Cast bullets in .300 blackout

[Joshua Seymour]

Anybody using cast bullets in their .300 blackout?

I've tried lee 160gr 1r slugs with no success.

I just bought a lee 155gr 2r made for the 7.62x39. I plan to size these down to .309.

If anyone has any suggestions/comments, I'm all ears.

Oh and on a side question, where is the best/cheapest place to buy jacketed spire point .308 bullets for plinking? I've tried .30 carbine but round noses cause problems with ARs.

 

[osage48]

I bought a Lee mold for 230 gr 30 cal. But have yet to cast any bullets. I am interested to see how well they shoot.

On the .308 bullets for plinking I would look for some FMJ bullets that have been pulled. They are pretty cheap when you can find them.

 

[Joshua Seymour]

Osage, the cheap fmjs you speak of are what I've seen. I've been shopping around looking for some around 12 cents a piece. If you know of a place that sells them cheap, please send a link.

I'm wanting to essentially have three loads for my .300. A cheap cast plinking load, a fmj general purpose load, and a hunting load. I've got a hunting load, I just need the other two.

 

[Schwing]

If you go over to the castboolits.gunloads.com, there are several threads on this subject.

I don't do this or even own one but I stumbled across this while looking for information about powder coating bullets. Over on castboolits, there is a lot of info on powder coated .300 blackout bullets.

 

[Elkins45]

Anybody using cast bullets in their .300 blackout?

I've tried lee 160gr 1r slugs with no success.

I just bought a lee 155gr 2r made for the 7.62x39. I plan to size these down to .309.

If anyone has any suggestions/comments, I'm all ears.

Oh and on a side question, where is the best/cheapest place to buy jacketed spire point .308 bullets for plinking? I've tried .30 carbine but round noses cause problems with ARs.

Give us a little more info. Powder type and charge? Lube? Alloy? Size of bullet compared to size of bore?

I've had pretty good luck with cast in the 300. I've even had decent 100 yard success using a plain based bullet as long as I didn't try to drive it up near max.

 

[KansasSasquatch]

I can't help much on your casting questions, not for .300blk anyways, but I can tell you that 12 cents each for .308 pulled bullets isn't a bad price. When you consider how much standard 150gr FMJ bullets cost factory new, there's a good bit of savings in buying the pulls. It may not be the best deal you can find but I wouldn't expect them to get much cheaper. Around here I pay that much for non-pulled .224" FMJ, they're a little cheaper online if buying in bulk, but that gives you some comparison for those .308 pulled prices.

 

[redbullitt]

Feel free to try them at .310 and .311 sizing if you do not get .309 to shoot well.

What do you mean "no success"? Cast bullet loading can take a bit more work that regular old jacket loading.

 

[tyeo098]

I use them with much success with my AR pistol.

The Lee C312-155 lubed with supermoly sized to .311 in a lyman lubrisizer (intended for my AK's and SKS ), and gaschecked with an aluminum cap.

I load it in converted 223 AMERC casings (because they were gonna be trash anyways) with a SRP and 15.3gr of H110. My starting load was 14.7, and I worked up from there, settling on 15.3 gr.

I seated to the crimp groove on the projectile, but my lubrisizer's 467 top punch squished the ogive a bit, and the bullet will sometimes get stuck in the rifling.

If you pan lube or have the correct top punch you should be able to avoid this issue.

As always, this information is for educational purposes only, always check your loads with reputable, publish sources.

Have fun

 

[Joshua Seymour]

The lee 160s I've tried are round nosed and they catch in the chamber throat. In order to avoid this I have to seat the bullet so deep that they delay in hitting the feed ramps and they hit the too of the barrel estension and jam. The weapon I'm using is a smith and Wesson m&p15. According to information on various forums, the chamber in this gun is rather tight. I've tested the 155s this past weekend. I had three test loads using h110. All loads were gas checked using hornady checks. Bullets were sozed .309 and thble lubed ising LLAThe charges were 14.0, 14.5, and 15.0 grains. The 14.0 were the most reliable. I'm having trouble with shells jamming. It seems they are drifting forward in the mag and standing up inside the chamber once the bolt pushes them. I haven't been able to slug the bore. So bore diameter is unknown. I know this is rather ignorant of me to reload without knowing my exact bore diameter.

 

[greyling22]

I've been reading up on lead in the 300 over on cast boolits. The lee mold (220 or 230 grn, I can't remember which) is a boat tail which is A) stupid and B) doesn't give vary good results according the the crowd there. A couple guys have ground out the boat tail on their molds and claim accuracy has improved.

https://www.ar15.com/archive/topic.html?b=3&f=121&t=575572

and if you go to the bottom of this page the guy shot 500 rounds of lead through his ar, them took it apart and photographed it. http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?125592-AR-15-question&p=1406367#post1406367