New #315 clone from NOE

Ole_270

Well-Known Member
Looks like Al got this sale mold out the door pretty quick. My Brother talked me into going golfing today, nice day but windy and muddy. When I got home there was a package in the mail, my new 5 cavity #315 clone from NOE. I hurried up and got the pot plugged in, turned on the hot plate and started washing the mold with soap and hot water. I didn't spend much time on the cleaning and it showed. Took a while to get rid of wrinkles in the castings. Used a wodden match to smoke it and started getting good boolets pretty quick. Looks like they are going to average 174 gr in this alloy, measured .312-.3125 on the base band. .3015 on the front band ahead of the first groove. I'll probably get some Hornady gas checks seated and powder coat these in the next few days since I don't have an H&I die for my luber/sizer yet. I run the powder coat through a NOE die similar to the Lee push throughs.
I bought the mold for use in my old JC Higgins 51-L 308. It's a Husky HVA action, barreled and stocked by High Standard for Sears. This one was built in 1959 or 1960. The bore runs .3105 at the throat and about .310 at the muzzle. I've been having very good luck with a plain based SC311-165RD boolet, powder coated and sized to .3113 at 1440fps over 10 grains Universal. I wanted to get a gas check mold to run between 1850-2000 fps. May also size a few for my Grandsons new Kimber Montana 308 for the kid to practice with. He's just a 6th grader and I'd like to keep it loaded a little lighter than jacketed hunting loads.
I know several guys use this mold, anybody want to reccomend a load for the 308 that will get close to 1900-2000 fps?
 

waco

Springfield, Oregon
I was getting an avg. speed of 2180 with 44.3gr of IMR4831
Not the most accurate load but under 2 moa @ 100 yards.
 

Ole_270

Well-Known Member
Thanks. Haven’t used imr 4831 in 30 years. I jump from H4350 to H 4831. Got a little Rl22 and Magpro but most of my stuff is H4350, Big Game and quicker. Varget, Rl15,4320, H 4895 and that sort
 

Ole_270

Well-Known Member
Waco, that didn’t come out like I intended it to Sorry. They used to warn about reducing load weight with H4831 because of detonation, not sure if it would be safe to drop down with that powder. Big Game is fairly close to imr 4831 burn rate , but it tends to work better at peak pressure.
I’ll see if I can pick up some 2400 before long. Fivers load of 28 H4895 works pretty well with the RD mold but it’s running around 1750. Might work up from there a little
Thanks guys
 

fiver

Well-Known Member
you can get to about 30 or so then need to step the powder speed back and move ahead again and so on.
the load Walter gave you is a slightly reduced load from one I gave him using another brand of the 4831.
it's actually a slightly modified jacketed load..
 

Ole_270

Well-Known Member
I only know of one other brand of 4831 and I've been using it for over 35 years in the 270. Through all three versions of it. Guess I never thought of it as a 308 powder.
 

Spindrift

Well-Known Member
I have a NOE 4 cavity 50/50-mold. The most accurate load with gas checked, tumle lubed bullets (bhn ~18) in .308 I have found so far, is 17 grs viht n110. I get consistent 5 shot groups @100m at 1-1,3 moa. Which is very good in my book, I am not a very experienced bullet caster. I have just powder coated some pb bullets, will be interesting.
 

Ole_270

Well-Known Member
fiver, do you use dacron?
The ol 270 doesn't get used too much anymore and I've got 4 lbs of H4831SC, Son in Law has 8 lbs. Might come in handy.
 

fiver

Well-Known Member
not in the 30-30.
I did in the 308 when doing my initial load work ups.
I was making one step with Dacron and one without letting the Dacron act as a predictor, and the plain load as the catch up step.
once it started cleaning up I knew my pressures were starting to come up to 45-50K.
below that it did do better with the Dacron, but as soon as I got there I didn't use the Dacron any more and reduced my powder jumps from .5 to .3 looking for accuracy.

