New member here, been reloading a long time, casting about 4-5 years. Looked at all 35 posts on CBA and just about everything else I could find. So I have a pretty good idea what I have here.
My barrel slugs around .2685
Picked up a NOE 163 grain .269 plain base mold . It has the two little driving bands and the rest of the bullet is a smaller diameter. I chose this based on diameter and it was about all they had available.
I powder coated a small batch and started loading with Trail boss. they are about .272 on the bands. I've never lubed a cast bullet. I started powder coating right off the bat since it was so cheep and easy to do to start out. ( I was only casting pistol stuff)
5 grains of Trail boss shot 820, 840, 805 fps. plain bullet no PC. 6 grain shot plain bullet avg 860. So I and loaded coated bullets and went back to 5 grain and speed slowed down a little ( avg was 820) moved up by .5 grains to 7.5 grains shooting 970fps.
Cases started shooting cleaner as I went up, still a little dirty.
Having a little trouble getting that bullet seated nice and straight. Seating it down to just past top band and that a little shorter than Lee COAL spec. on sheet.
So that's where I left off. I think Ill check barrel for lead or PC.
Wondering how fast I want to try to get to. 7.5 grain of Trail Boss in this long heavy unit feels like shooting a 22 still. Ive been loading the same three cases up to 8 times now. Still the same demetions I started at.
I must admit after all the "blow it up" hype Ive read, I was a little goosey with my aiming and shooting through my un-shot chronograph so my groups are all over the place. I should see how good of a group I could get with 7.5 of Trail Boss.
So that's my start, my first CBA post all wrapped into one.