Ways to consistently increase pressure for gallery loads

[Intheshop]

Don't tell my bone stock,spraybombed Savage #16 223 it can't shoot cast...... that's downright funny. It will flat out embarrass many,if not most JB shooters. It's a fast twist sporter barrel so it isn't going to shoot long strings of fire,but is WELL under 1" @100 for 5 rounds.

Problems... Savage triggers are doodoo. Barrels are just OK. Stocks kinda suck. And the fast twist makes it "touchy" on launch. Which without having to write a book length essay..... is IMO,the crux of the whole twist thing. NOT,an external ballistic problem....

 

[Bret4207]

It has taken the better part of a year, but I'm finally starting to get discouraged about this whole cast .223 in the AR thing.

In your defense, you picked a difficult platform and cartridge to make your first try with. If it had been something like a 7x57, 308, 30/30 the learning curve wouldn't have been anything like this. The dies and mould will sell on Ebay for more than you think. Your M-N isn't the easiest thing in the world to work with either, mostly due to variations in quality/care and sighting equipment, but Fat 30 type moulds are a snapper compared to playing with 22's. Find something of at least .314 diameter, get some decent brass and start with the go to type loads of 13.0 Red Dot or 16.0 2400. Do this AFTER you get the copper out of the barrel. Put some time in with that 22 Ruger, use a snap cap if you want to dry fire. Read up on sight alignment and trigger squeeze. Work the snot out of those "cats sneeze" loads before worrying about turning the M-N into a fire breathing dragon.

 

[fiver]

I actually thought the AR was pretty easy to get up and running at high speeds.
my expectations were no higher than FMJ type accuracy at full function 27-2800 fps speeds and that's pretty much what I got.
in the plain jane 1-9 twist Stag A-2, I got 1-3/4" groups with a 2-7 scope and a teenage girl behind the trigger.
in the better barreled 1-8, 6-H version I hang out at the 1" mark consistently.
it shoots better jacketed ammo in the 1/2" area all the time.
while the box stock version is just barely good enough to take out ground squirrels to 100 yds.
same cast bullet and same cast loads also work quite well in the 22-250 and 220 swift.

I wouldn't expect miracles from an M-4 but 3-4" groups from everything says something is wrong in the system.

 

[popper]

IIRC it's the hammer that breaks in SOME, not the F.P. From my limited mil. rifle training, those guns are pretty worn out - at least the Garand I got was. Also, soft rubber behind the trigger gets you squeezing vs jerking - you don't know when it will break. but 3-4" groups from everything says something is wrong in the system. If he can't get good accuracy from good factory ammo, something is wrong. Could be trigger, barrel, shooting skills. who knows? Start with basics, then move on to advanced.
I don't clean the copper out, jocky back and forth with cast, jacketed - don't see any difference. I do break in the barrel with some jax with minor cleaning, then cast. Yes I suspect 223 is much harder to get cast performance than 30 or larger bore.

 

[462]

As others have mentioned, there are times when we have to stop what isn't working and get back to the basics. Get your 10/22 out of the safe, and practice, practice, practice. Jumping round from one rifle to another (.223 bolt rifle or the Mosin-Nagant) without having confidence in your shooting technique and ability will most likely end with the same results that you are now experiencing.

Expecting blazing speed and sub-MOA results from a hand-built rifle shooting cast bullets, when there are questions and possible limitations on one's shooting ability, just may not be in the cards.

 

[RBHarter]

1 Take the flash hidder off .
2 Look at the crown .
3 If there is a little space between the muzzle and the shoulder of the FH and or the FH is similar cal it will foul the crown and screw up accuracy . I went through this dance with a 6.8 .
4 Twist is the hangup . Match bullet length to the twist it gets better . I have a ; Savage 222 , 1-12 , 225-55 NOE H322 2620 fps .
Savage Axis 223 , 1-8 225-55 NOE H322 2050 fps.
Stevens 200 223 , 1-8 225-55 NOE H322 2110 fps .
For staying in a 1" grid at 100 .
The AR shares ammo with the Savage and Stevens .
I want an 80 gr but no good swaps yet .

 

[popper]

This thread has been going from 2/2018 on the other site. Nothing much has changed.

 

[Bret4207]

I actually thought the AR was pretty easy to get up and running at high speeds.

But you had some experience with cast and could shoot to start with, right? This guy is starting blind and bouncing around trying one thing then another and getting nowhere. I can understand his frustration.