I would treat the 270 same as I do a 7mm start out at about 75% of what a 30 cal uses and use bullet length not bullet weight to make my comparison.
145grs in 7mm is right at the same length as 165 in the 30.
28.5grs of 4895 with Dacron is pretty hard to beat in the 30 cal, 24+/- grs in the 7mm under the 145 pretty much matches the 30 cal load for accuracy and velocity.
18grs of 2400/16grs of 2400,, and so on.
 

fiver

Well-Known Member
I was using a long 30" barrel but the 4831 settled in for me right at 2400 fps.
I was also a grain higher than Walter using the H- short cut type, I don't remember which cases I was using but Remington comes to mind since I seen a box of them sitting downstairs earlier today that say's 'anneal before next use', and I have been using HKE's in the XCB bullet testing.
 

waco

Springfield, Oregon
I have been using HKE's in the XCB bullet testing.
Funny you mention this. I ran across A LOT of this stuff. 2013-2014 lot.
I've been busy match prepping a bunch for plinker cast stuff in the 1400-1800fps range.
 

Ole_270

Well-Known Member
Thought I'd bring this back up with an update. The weather hasn't been too cooperative since these posts, decent days that aren't too windy have been hard to find. I've tried several bullets, including some 31-165A and XCB that fiver was good enough to send me. I got some from popper as well, but have been concentratig on the NOE Saeco #315 clone I bought.
My alloy runs 1.43% Sn, 2.93%Sb per BNE, and after PC and gc they weigh 180 grains. I added a little pewter, just because. Bullets were sized .3115 and gas checked with a NOE push through sizer die, then PC'd and water dropped. Most testing has been after about a month to allow the alloy to stabilize. Cases have been mostly Federal since I've got quite a few of them, some PPU have been used but kept seperate from the Feds. The PPU weighs pretty close to what the Feds weigh, both about 23 gr heavier than my Winchesters. Since starting this, I've picked up a Lee collet sizer die. Case necks are expanded and belled with a Noe expander plug in a Lee universal expanding die.
None of the bullets were weighed, just lightly sorted for visual defects. Seating is at 2.7" oal, at that point I'm getting land engraving on about 3 sections of the bullet. All testing has been at 100 yards.
I've tried several powders, up to 2325 fps with Varget and hit 2400 with H4350. With every powder so far, groups opened up at 2300-2350 fps, H4350 went higher than Varget, and Varget higher than H4895.
Several powders have given 5 shot groups under 2" in the 2000 -2300fps area, some were more likely to have flyers than others. So far I've tried H4895, 3031, Norma 202, Varget, one low end trial of RL-15, H4350, and H4831sc. They've all been somewhat similar, but I did have one 9 shot group of H4350 with 5 shots in 1/2", but it had 1 shot 1" left of those shots, 1 shot 1" right, and one 2" right along with 1 shot 1" low. I need to change scopes, not at all sure I'm not fighting some parallax. The most uniform so far has been H4350, and it fills the case. With the higher end loads it's a compressed powder load. On the other powders I'm using a dacron filler. One group of N202 at 2045 fps had 9 shots under 1 3/4".
The H4831sc tests were early on, before the alloy had fully hardened. I'm planning on retrying those and push them a little higher.
It's been an interesting process, I'm not really trying to max out the loads, just trying to find an easy shooting practice and plinking load in the old rifle that won't be too hard on the well worn barrel but still fast enough to use for deer hunting if the fancy strikes me.
 

fiver

Well-Known Member
your so close, there is just that one little thing that needs to be ferreted out.
lube, size ,, something.
 

Ole_270

Well-Known Member
Most have been seated at that 2.7 oal, tried a few at 2.75" with worse results. I will eventually try some seating depth variances to see how much difference that makes.
The PC I've been using is some of the gray that Randy Rat sold on the other board a couple years ago. It goes on fairly thick. I've got some wet gloss black from PBTP that's getting some age, starting to seperate pigment when used. I'll use some of that next go round to see if there is a difference.
One of these days, I'll try casting some and water dropping, then run them through the size/lube machine. It's filled with Bens Red now and that is about all I have on hand. Got some BLL to top it with if needed.