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One of my favourite rounds is the .310 Cadet. I shoot at least 100 rounds a week of the stuff in a BSA Martini Cadet rifle.

I shoot it mainly at 25yrds on indoor ranges and I will be looking to shoot the HARC leagues with it this winter. It is also good out to 200yrds and I have taken rabbits, hares and the odd fox with it over the years.

Here are a few quick snaps of my current .310 cadet that has been getting some hammer for the past seven years. Its a post confederation BSA in average overall condition but shoots to point of aim with good accuracy, so its been a keeper.















As I was getting low on 310 ammo it was time to handload a few batches up, this coincided with me having a powder clean out during which I was surprised at the amount and variety of old Nobel rifle and pistol powders I had on hand so I decided that I would work up loads for the Cadet and in due course other calibres to use up this old powder. Many of us will no doubt have fond memories of the Nobel powders harking back top the days when that was all you could get if you wanted to handload. My memories were of it being good powder but dirty, that worked best with the stiffer loads.

Here are some of the old Nobel powders I have.



The job was to find some data so when I started looking through my boxes of notes in the loft I was pleased that one of the first things I came across was a Nobel handbook complete with .310 Cadet data. More than can be said for the references of today.







As I was looking a stiffish load for a 300 yrd shoot a week this coming Saturday I decided on Pistol No2 powder with a starting load of 5gns working up to 5.6gns in .2gn increments.

Cases were converted R-P 32-20 and the boolit was a heeled Cadet design from a Lee GB that I had Tom at Accurate Moulds cut me a mould to my own dimensions. he boolit was lube with a thin wash of 60/40 white spirit and Xlox.

The 310 Cadet has to be the easiest round to load for as all I do is clean the fired cases, deprime, reprime, add the powder charge and hand seat the bullet. The only die that is used is the depriming die. This is cases being deprimed on a Forster Co-Ax press with a Lyman universal decapping die.







To prime the cases I decided to us the RCBS bench mounted APS strip primer, this priming tool really comes into its own when I'm doing large 500+ plus batches of ammunition as the set up is a little time consuming loading the strips. However I enjoy using different tools and ringing the changes, to me handloading isn't a race, so today the APS got an airing.

This is the tool mounted and ready to load.






This is the strip loader, I'm using CCI small rifle primers for this load.



Strips being filled.



Filled strips for the number of cases being used.



Strips is fed into the primer and away we go.









Next it was onto the powder throwing, the usual set up RCBS 5-0-5 scales, Lee powder measure and the Target Master Powder trickler for speed and accuracy. The powder measure is set to throw a couple of grains under and the Target Master trickles up to weight.






The boolits were then just hand seated in the case with a friction fit, the boolits won't fall out if the cases are turned upside down but they can be easily removed by hand. Here is a completed round and a boolit from Tom's fine mould, I cast these softish with a BHN of around 10-11.

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I tried the loads out today and 5.2 and 5.4gns gave nice 5 shot one hole groups at 25 yrds, didn't manage to chronograph them but will do now that I have an accurate load.

So back to be bench this afternoon to rattle up some more rounds at 5.3gns for testing at longer distances and chrongraphing.

Scale set for 5.3gns.






The Target Master delivering on the button.



Next batch of rounds ready for further testing.



Is this game fun or what! :shakeshout:

Great looking rifle were these fullbore martinis chambered for a smaller round or were they made specifically for the .310 cadet ?

No these are specially made small frame martini actions, they are the parent of whole BSA small frame martini line that ended with the MK V ISU International.

The early ones were made by Francotte and BSA adopted this idea whereby the whole action can be removed from the from by undoing one screw.

Hmmm, we've not encountered .310 Cadet afore. It looks like a grown up .22LR



*Scurries away to read up*

A nice looking rifle Dromia, maybe the Viking needs one as she is talking more and more about SOWR's and another large gun cabinet to keep 'her' collection in.

I have a .310 cadet I dont use it very often I have struggled to develop a load for it due to lack of reloading info.
Intresting post Adam it would of been even better if you had resized the pictures to fit across the page with out having to scroll from side to side. sign01

A nice looking rifle Dromia, maybe the Viking needs one as she is talking more and more about SOWR's and another large gun cabinet to keep 'her' collection in.

What does SOWR,s mean please.

Funny enough, .310 was also the old Kynoch "Cattle Killer" round.
Very effective for knackering.
I know we had an old cut down rifle in that calibre at kennels, as well as a single shot pistol which I think was a Webley?
A very safe round to use, far better than the 7.65/.32 which I had afterwards.

What a poof still moaning about picture size, the quality setting on the camera is set to "S" small and that is what you get and I'm not going to spend more time resizing them so don't be idle and just hit the zoom buttons on your browser to avoid scrolling Dave. :55:

Bobbob has a .310 cadet, which we put on ticket as soon as we bought it, as we wanted to shoot it. We bought several hundred Bartram new brass from AUS, and use a 4.5gr Unique powder charge under a 115gr lead bullet, which is good out to 100yds. They are a cracking little rifle that shoots very well.