Plainbase 7.62 x 54 loads (am i expecting too much?)

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  • Last Post 22 November 2010
DAMRON G posted this 15 November 2010

This last two years i have been shooting plainbase in 30 calibers much more than gas checks.Now i am concentrating on the 7.62 x 54  Russian Mfg 91-30 rifles with good bores (scoped,but in orig stocks) to see how well they can do.Having gone though many designs lately,i have now focused on the ideal 311259 200g “Stop Ring” Hudson bullet and a 190g Modern Bond Semi spitzer affair,both with either 8.5 of Unique or 11.0 of Trail Boss and pistol primers.It seems for every 1” group there are as many 2” groups.I am always seeming to battle bore condition issues that seem to be lube and carbon with a very very light leading sometimes visible.(Three GC loads clean it out perfectly while a brass bore brush and Eds Red still leaves a little crud in the bore) Alloy has been from 10 BHN to 20 BHN with no apparent correlation to accuracy.Velocities are held to roughly 1200 FPS and SD's  and ES's are very uniform.This last three weeks i shot 17 five shot groups and one ten shot group at 100 yds with the 311259,11.0 of Trail Boss,Fed 150 primer.Smallest group was 5/8” and largest was 3.5” for an 18 group average of 1.62".Am i fighting an uphill battle tricked by the good groups,will i find the magic combo,or is this accuracy as good as i should expect?

Actual groups.

.625  1.0  1.375  1.25  1.125  2.25  1.625  1.875  1.375  1.55  2.0  1.375  1.0  1.55  3.5  2.25(10)   2.0  1.625   

George

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tturner53 posted this 15 November 2010

Hang in there George. As it is you've probably about perfected cb shooting in those guns, but who knows? You are persistent, that's for sure. Most guys would have moved on to something easier to work with. You have achieved amazing accuracy, but with a gun that crude finding consistency might be like chasing your tail, always one more lap. Maybe they'd like some gc loads with a little more oomph? Give ya a new area to experiment with if nothing else.

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Ed Harris posted this 15 November 2010

George,

You are doing about as well as can be expected, and the variation in group sizes shown is about what I would expect. As sample size increases more of your groups will cluster around the long-run average, but seeing an occasional group under an inch, and also a few as large as 3 inches or more with a rifle-load combination which averages 1.6 over the long run is to be expected. Both are within the magnitude of random variations of chance. You have a good rifle and the load works.

Savor the bragging groups and don't let the occasional bad one sour you. The trolls demand their fun and will not refrain from mischief. I was told once by by the Finnish gunwriter P.T. Kekkonen that there is one way to beat them.  Save all used cleaning patches from each time you clean your rifle after having shot a bad group. Quarantine patches fouled with troll turds which you have scrubbed from your barrel in an old Hopes bottle. Keep the jar tightly sealed so that fumes from the troll soil cannot escape to contaminate your other rifles.

When the Hoppes jar is full you must then purge the shop of troll soil and bad brass. When you shoot a bad group you must segregate the bad cartridge cases which caused the fliers and lock them in a metal box so they cannot contaminate your good brass.

 When you have enough troll soiled patches to stuff all the bad brass, force the troll soiled patches into their mouths, and discard them only by hammering their mouths into the ground around the perimeter of a crop circle, using the butt of your rifle, so that the case heads are flush with the ground and illuminated by the light of the moon.  Then you must drink dark beer as long as the moon stays full and urinate on each hammered cartridge case in which you have imprisoned the troll soiled patches. Complete the task before the sun rises and then you will have no more fliers.

73 de KE4SKY In Home Mix We Trust From the Home of Ed's Red in "Almost Heaven" West Virginia

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RicinYakima posted this 15 November 2010

George,

The only way I know of determining if it really is bore conditions is:

for leading, one pass with a brass brush and one dry patch between every shot

for lube, one pass with Ed's Red and one dry patch between every shot

It is like the year I shot 90+ ten shot groups trying to determine if cartridge concentricity was related to accuracy, if you want to have something to hang your hat on, you have to do the work.

Ric.

p.s. Ed, you have a strange mind.

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billwnr posted this 15 November 2010

George, Put a 6x scope on that gun and shoot it in the military matches. Or...with your 44 year old eyes shoot it in Issue class. Those are good groups.

