Small is beautiful? 30-20 and BP - part 2

[martinibelgian]

So now we have a rifle with a barrel and a cartridge.

As some of you will recognize, the rifle is equipped with the original BSA 12/15 sight - i.e. an aperture front and a Parker-Hale 7A rear with Hadley eyecup - 50's match-grade sights. Those will do for the moment, but in due time, they will be replaced with a more traditional tang sight - probably a BSA model 8.

The next step is the bullet for BP. Seems obvious, but isn't really: I couldn't find the bullet I wanted - either too light (90 - 120grs), too heavy - most 308 or 30-30 bullets) or too flat-nosed (lever-action bullets).
I was looking for something with some potential to reach out a bit, while maximizing case capacity - and I couldn't find anything commercially available.

Solution? Design your own bullet, and have it made:
.
This number weighs 151 grains exactly cast in 16:1 L/T alloy, has some lube capacity and a nce round nose while still being comfortably stabilized in my barrrel, which has a 1:15 twist - slow for a .308, but fast for a 32-20.

Estimated BC is .300, and while it won't be breaking any MV records, with the powder/bullet weight ratio, a clean burn should be a given - in theory at least.

For cases, I have a decent supply of both remington and starline, with - surprisingly - the starline cases being quite a bit shorter. So I started fireforming cases with the Rem brass - well, actually I had some boxes of factory ammo left, which I emptied in order to use with the new bullet: pull bullet, remove powder, load black, seat overpowder wad and bullet.

The load I started with for fireforming consisted of the bullet illustrated above, lubed with my own lube and more or less seated as above - bullet hard into the lands. I managed to get a whopping 16.7 grains of 1 1/2Fg Swiss in there, with a card overpowder wad.

Time to start firefrming some brass - but that's for the next installment.

[martinibelgian]

Next question, how this shoot? As the intention is to use this little rifle for tqrget work - thi means, prone shooting, with sling. The local range only has yds, so that's what was used: Prone, with sling, unsupported at 75m

Accuracy testing started while fireforming, which yielded targets like this one:


Just disregard the .22 holes, I'm cheap and re-use .22 targets. Bottom line, seems the rifle/amm combo really wants to shoot (after all, there's also shooter's error in there), keeping all shots in the 10-ring of the 25m ISSF-target - which makes for just a bit more than 2 MOA.

The 1st test after fireforming? I was surprised myself... This was with the - short - starline cases, 10 shots at 75m with the 100m sight setting (Iwasn't willing to readjust as I had a match coming up):



As to fouling mnagement - pretty easy, really: I made up a blowtube, nd had some patches. A flexible (delrin) cleaning rod later, I was equipped. The routine between shots was as follows: a partial blow down the tube (even a full breah was too much), followed by a single dry patch: No fouling issues whatsoever, and pretty easy to manage. Too much cleaning actually caused leading, but no degradation in accuracy though.

Result? I now have a new short-range match rifle which needs a bit of dressing up - it's a bit of a mongrel right now - but it most certainly is anxious to please... And pretty hard to beat for short-range work.

Next test will be and meters, to see how she will do at longer ranges. I'm not expecting miracles, but could turn out pretty well. Ido have some doubts about though - but we'll see.

Morale of the story? Apparently those smaller calibres aren't really that hard to get to shoot with BP, seeing that I was able to achieve competition-grade accuracy without any load development whatsoever - or maybe I was just very lucky...

[paravil]

Dunno if this is any help. But accuracy with my shoprt cav. carbine increased noticeably when I added a base cavity (as per the original mil spec)

[martinibelgian]

Had a try today at 200m with the little round, shooting it in a .308 barrel with a 151gr RN bullet, all of 16.7 grains of powder behind it. Despite having a switchy, fresh 4-6 o'clock wind, it went pretty well. Better than expected, actually.
The 1st shot from a clean, lubed barrel went pretty wide, but the next 4 clustered nicely in the 7-8 ring at 12 o'clock, for a group of about 2 MOA. I dropped the sight 2 minutes and I was shooting 9's and 10's - untill shots 9 and 10 went low: But after pushing 2 humid patches through the barrel, things came back. Still, shots 14 and 15 did the same, so I do need to change my fouling management to something more effective.

I was blowing 1 breath down the tube, followed by a dry patch - obviously not enough. I'll try wiping with moist patches next time, but even so I was agreeably surprised at the accuracy of this puny round at 200 m (about 220 yds), in that wind. It was actually doing better than my big 45, although that was also operator error - the little rifle is quite a bit easier to shoot with a sling, exhibiting quite acceptable wind sensitivity.
Mind you, I did have to firelap the barrel, as it was leading - which I never noticed when shooting smokeless. Still, I'll keep experimenting with this little rifle, a BSA 12/15 action with a Schultz & Larsen 1:15 twist barrel.

She's also shooting surprisingly flat, I'm guesstimating the BC to be at around 0.35 or so. With a MV of a sedate 1060 fps, the heavy-for-calibre bullet is actually subsonic all the way - which might just explain the nice behaviour re. wind: subsonic bullets are supposed to be less sensitive to wind drift. I'm now thinking real hard about ordering a PP bullet for it - this could be fun indeed...

[Brent]

Looks like fun and reminds me of my old .25-20 SS. It was a fun rifle to play with. Strangely, I got it to shoot best with 1.5 fg Swiss rather than 3f or 2f. I had about the same powder charge, maybe slightly more but a much lighter bullet (about 79 gr if I remember correctly). It made a great tree squirrel rifle, though a bit noisy.

[Kurt]

Those small calibers are fun to shoot. I never had a small .30 but I have several .25-20 and one Marlin 62 in the .256 Win. that was one fine caliber.
The 62 had no serial number.
I been considering a small bore barrel for one of my 44-1/2 CPA Stevens and that .30-20 or a .25 caliber would make a fine choice.

Kurt

[martinibelgian]

Brent,
That's exactly what I'm using - 16.7grs of Swiss 1 1/2Fg. Once tried the same volume of Fg, just for grins, and it actually shot pretty well too. It shot a bit lower, yes, but accuracy at 75m was approximately identical. Now I'm wondering what she will do at 300... This little rifle is a lot of fun, and I never expected it to perform this well at those longer ranges.
Of course, it's not really a traditional 32-20 - for starters the barrel is a .308, with a faster twist - so I'm shooting what is essentially a heavyweight bullet for this little number. Difference in elevation between 100 and 200 is about 16 minutes, I was expecting it to be quite a bit more.

[Brent]

Hey, you might have stumbled upon the next greatest thing in wildcat Schuetzen cartridges. Frankly, it does seem like a pretty cool idea for a small caliber schuetzen rifle. I bet it works great.

[martinibelgian]

For me, it's my short-range BPTR rifle. Most matches here are 100m, so this one will do quite nicely once I have figured out the fouling management thing. And if it will perform at 300 (hoping, not expecting), all the better - I can use it for 90+ percent of my competitive shooting here. For the real long range stuff, I still have my rifles chambered for #2 Musket.