on it and keep it as a collectors item or should I fire it and reload it? The brass is probably military spec.
How I wish I would have bought those other three boxes...

[gerry303ca]

I have just started trying cast loads in my 1949 Long Branch Mk 1*.
So far I have onlytried bullets made from the 185 gr Lee mold sized .312. IMR3031, 20 gr gave me 2"-2.5" @ 50 yds with iron sights (ladder type). I fired 3 shots with the battle sight for a 1.5" group. I also tried Trail Boss, 7-8.5 gr. The best was 1.5" @ 50 yds with 41 gr. Lots more powders to try but this is the first LE I've had that would shoot these bullets with any accuracy. Most key-holed in my P-14's.
For a fun plinking load , try Hornady 85 gr HP/XTP pistol bullets (.312) with 40 gr of H4895. I loaded up 5 last week and got a 1.4" group @ 50 yds, but 4 of those were in .5" with iron sights. I loaded more to try next trip to the range.

[buffdog]

.
I'll have to go back through my "Handloaders Digests" to find a good article on cast bullets for most Surplus rifles.

I believe the article was written by C.E. Harris, who contributed many articles to the "American Rifleman", and leaned toward cast bullets. In this article, he suggested a load of 13 grains of Red Dot. I have used this load as a reference or starting load for most military rifles such as .303, 7.62X54 Russian, 7mm Mauser, 8mm Mauser, .308, 30-06, 30-40, and various other calibres of the same case capacity.

WARNING....DO NOT USE THIS LOAD IN SMALLER CASES SUCH AS 7.62X39.

Back many moons ago, when I was shooting targets, I used up a lot of cast bullets in .303 calibre. I had one rifle set aside for cast bullets only, and used it for practice. With proper sight adjustments, I could shoot about as well with a cast bullet to 300 yards as I could with issue Mark 7 ammo.

One critical thing you have to do. Clean out ALL the copper from the bore. If you fire cast bullets, then jacketed bullets or vise versa, you will not get the best accuracy. Really clean out the copper fouling.

I used to shoot cast bullets out to 600 yards with the .303. I used the Lyman 311299, about 205 grains, unsized, and Texaco Hot Box lube (used on railways). The rifle had a minimum bore diameter, the mould cast a 1/15 lead mixture bullet a bit oversize at .314.

I found heavier bullets tend to group better. Possibly the lighter ones do not stabilize well in the military bores. You should slug the bore and measure it. For the .303, I have seen bores running up to .319 diameter. A bullet about .002 oversize has worked best for me under most circumstances.

Lyman MADE a lot of bullet moulds in different sizes. They have cut down to a few calibres now. In the .30 calibres or .303 you could once get .308, .311,.313,.316, and .319 moulds. Also, Lyman moulds can be marked with the number and the letters "U" or "US" or "OS" meaning the mould will throw the bullet UNDERSIZED or OVERSIZED. You can still find the older Lyman moulds on E-Bay.

Lubricator-sizers such as the Lyman and RCBS, etc., do not give the best sizing accuracy. This type sizer pushes the unsized bullet downward BASE FIRST. If the nose punch is not perfectly aligned, it can tilt the bullet and you size more on one side than the other. Also, the older Lyman sizer dies had a step on them. When you pushed the bullet into the die, it shaved off a lot of lead. Newer ones were tapered, and worked better. I found the best dies at the time were home made ones that mounted in a reloading press and pushed the bullet up NOSE FIRST. There seemed to be less distortion to the bullets. LEE later made sizer dies of this design.

I still play around with cast bullets. My latest use is in a 9.3x57 Husqvarna. The larger bores seem to work better with cast bullets for accuracy and hunting. Millions of Buffalo were taken with cast bullets, so they are effective.

The way things are going pricewise and availability of components for reloading, and ammunition, I keep lots of primers, enough powder, and bullet moulds for most of my favorite rifles and calibres. It is a cheap assurance that I can still enjoy firing my rifles if need be.
.

[Warren]

try 11.2 grains of UNIQUE with dacron or kapok filler. Should be able to pick the fly **** out of the pepper at 100 yds but again, all rifles vary. Found this load worked well in most of the ones I tried it in.

[Curator]

Check out Steve Regwell's web site, 303britsh.com. He has an article I wrote a few years ago about using cast bullets in Lee Enfields. There is a lot of information learned "the hard way" that will help you avoid some of the same mistakes I made when first starting out. Cast bullets can be (and often are) more accurate than jacketed bullets. You just can't drive then as fast.
Follow this link to the article:

Cast Bullets in the Lee Enfield Rifle

[Beadwindow]

I got my rifles out to the range two weeks ago for the first time this season and tried out some of the loads that I reported on last season in an Ishapore SMLE, No4 Mk1 and Jungle carbine.

Some adjustment of the SMLE's sights were needed to zero the groups, that seem to keep under 2" at 50 yrd with the Lee bullets sized down to .311. I was shooting the same combinations of H4198, IMR 3031 and H4227 that I used in the opening post.

The No4 Mk1 was doing similarly well, but for some reason the Lee Bullets were sometimes getting caught at the front of the mag or mag well and jammed the rifle. In one case I pushed the bullet back into the case while trying to load it! Does anyone have any suggestions as to what may be wrong? I'd like to make it my primary cast .303 rifle (due to the peep sights) but might decide otherwise if I cannot make her feed consistently.