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Ed Harris posted this 15 November 2010

RicinYakima wrote: ...p.s. Ed, you have a strange mind. That's what I deserve in forgetting to add the Smiley 8-)

73 de KE4SKY In Home Mix We Trust From the Home of Ed's Red in "Almost Heaven" West Virginia

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nobade posted this 15 November 2010

I haven't tried really light loads in my MN, but it shoots a Hoch .314” plainbase 175 gr. bullet really well with 2.8cc IMR 7383 plus 1.6cc Cream 'o' wheat. (I tried 3.1cc + COW, but pressures seemed to be a bit high. It shot great there though.) Bullets are quenched wheelweights with Lee tumblelube applied. Cases are Norma, neck sized with a 32 H&R carbide die. It shoots as well as I can see, and tracks to the sights out to 400M.

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tturner53 posted this 15 November 2010

Ed always gives good advice. But, lucky for me I'm not troubled by fliers or inconsistent groups. “Consistency is the hobgobblin of small minds.” Therefore I am skipping the first six steps and going right to the dark beer drinking part.

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corerf posted this 15 November 2010

WOW, thats all I have. WOW.

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DAMRON G posted this 15 November 2010

billwnr wrote: George, Put a 6x scope on that gun and shoot it in the military matches. Or...with your 44 year old eyes shoot it in Issue class. Those are good groups. I shot plain base at the nationals this year with my 30-06 Enfield.It was mainly failure due the the odd fouling i was getting over on the wet side of the mountain(that's my excuse anyhow) except i lucked into the 200 5 shot agg.I had this Mosin and was going to shoot the offhand with it,but wimped out.

George

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DAMRON G posted this 15 November 2010

RicinYakima wrote: "for leading, one pass with a brass brush and one dry patch between every shot

for lube, one pass with Ed's Red and one dry patch between every shot"

Tried the brush and patch method already.I have shot the Pope 308403 in the 30-06 bullet without lube and used Eds Red evvery 10 (cleaning every shot resulted in 6” groups) and it shot just like the lubed bullets.

"It is like the year I shot 90+ ten shot groups trying to determine if cartridge concentricity was related to accuracy, if you want to have something to hang your hat on, you have to do the work."

These last 18 groups were typical of the groping i have had with the 30-06 and 7.62 x 54 with plain base this last two or so years.I have burned though 7000 Federal pistol primers doing so and am not gaining on it.I am going to try some “P-checks” and other non metal insulators on the bullet base to see what i can find out.

Here are four 5 shot groups(and the last three in the box) with the same 11.0 TB load and the NEI #72 Harris Bullet.Besides the large group the point of impact stayed pretty good.

George

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DAMRON G posted this 15 November 2010

Ed Wrote-

"You are doing about as well as can be expected, and the variation in group sizes shown is about what I would expect." good to hear,i guess i was setting to bar too high.

'Then you must drink dark beer as long as the moon stays full and urinate on each hammered cartridge case in which you have imprisoned the troll soiled patches. Complete the task before the sun rises and then you will have no more fliers. " for some strange reason that makes sense.Will report back with results

George

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DAMRON G posted this 15 November 2010

tturner53 wrote: Hang in there George. As it is you've probably about perfected cb shooting in those guns, but who knows? You are persistent, that's for sure. Most guys would have moved on to something easier to work with. You have achieved amazing accuracy, but with a gun that crude finding consistency might be like chasing your tail, always one more lap. Maybe they'd like some gc loads with a little more oomph? Give ya a new area to experiment with if nothing else. I'm too stupid to give up.If those 1” groups would stay away I'd be done,but they tease me just enough to keep my interest.

George

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tturner53 posted this 16 November 2010

While I'm playing devil's advocate, there is another approach I've read of using pbs. Large doses of slow/very slow powder with a filler. But I haven't read anything about them being match grade. Supposedly something like COW/PSB/dacron will seal the bore against gas blowby and protect the bullet. Maybe the consistency you're looking for is there somewhere. I did shoot the offhand option at the Military Nationals, proved I'm no threat in offhand shooting.

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RicinYakima posted this 16 November 2010

tturner53 wrote: Large doses of slow/very slow powder with a filler. But I haven't read anything about them being match grade. Supposedly something like COW/PSB/dacron will seal the bore against gas blowby and protect the bullet.  