 

[freebullet]

It's basically a civvy M4 clone on a budget. I was gifted the lower for Christmas. Built the lower out on my own and bought a BCA 16" 1:9 fully assembled upper from Palmetto to finish the rifle. After a few months I swapped out the carrying handle for an inexpensive 2.5-10x scope.

We may have run in to a couple possible BINGO situations.
1. Nothing wrong with budget, but you'll need to verify that scope is holding a zero. If she ain't holding, bingo, need to remedy that. Could switch back to the carry handle & try off a solid rest @25-50yds.
2. If it is holding zero your barrel is junk. Don't feel bad, prolly ain't yer fault. I've had a few psa barrels, & none were performers without work, & two of them never would shoot well.
Swapping an ar barrel isn't difficult. An hbar from dpms or other reasonable quality manufactures can be had for under 150$. Smooth it with a few hundred jax, then cast should do ok.
Do dry fire practice, alot. You can only lie to yourself during dry fire. If the gun moves when you press the trigger keep practicing.

I wouldn't give up on it. Even if ya need to save for that barrel you'll be very much ahead in the long run working this out. Now is not the time to sell an ar. That time is when the markets turns volatile & prices are up. Now is the time to be building them/collecting parts.

Should be able to find an axis for about 200$, so don't pay 280. They have wobbly stock syndrome from the start anyway.

Try holding the trigger back until the gun has fully recovered from recoil. Trigger follow thru is something I see a lot of newbies struggle with. During dry fire, hold the trigger back until you've cocked the bolt, practicing the trigger reset is just as important.

IIRC it's the hammer that breaks in SOME

If the upper ain't on or bcg ain't in, yep, could break the hammer or lower between the fcg pocket & magwell. A fully assembled ar should not be damaged at all, ever, by dry fire. T'was ready to fail already, otherwise.

 

[waco]

BHuij. Have you tried having someone else shoot the rifle? This may tell you if it's the rifle or you. Just a thought.

 

[BHuij]

So the more I looked at what I was doing, the more I found I just had too many variables in play to diagnose and address problems one at a time. Scope not holding zero, bad shooting technique, bad barrel, something not torqued right, fouling, damaged crown, etc. etc. etc.

I went ahead and took off the bipod and scope and put my carry handle back on. I'll shoot off sandbags from now on. The rifle is now about as vanilla as it gets.

Scope is going on my 10/22. Not to verify if it's holding zero, I think it's entirely possible that the 10/22 won't kick enough to throw it off even if the AR does. I just want to get some serious practice in with the 10/22. Luckily I know for a fact that that rifle does great out to at least 50 yards. Going to do a bunch of shooting with it at 25, 50, 75, and maybe 100 yards over the next few months off my sandbags.

I'm going to take apart the AR and give it a really good cleaning and greasing. Then I'll try running a couple boxes of factory ammo through it at 25 yards with the peep sight, off sandbags, to see if it really is the rifle. TBH I don't think it is, but those tests should tell me for sure.

If it's the rifle... well then that's a whole new rabbit hole to go down. If I find it's not, I'll use the 60 FMJs I still have laying around to hone in on a good load in that 22gr range and see what I can get out of FMJs. Assuming I can do better than 2 MOA with those, I'll try the antimony/tin-enriched COWW alloy that Fiver is having success with.

 

[fiver]

But you had some experience with cast and could shoot to start with, right? This guy is starting blind and bouncing around trying one thing then another and getting nowhere. I can understand his frustration.

I like to think I do, but I have discovered so much more since then.
the only previous AR experience I had was 'here this one is yours, it lives with you',, and it did for about 8 years.
I slept with it, ate with it, and carried it around until it was part of me.
after that [shrug] never touched or even thought about one for around 15 years.
the difference?
I'm probably a bit more methodical [some would say OCD] in my approach to getting a rifle shooting well.
I have thrown back hundreds of pounds of bullets for the rifles that I want to get up and running at higher speeds.
I have probably measured stuff most wouldn't even look at, and spent quite a bit of time just thinking about how the whole process needs to work working backwards from the target to the mold and analyzed the entire process and how each step affects the next one.

maybe one of my better attributes is the willingness to screw things up and figure out what I done wrong.
I can tell you lots of stuff that don't work, probably a lot more than stuff that does work.
I have seen the grey smoke poof many, many times, accompanied by no holes anywhere.

