...and dreams of "truck guns" danced in their heads.....

[RicinYakima]

I had NEI (when Walt had it in Portland) make a double cavity mould 150 grain one GC, one not. They were .270" and I lubed them by hand. They were very good up to about 1200 f/s, terrible above that. I picked the rifle out of the rack at SOG in about 1996, and was just out of rebuild and as beautiful as jewelry. I sold it in about 2001 for a 400% profit here in WA. BUT it would shoot MOA groups with 160 Hornady bullets with any reasonable load. I read about people on the 'net talking about making them shoot cast, but I have never seen one do it in 15 years of military rifle matches all over the country.

 

[Ian]

Ric, it's doable, but I seriously question if it's worth the trouble for anyone unless they have simply run out of brick walls against which to apply their foreheads.

I did it with near zero neck clearance, a lapped mould that cast a bullet fitting the throat pretty much like a glove per ink scuffs, and used the Loverin design so that there was plenty of room for lead to move as the wide lands cut it. About that, it's a catch-22, one would typically use a long, parallel-nose bore rider with two medium-length driving bands at the rear to ride the lands per 2-groove Springfield, BUT due to hotdog/hallway syndrome you simply can't fit a bullet like that (266673) into a Swedish Mauser's cavernous throat and expect it to come out straight on the other end. I also had to make brass with thick necks, which is a chore unto itself, particularly with maintaining absolutely uniform neck tension. Then there's that twist. Not all that much faster than, say, a 7mm-08 and many others that shoot cast well, but not a lazy, easy-peasey twist rate, either. Your bullets had better be geometrically uniform when they come out the muzzle or they will fly off into the wild blue yonder when pushed to anything above very tame velocities.

To keep from damaging the bullet, I had to use very slow powders, quite a bit of work with alloy, and do the monkey business with shredded poly shotshell buffer as was recommended by some in order to get the burn rate into a consistent pressure zone and extrude the bullet into the rifling with minimum drama. One MOA at 100 yards at 2200 fps/15 ft was as far as I was able to get after a couple of years working on it.

Keeping with the Mother Goose theme of the thread "When Karlina is good, she is very, very good, and when she is bad, she is horrid". That's why I recommend to just make the bullet fit snug in the throat, and stick with Alliant 2400 at about 1600 fps. max.

One of these days when I'm rich, famous, and bored, I'm planning to send off my sporterized M96 and have a modern, 22" barrel put on it with a very tight chamber and relatively short leade, and modern rifling. Oh, and probably a 9" twist if I can get it. I'd just build a Savage 110 but I really like CRF.

 

[RicinYakima]

Thanks for your story, Ian. They are beautiful rifles shooting a historically great cartridge. Everything was designed around that long straight sided jacketed bullet, and that seems to always be the issue.

 

[JSH]

Who was it that supposedly had these rifles figured out and swore his shot like a laser. He talked in riddles on the subject and would not come out and say it. I looke back over his threads at CB till I was cross eyed, and still never came up with anything usable other than he never owned a poor shooting gun.
I slugged mine a long time ago, forget now what it was but Glen's sounds close to what mine was. I size mine .266 also. One thing I did learn from researching was that you can bend them fairly easy when sizing. A star or Lee push through would solve this.
Another reason I need a lathe!!
Jeff

 

[Glen]

I am hoping that this will make the STG happy (and there is the added bonus that it might also make my long neglected .256 Newton, with its oversized .267"/.263" bore, a shooter).

 

[Glen]

Preliminary test loads (10.0 grains of Red Dot for 1395 fps) look promising. This sight-in group was shot at 25 yards, but to keep things in context, the jacketed loads I was shooting a couple weeks ago while sighting in at the same distance were averaging 3+" (and one load went 8"), so this is a marked improvement. Clearly this Mountain Molds bullet fits this gun better than the rest. Time to start working up loads! (PS -- why is it always 4 shots in one ragged hole, and then a flyer?)

 

[9.3X62AL]

The Swedes can be posers, for certain. My 6.5 x 55 is a lot more forgiving--a Ruger 77R with .256" x .264" barrel and .2645" throat as best I can determine. I had Buckshot turn a .265" H&I die and went to work with both #266469 and #266673 under 3 different loads giving 1500-1700 FPS. The rifle's 4-turns/meter twist (1-9.8" in American) seems a bit less unforgiving than the 1-8" or 1-7.5" seen in the milsurps for the pourings. The Loverin shot significantly better than that bore-rider (another state secret, recklessly disclosed) and I have yet to try accellerating the "469s" any further. I'm striving to turn the 6.5 x 55 into a heavy varmint strafer during the off-season heat. Both light-for-caliber j-words and the Loverin are involved in this project.

 

[Glen]

The Loverin shoots very nicely in my Remington 700 6.5x55 (1 in 9" twist) at 1900 fps with 26.5 grains of 4895 (sized .266"). I have tried to get the same level of accuracy with the 266469 HP (for varmint loads) and just haven't gotten that bullet to shoot as well (yet). The Hornady 100 SP and Nosler 100 BT are outstanding varmint bullets (and it sounds like your gun has a small enough throat to shoot them well).

 

[Ian]

That's the one, Allen.

Glen, like a lot of us I've asked the universe at large the same question more than a few times. Occasionally, the answer has been "use less lube", particularly when lithium grease is a major constituent of the lube recipe.

 

[Glen]

The STG seems to really like the Mountain Molds 268-140-GCFP over 16.0 grains of 4227 (left target, 1580 fps). This target was shot at 25 yards, as we were getting the sights dialed in for this load, which will be used primarily for head-shooting grouse at roughly this distance (and the wind was blowing the target stand over, and I didn't feel like walking any farther than necessary to set it back up each time). It is worth noting that the STG was printing 3+" groups with most of the jacketed bullets tried at this same distance. This is clearly the most accurate load, cast or jacketed, I have found for the STG.

 

[Ben]

Glen,

That load will wear a grouse out ! !