Tim, those guys who think they can find a load with a chronograph, small extreme spreads and SD's, like that approach. But anyone who has tried it finds that it makes big, or at best average, groups even though the numbers “look good". Look through the match results from years past and you will not find them in the top three of any class at any national level matches.

The more I think about this, the more I think Ed Harris is right: that is the limit of the rifle with these bullets and that sighting system. “Lucky” five shot groups close to point of aim are just the random grouping of five shots. The “bad” 3+ inch group is just the random grouping of 5 shots also.  The set up isn't going to average any better than the 1.62” he has.

IMHO, Ric

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DAMRON G posted this 16 November 2010

for those who missed it in the first post rifle is scoped

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Ed Harris posted this 16 November 2010

For those who need to know, either Guiness stout or Modelo Negro are suitable dark beers I can recommend to assist you in performing the cleansing ritual.

Finnish dark beers, fortunately, are not widely distributed in the US. That is a good thing.  Lapin Kulta which you can find in high-end, east coast wine and beverage stores is especially bad, especially when drunk warm. Finns call it poron kusi, loosely referring to reindeer urine. Lapin Kulta is said to be the second worst beer in Finland... Why anyone would CHOOSE to drink it outside Finland is an intriguing mystery, but P.T. Barnum was right.

Finnish beer suffers from the same problem that al lot of American mass-market beers suffer from, in that it is designed to be served as cold as possible because most Finnish beer is drunk in or after Sauna. The Finn expat who introduced me to it described it as “forest water flavored by troll urine."

 

73 de KE4SKY In Home Mix We Trust From the Home of Ed's Red in "Almost Heaven" West Virginia

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DAMRON G posted this 16 November 2010

"those guys who think they can find a load with a chronograph, small extreme spreads and SD's, like that approach. When working up plain base loads is the only time i shoot over a chronograph religiously.When in the 1200fps range large SD and ES's shoot noticeably worse then uniform ones.There are times when a shot will be exactly the same velocity as the last and go out of the group a bit,but if it's off velocity(50-75 fps) wise it is seldom in the group.I haven't seen the same with 1400 or greater GC loads.

These are two consecutive 10 shot groups at 200 with a 200g plain base in my 91-30 with 6x scope.the Sd's were 10 and 12 fps.Another load i shot that day with the same bullet and different powder were in the high 30's and strung horribly vertical into 6-1/2” groups.Didn't save those targets for obvious reasons.

George

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JeffinNZ posted this 17 November 2010

George: Have you tried softer alloy? I got to thinking that the loads you are running are similar to the old days of the .32-40 etc and those guys shot 25-1 alloy and so on. You certainly are not generating much pressure.

Cheers from New Zealand

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nimrod posted this 17 November 2010

Been following this thread and really appreciate the effort that George has put forward for the rest of us. I think that JeffnNZ has hit on something that I have been thinking about. I have a little experience with a Schutzen 32-40 that shoots a Barnett bullet custom made for my rifle. It's rather long for the twist, spitzer shape and I cast it 25:1, has six shallow grease grooves and a fairly wide base. It is of course breach seated and that does make a big difference. I have shot it very little at 100 yards mostly at 200 and it shoots just great.

I have also spent some time shooting BPCR bullets with smokeless and the same thing long for twist multiple grease grooves, 20:1 soft lube, mostly Emmert lube. With the same results MOA accuracy and most of the time much better with peep sights with a scope and good weather much better.

What I was thinking about doing was to scale this Barnett bullet down for my 39 Finn for the same reasons that George is doing, expecting great accuracy at 100 yards, easy to load and cheap to shoot. Great offhand practice and just fun shooting. To be used in fixed ammo of course. Maybe make up a couple special shells to be indexed and loaded one at a time at the range might be something there to look at also.

I don't have a camera, need to do that some day, or I would post a picture on here to see what you fellows would think of my idea, I would be happy to send some bullets to George to see what he would think of this project? Maybe that Ed guy if we could get him off the trolls for a little while.

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DAMRON G posted this 17 November 2010

JeffinNZ wrote: George: Have you tried softer alloy? I got to thinking that the loads you are running are similar to the old days of the .32-40 etc and those guys shot 25-1 alloy and so on. You certainly are not generating much pressure. Have used them down to about 10-12 BHN. I might alloy something in the 25-1 range now that you mention it.

George

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