So I was shooting today… Playing around with some TT-33 (7.62x25) loads today. Love that zippy round. Anyway, I was testing some .311" bullets. Some I DIY, some I bought. The DIY shot well, Lee mold: 31-93-1R.
Now… I am not super excited about casting, I can shake and bake hiTek (also not super excited about that either, I much rather buy), but casting this little fuckers - I am not super into it. So does anyone know if there are bullet casting companies out there who will do custom runs on specific cast bullets; and whether molds are interchangeable or do machines use custom molds? I’d be looking at around 5k projies (peek into my shooting habits lmao).
5k is a few…if you could find someone with a Magma casting machine thats easy done…but you will need a different mold, as they dont run with Lee molds, only RCBS, LYMAN double cavity from memory. I tried to buy a Magma 3yrs ago but missed out on it. I could ask the guy who has it for you?
Have a chat to Les at HRBC - I got him to swage some .32 78gn Round Nose projectiles down to (IIRC) .310 and they worked pretty well. Not as well as the Sierra SportMaster .308 85gr JRN projectiles I got got the gun show a while back, but well enough to participate in Service Pistol matches.
That’s exactly what I did @Martini and that’s the ones I don’t like compared to my own with the Lee mold. I don’t like how deep you have to seat them. Just looks poop and sometimes they get caught on those protruding ridges.
They will definitely do in a pinch and I had him size them to .312 actually. Good to have, but the one Lee mold throws imho is better.
I agree they’re not ideal, but I’m resisting getting into casting my own projectiles if I can help it so there’s a lot to be said for making do with a more-or-less “off the shelf” solution if I can.
I haven’t had any feed issues etc with my loads using the HRBC projectiles, FWIW.
Ive contacted the guy with the Magma caster, hes not interested, in making bullets, and wont sell the machine to me!! Work that out! Hes a hoarder, i think!
Uhhh super interesting! So I recon those few thou that you had it sized down to over mine makes heaps of difference. I’ll have to measure mine, but I had to seat a lot deeper just from the looks of it.
Okies, so I did a bit more investigating… Waiting for tap to make an OAL guage case I will get to the bottom of this… Initial thoughts is that the bullet has to be 0.308" diameter to play nice with the chamber and case wall thickness…
Will get to the bottom of this soon. In the meantime, @Martini I think you might need new calipers, seems like they are over by about 5mm.
They’ve been playing silly buggers lately so it wouldn’t surprise me. I usually seat to the cannelure on pistol rounds then make sure the dummy round passes the magazine and feed tests. Highly scientific, I know
Determined to get to the bottom of this shitty OAL conundrum! Something I read, don’t recall where that Tok bullets are in fact .308, measuring factory is more or less evident of that.
So sizing to .311 and .310 does have some chambering issues and needs to be seated a lot deeper. Anyway, I thought let’s confirm this…
Attempt number 8! Success! Not much space to work with in there and the little c*nt kept spinning until I made a jig and wrapped it in sandpaper (rubber from old bike tyre, but it just wasn’t doing it). Fine line between holding it tight and squashing it. Anyway!
There’s at least 1.5mm difference in OAL, possibly up to 2mm. All I had was .309 sizer though. So that’s between .311 and .309. Should receive 0.308" punch next week, I recon that will be closer to spec than anything. More science to come.
Still set on not casting, so methinks those HRBC projies will go through the sizer and then recoated. Mmmmm. Still better than casting.
Hmmm ok…
…interesting…A bit like me not wanting to cast for 303…thinking finding a stash of 308 bullets to swage upto .312 because its a rare size…I think an unbalanced bullet will result, unless its perfectly centered before any compression hits it.
