MMA10mm's Daily Reloading Blog

I decided to start this blog, because I had a really good New Year's Holiday weekend, and got a big and a couple small reloading projects done. I realised that as a father with two jobs, I don't get to enjoy my hobby as much as I used to or would like to. Well, now that my daughter is getting older and independent, I'm looking for things that give me some recreation and might give her a diversion too... Even with the moral virtue and treasured time spent with wife and daughter, I think it's important to have some "me time" enjoying my hobby for my own mental relaxation. So, after that good weekend, I decided that if I started a daily (or so) blog, that would motivate me to commit some kind of time each day to reloading, instead of watching the TV... Still spending time with wife and daughter, I'll do a lot of this after their bedtime...

First, I want to express that I have not "invented" anything having to do with reloading. I have had a fascination with guns since an early age which extended to reloading and casting as I got older. I owe much to my father who got this interest germinating in me, and my mentor, Larry, who took over and taught me about shooting and reloading and casting. Then, I hit my 20s, the know-it-all stage, and I struck off on my own and did a lot of stuff for myself, but it was not innovative. Magazines were big then (80s) which is where most information came from. Started my own casting and reloading business in the 90s, but again, I was using what I had learned from others and experienced myself -- I didn't invent anything. Now, I'm old enough to realize that not only do I NOT know it all, but I still have a lot to learn! And, this leads me to giving credit to some more people. A lot of the information you're going to see is my application of smart stuff I learned from other people, be them, my dad, my early mentor Larry, Handloader/Shooting Times/Guns&Ammo magazine's authors, and really smart guys here at GlockTalk and at another great website I visit often: castboolits.gunloads.com. So, I wanted to be sure to give credit where credit is due...

Now, as far as this weekend and today go... I've gotten onto a mil-surp kick. This is my dad's fault, as he was a mil-surp gun guy. Now that I'm older, feeling the connection between my hobby and history is intoxicating! Also, I've been mostly a pistol shooter my whole life, and I wanted to get back into more varieties of shooting. I also wanted to use cast bullets, which I've done for 30 years with my pistols, but only very rarely with rifles (30 carbine and pistol-caliber lever-actions mostly). So, I went to the safe and picked out the two M1903 Springfields and pulled them out, cleaned them up, and looked them over. Both are WWII rebuilds, one is a 1918 serial number, with matching barrel, but a Remington (WWII) replacement bolt. It's also a Mark I (cut for the Pedersen device), but it's now in a C-style stock. The barrel has definitely seen better days... The other is a 1931 model with original barrel, and an S-style stock, which has an old arsenal repair to the top of the butt. It's barrel is pretty nice and shiney.

So, my first step was cleaning up some of the reloading room and hunting down my 30-06 stuff. Found a tub with some Garand clips, commercial R-P cases which I had cleaned, resized and re-primed probably 20 years ago, and then never done anything with, some jacketed bullets, and other items. I separated the cases out and went looking for load data. Here's some EXCELLENT information on cast bullet shooting in rifles: http://www.castboolits.gunloads.com/...30&postcount=1

I decided I would start with the light pistol-power load that is called the "small-game load." I tried 7.5grs of W231 at 25 yards (because I didn't know where the bullets would hit due to elevation), and here is what I got for a first group (this is with the 1931 rifle with good bore):

Waaay low and left.

Dialed in some Kentucky Windage, and here's my second group:


Not bad. I've since loaded up 9.0grs and 11.0grs, and gotten slightly bigger (around 1-2" @ 25 yards) groups, but still well-centered now that I know where to adjust the sites. Due to the cold, I haven't chronoed any of these, but I went back to the article and looked in some other sources, and found that one of the old standards for light cast bullet loads was 13.0grs of Red Dot. Consulting a burn-rate chart (one day I'll talk a lot about these things, their usefulness, and how they could be better), I saw that my favorite (W231) was very close to Red Dot, and in fact is slower, so it was perfectly safe to up the charge to 13.0grs. That is what I loaded last night, but I haven't made it to the range to test it yet.

More tomorrow.