Friday wrap-up

It was a busy week, and slow in the blogging hobby. I didn't play with guns much this week, concentrating on family and other duties. I did load some cast bullet loads tonight for the .30-30.

When working up a load, you have to make changes. But you make them one at a time, and evaluate your change of a single item. The poor groups I was getting with the 311041 was based on a mold that wasn't thoroughly prepped. The bullets were coming out at different weights. I looked at the mold and saw daylight between the halves, so I took out some needle files and cleaned the face of the mold, eliminating all the burrs. When the mold was closing properly I cast some bullets with good results. They were averaging 178.6 grains, with an SD of 0.9 grains.

I lubed a buncb of them, seated gas checks, and sized them to 0.309. Then I lubed them again. While they were drying, I prepped brass. Trimmed it, expanded it, cleaned primer pockets, seated new primers and got ready for loading.

Tonite, I duplicated the load that gave me such poor performance. 25 gains of surplus 4895, but wth more uniform bullets. Then I adjusted the measure and loaded the same load with 25.5 grains, 26.0 grains, 26.5 grains, 27.0 grains, and 27.5 grains of the same powder. FIve rounds of each in half grain increments. I should find one load that shoots like I want it to shoot.

Then I loaded everthing in the truck, along with my 1911 and a couple of hundred rounds of .45 ACP. Tomorrow is a range day. I'm looking forward to a little trigger time.