 

[RBHarter]

BHuiji,
When I start a new cartridge in a new rifle (or new to me after a good cleaning) I like to have a box or 2 of ammo to run through it . It doesn't even have to be good ammo . 20-50 rounds shot in 3s or 5s will generally give me some kind of a place to start .
It will tell me if a rifle is going to be consistent , does each group hit the same place .
It will tell if it's going to be case , charge fussy , does it put 2 right together and 1out in weeds .
It'll suggest something touching that shouldn't be or vise versa with wandering srtings .

I fought an AR A2 upper to a point that I was just pulling my hair out . I had a load that was stringing a little but otherwise coming together and improving on good factory and factory reproduction loads . All of the sudden nothing will shoot . The good nor cheap factory not the improved repops and forget the cast load . So I start taking stuff apart with no clue as to what I should be looking for but looking anyway . I decided a free float was a place to start , so I had those parts in hand when I started the teardown . When the bird cage came off I found it had a 30 cal hole for the 27 cal bullet . It also had a gap between the muzzle and the shoulder wide enough to catch anything following the bullet . It was impacted with carbon and antimony wash mostly , and nothing resembling smooth . As you might imagine the crown was a flake sluffing train wreck also . I probably could have stopped with cleaning that up but I didn't . A gentleman offered to remove the step in the bird cage and add threads to bottom it on the barrel step as desired . So now I have a birdcage FH that has 1/2-20 threads almost to the slots and no shoulder or step to collect crap and repound it back to the muzzle . The melonite finish on the barrel is very hard but did poloish out some on the crown after some aggressive cleaning .
The pins in the A2 gas block/sight weren't parallel so I'm sure there is/was a stress point there additionally one was sledgehammer tight and 1 just about what I would consider right for a press fit taper pin .
When the forend came off it was obvious that there was a heavy rub between the heat shield and gas tube and that the tube was pushing sideways in the barrel nut .
The barrel nut had to change to install the free float fore end so I was painstakingly careful to meet torque and have the holes centered . I then spent an hour or so flexing to fit the gas tube to as close to nil contact as possible .
The set screws introduce a question but the answer is not enough to worry about for the tool at hand .
With that sorted out and new parts in place I went back to a known good load and the FC FMJ . The FMJ offered a visible improvement but measured the same . The good load closed over a half inch , but was still over 1.5 .

Things I know happened ;
I removed 10 touch points between the receiver and gas block .
I probably fixed a burr on the crown .
I definitely removed some stuff that was causing release issues at and just past the muzzle .
The barrel hum was probably altered by a lot ,but without changes to it's end point . I guess you could say the harmonics changed but the whip stayed the same ......
Lastly the barrel had upwards of 300 rounds down range from it's baseline at test fired packed and shipped

The GI barrel with weight step under the handguard and M203 cuts can't be a stable barrel design but it works ok for 223/556 and has for 50 yr or so .
GI issue standard for minimum accuracy is 3 MOA . Armory test fire barrel pull is 3" @ 300 ft from the muzzle for standard service rifles . USN Armory manual specification 3 MOA or less for combat issue . My Daughter was a SeeBee gunners mate in the Armory . Anything better than 2" on a Mil Spec upper is a great example .

I swapped in an ARP 5R heavy barrel and all of the refit parts viola' .9" groups , faster loads (4" of barrel will do that) , and it will do 10 sub MOA even with me driving .

Lots learned by me . Lots learned that just isn't written down . Learning what you do that goes the wrong direction , especially when it is something that should have been a step in the right direction is just as important per rifle as what does work .
Some rifles just won't shoot sub MOA and some are having their best day ever at 2.5" .

Final conclusion .
Get a baseline from something , it is a point of reference you can return to even if it sucks .
Keep it simple . Check screws , clean and lube before you tear it down .
Change one thing at a time .
When you've exhausted a line of travel or the test goes backwards , reference the base line .

 

[358156 hp]

It's basically a civvy M4 clone on a budget. I was gifted the lower for Christmas. Built the lower out on my own and bought a BCA 16" 1:9 fully assembled upper from Palmetto to finish the rifle. After a few months I swapped out the carrying handle for an inexpensive 2.5-10x scope.

