Re: 30-40 Krag update.

[dromia]

Heartened by my first rounds through my Springfield Armoury 30-40 Krag rifle as reported here:

http://www.full-bore.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=18841

I decided next to see how a heavier boolit would work, throat fitting designs are the best way to approach cast boolit loads in rifles with generous chambers.

The first bullet I tried was an Eagan style, a sort of truncated nose Loverin, so next up was a heavier boolit the Lyman 311284, it has a nice long freebore filling nose as opposed to the Eagan style which just has the front driving band connecting with the truncated nose just hanging in front



This boolit came from and NOE mould and weighed in at 220 gns fully clad with lube and gas check, it dropped at 0.311" with my range scrap alloy with a smidgeon of tin, BHN 12 and was sized at 0.311".

I dropped the load back to 20 gns of Ramshot Enforcer with the heavier bullet, the gave an average velocity of 1823 fps with an extreme spread of 6 fps over 10 shots.

Results were good with the first group of six rounds giving me a 2 1/2" x 1 1/4" at 100 yrds.



For my second group I aimed off a tad to try and centre for score and I got this group with the flier being called, usual holding to long before releasing the shot, as they say your first sight picture is always the best.



Cast Boolits, you know they make sense.

[jjvc]

Very interesting, thank you for sharing.

Joe

[Alpha1]

Nice is that mould a standard NOE mould.

[dromia]

Yes and in stock at present.

http://noebulletmolds.com/NV/index.php? ... tkauf5tqh3

[dromia]

Thanks Joe.

These groups are about as good as I'll get with the issue sights and my eyes methinks.

Toying with getting an S&K no gunsmithing scope mount just to see better how well it can shoot.

[Laurie]

Damned good result Adam, especially as you say with eyes past a certain age and the 'young man's sights' on rifles of this vintage. (I got myself a pair of 7X57 long South American Mausers last winter and am wondering if I'll actually manage to see anything looking along them! Will see, or not as the case may be, shortly.)

[dromia]

Thank you Laurie.

I have to confess that I do use an old Steward adjustable iris stuck onto my shooting glasses which helps sharpen things up a bit so long as I don't hold the sight picture for too long.

[Dougan]

Looking good

As you say it's not easy judging groups with open sights - I got some fair, but not conclusive, results out of Our Swedish Mauser with open sights a few weeks back with our most promising cast load - My old man is going to have a go with the scout-scope tomorrow...I'm shooting a TR comp, so have made him 30 rounds of the best load tested to see if he can find the bull and stay there...

[dromia]

I'm pretty sure that the rifle is shooting cast well.

It is at least shooting repeatable 2" groups, the bigger groups are operator error.

With some further work I think it has the potential to be an honest MOA rifle with cast.

This would be a fine competition rifle with cast but my competition days are over now.

Just posted this to show that if you take the time to get your ducks lined up properly they shooting cast bullets gives up nothing to jacketed.

I have done no load development other than trying two bullets weights, picked a load would give me 1800-2000 fps velocity with the powder that I happened to have to hand in the desired burning rate and with a rifle in good shooting condition it delivers.

Nothing magical about the 30-40 Krag round other than it has the attributes of a good hand loading case, not to large a capacity, a nice rim for headspacing so you don't need to worry about worn free bore and chamber and a nice long neck to give good boolit retention without sizing the boolit down and keeping the boolit nice and concentric to the barrel.

[dromia]

BTW there is no leading anywhere and here we are shooting a soft range scrap alloy at 2000 fps.

Cast bullets, you know they make sense.