Finally, the No5 fed wihout a glitch but the groups were enormous. Since the bore looks pretty good, I presume that this is probably a typical case of a larger diameter bore that requires larger bullets.

I have loaded a large batch of 200 cartridges with 24 grains of IMR 3031 pushing the gas checked 185gr Lee bullets unsized (about .313" diameter). I have another 25 loaded up from 24-28 gr that I'll test with one of the rifles to come up with an ideal loading for it, after which I have another 75 bullets and prepped cases to load up. I just wanted to get some practice in with my earlier loads as well as fire a couple of groups so that I can better gauge any differences between my these different batches of bullets and loads.

I concur with the earlier posters recommending C.E. Harris' article on shooting cast in military rifles, as well as Steve Redgwell's excellent work. Harris' article provided the basis for my first loadings in my Enfields and Mannlicher rifles, while Redgwell's detailed rundown of the Lee Enfield really makes one appreciate all of the factors that go into making an effective cast load.

[Curator]

check out Steve Regwell's website: 303british.com. He has a link to an article entitled: cast bullets in the lee enfield, that was very halpful to me in getting my .303s to shoot lead.

[Beadwindow]

Well folks, I finally got a camera so that I can show you some pics of my groups.

The first picture shows a typical grouping from my Jungle Carbine at 50yds benched with 24grains of IMR 3031 shooting a Lee bullet sized to .311 calibre. This load was getting about double the group size than what I was getting from my SMLE and #4mk1.:



Since the bore looked very good on this rifle, and the groupings on my other rifles were also bit larger than I'd have liked, I decided to load a few more cartridges without sizing the bullets (gas checks were pushed on by hand) to see if it was a case of my shooting undersized bullets in an overly large bore. Here's another group from the same rifle taken last weekend at 50yds benched:



A remarkable improvement to to say the least which reinforces what I've read in a few articles and was told by those of you who posted their opinions. Thank-you!

This newly discovered accuracy motivated me to sight in the rifle at 100m, where I got the following group from a bench. Note the arrow pointing towards a bullet that shot low and to the left just off target. When I fired another 5 round group with the rifle sitting, I got a slightly larger group than the one pictured below, with two bullets shooting to the left and one of them also a bit low. Perhaps some further practice will confirm whether this was merely a coincidence or part of a consistent pattern, (i.e. a changing POI as the barrel heats up.....AKA the infamous wandering zero?):



Below are two groups from my Ishapore SMLE. It used to shoot about 3" to the right consistently, and boresighting confirmed that it was due to the sights being off centre. The front sight has since been drifted to the right. These two groups were taken at 50m benched with a load of 24grs IMR 3031 using the sized ammo (another group taken at the end of the day with the unsized bullets showed similar if not a tad bit better accuracy):



I might still have to move the sights a tiny bit back to the right since the rifle now seems to shoot about an inch to the left at 50m. It was good enough however to move to the 100m firing point, and after making some adjustments for bullet drop, I fired managed a 5 round group from the sitting position at 100m. While I grouped all over the target, I am confident that it was more due to lack of practice than any deficiency on the part of the rifle and load.

My #4mk one has produced groups similar to the #1mk3 with the sized bullets, though I've found that they often don't feed well from the magazine but get caught in the process. Any suggestions?....and yes, I did load the stripper clips properly! Here's two groups fired from 50yds benched; the second group was hindered by loading problems that caused me to raise my head and adjust the rounds (note the two pairs of bullets that are touching/nearly touching and separated by a longer distance).



Since this #4Mk1 only came with the 300/600m flip aperture sites and shot about 6" below POI at 100m, I'll either have to get one of the adjustable rear sights or perhaps dedicate her to shooting jacketed ammo. Since I think that the rounds jaming might have been due to the shape of the Lee bullets, I suspect that the pointed SP bullets might just work better in this rifle anyhow.

In conclusion, my experiments with .303 cast in these rifles has shown that with a bit of patience and attention to the various factors involved, it's possible to develop consistently accurate loads. I can now practice shooting in field positions with at least two of my three Enfields up to 100m. In addition to another 150 rounds of .303 loaded up with unsized bullets and the same load of IMR 3031, I have 25 rounds loaded up from 24-28gr of IMR 3031. If I get the same or similar accuracy at 27 or 28 grains, I will then try to sight these rifles in for 200m shooting as well.

[kent9497]

I just posted a new thread in the Lee Enfield Knowledge Library ~ maybe the wrong forum but that's where I found another older post of mine. I haven't been here in a while. If it is in the wrong place would someone please move it?

Anyway, looks like your groups are improving even more than mine.

I have been working up loads for a couple of No. 5's making slow but good progress. Neither shoots factory ammo well at all. The only way I have gotten decent accuracy from jacketed bullets is to knurl them up a few thou in diameter. Then they do okay.

Cast at around 0.315" are doing pretty well and paper patched bullets gave good accuracy as well. I find paper patching kind of tedious though so will stick with as cast wherever possible.

I've also been finding Cream 'O Wheat filler seems to help especially without gas checks. I will do some more comparisons though before drawing conclusions. If I can get good accuracy with COW and no gas check that is the route I will go.