It's just a guess, but you might be experiencing a form of "tolerance stacking" here. If you have a different scope, I'd start with that after a close examination of everything else in the system. I have a particular personal issue, I'm allergic to "cheap" scopes, and I can't really afford a truly great one. A medium priced Simmons 3-9x40 cured me of that brand forever, it would break every time I took it out. Simmons would always fix it free, but it spent more time traveling than it did shooting. SIGs "Whiskey 3" has a decent reputation, and isn't terribly expensive. I know of a couple of guys running them satisfactorily on SOCOMs, so durability shouldn't be an issue on an AR. There are some really sketchy scope mounts available for ARs too, choose wisely. Also, most of the military style AR triggers are pretty atrocious, but reasonably priced replacements are available and relatively simple to install. It does sound like your rifle has a physical issue as is mentioned earlier. How does it shoot with premium factory ammo? A $20.00 box of factory ammo could save you hundreds.

 

[BHuij]

So I have set up my next set of test loads around the best cast performer of H335 at 19.5 grains. I will be shooting 10 each of 19.2, 19.4, 19.5, 19.6, and 19.6. This time it will be peep sights off of sandbags at 25 yards. The scope and bipod are gone. I don't know if the bipod being removed will significantly alter harmonics (probably will, it's not a free float barrel). But I also think I'm so far from worrying about barrel harmonics right now that I'm just going to roll with it and see what happens.

I was going to load 4895 loads to the same pressures and see how they compared, but the loads are so light to get the same pressure that I'm almost certain they won't cycle. I'm not sure why this is. Everything I know about using a slower burning and higher gas volume powder like 4895 is that it should cycle more easily. But my initial tests with 4895 forever ago wouldn't cycle until I was up over 17 grains. To match the ~20,000 PSI I'm getting with 19.5gr of H335, I'm shooting like 13 grains of 4895 and it's barely going 1700 FPS. I think I'll skip those for now. More tests with 4895 when I have had time to cast up bullets with the new alloy I want to try.

I also picked up a box of 20 factory rounds. If the rifle will not do better than 4 MOA, off sandbags, with a peep sight at 25 yards with factory ammo, then I'll take the dive and see what might be going on with the gun. Before I do any more shooting though I'm going to give it a good cleaning. It's been too long since I did that.

 

[BHuij]

I was able to hit the range today and test out my skills with peep sights and sandbags at 25 yards.

I wrote up a more detailed report on the other forum in the thread where I've been documenting this whole project.

But basically:

American Eagle Factory Ammo: 10 shots into 7 MOA, with 7 of those rounds fitting into just smaller than 4 MOA (yikes).
Hornady 55gr FMJ BT over 21.7gr of H335: 9 shots into just shy of 4 MOA, 1 flier, with 7 of 9 fitting into 2.8 MOA.
PC'd Cast Lee 55gr FP GC @ 30 BHN over 19.6gr of H335: 10 shots into 4 MOA, with 7 of 10 fitting into 2.37 MOA.

It appears at this point that it's not my projectiles that are my limiting factor, which means it's down to my shooting technique and/or my rifle. Probably both. I will probably refrain from testing new alloys and loads until I've had some time to troubleshoot my rifle and build up my skill.

The scope is now on my 10/22 and zeroed at 50 yards. It's holding zero no problem on this rifle. I doubt the AR recoil is enough greater than the 10/22 to be my culprit here, so I may put the scope back on the AR at some point.

That said, it's going to live on the 10/22 for a while. I put a few hundred rounds of .22LR down range off the sandbags to start practicing my technique at 50 and 75 yards. My best 50 yard 10-shot group was 2.6 MOA, and my best 75 yard 10-shot group was 2.04 MOA. From what I'm reading, it's unlikely that the 10/22 Carbine can shoot better than 2 MOA anyway without buying expensive ammo.

So while I'm all for improving my technique and practicing, I'm really thinking it might be my AR at this point. The BCA upper was purchased from PSA fully assembled with barrel, gas system, etc. So... where do I start troubleshooting something like this?

Edit: Pics.

 

[Bret4207]

Those groups are at 25 yards?! I think you could start at post 73 in this thread and go from there. You gots problems. Sounds a lot like a Mini-14 I had, only about 4 times worse and I never even got to cast in it. That rifle went down the road.

 

[Spindrift]

Bhuij; I can not help you trouble shoot your AR, as I have no knowledge of them.
But to me, it seems you have gathered some very important info on your range trip: you have a grasp on the accuracy potential of your gun (which, sadly, isn`t to good). Sometimes, the days with the disappointing results offer most important information. The good thing is, your cast bullets shot better than the factory stuff!

 

[Rick]

Quite true Spind, I always keep as careful of notes on what didn't work as what did.

 

[popper]

Practice your shooting, gun is OK.