Oval 308 bullets

[MAINER]

Got a bunch of 30 cal fmjs that were mechanically pulled by an Orangatang using a set of vice grips.

Some are as much as 6 thou. out of round.

Thinking of running them thru a .308 lubesizer die. Will have to buy one from RCBS as I size cast bullets at .309 or .310.

Anybody know if this is a dumb thing to do? Why? Anyone done this before?

Yes, I know Corbin has a "Bullet drawing die". It's $129.95. No thanks!

Has anyone tried shooting bullets in this condition? Can't believe much better than "minite of barn door" for accuracy.

Thanks,

Mainer

[kycrawler]

run them through your 309 size die and see what happens , should get them closer and not defrom them as much as the tight fit 308 die

[W.E.G.]

The real question is whether they will fully chamber in your rifle.

If they will chamber, they will fire.

I've shot mangled bullets.

Don't try to win any marksmanship contests with them. I wouldn't do any max-pressure loads either.

[MAINER]

Thanks for your ideas guys. I'll try the 309 die first, at least it should round em out a bit.

Also going to make up a dummy round with one of worst and see if it sticks in the chamber. Got these to feed a Garand and don't load much over 48,000 psi

Some of the bullets are undamaged, will try some comparison groups.

I'm sure someone has loaded these. Be nice to hear of the results.

Mainer

[lmoody]

I bought a Lee bullet sizer kit for .309 and sized a thousand of oval bullets. Worked fine.

http://www.midwayusa.com/eproductpage.exe/showproduct?saleitemid=501819

Lmoody

[perdurabo]

Where can you get these out-of-round bullets and how much cheaper are they than standard pulled milsurp bullets that have been sized?

[MAINER]

Tried the 309 die and find it of no help. The good bullets run .308, but bad ones slide thru 309 sizer with no or very little effect.

These bullets are 150gr fmj. flatbase (M2 Ball), not the 147gr fmj boattail (M80 Ball) used with 7.62x51 NATO. The 150s are or were used in .30-06.

The M80 ball I ordered is fine. the M2 kinda sux. What bites my butt is, they are all the same price. 20-20 hindsight says shoulda ordered all M80.

Recommend: Don't buy pulled 150gr M2 that's unsized. To be fair to Vender, these were listed as "M2-Ball-FMJ-Flat Base-150gr.-For 30-06"
Nothing about pulled or sized mentioned.

Dear Santa:
For Christmas, I would like a RCBS 308 sizer die. Used is OK!

Off to the "Gun Shops" :p

[fire for effect]

Go to Corbin Manufacturing and get a .308 ring sizing die. This is a die and punch that you can use in your RCBS Reloader that will size your bullets back to .308 and make them round again. The benefit of the Corbin die is that you can also run .311 bullets through it and make them .308 as well.

I want to add that I do this all the time with .375 Bullets, swaging them down to .355 and use them in my .38 Super and 9mm's.

[MAINER]

Thanks ffe, I'll check it out. Problem is, its only 50 bucks worth of bullets and I don't want to spend much on something for one time use.

[fire for effect]

Originally posted by MAINER
Thanks ffe, I'll check it out. Problem is, its only 50 bucks worth of bullets and I don't want to spend much on something for one time use.

Well it really isn't a one time use. You see if you happen to get any 8mm ammo, you can pull the bullets and resize them to .308 The ring dies are handier than you think.
as I said I use one all the time for 9mm. The choice of bullets is limited for 9mm, but with the ring die, I can resize any .357 bullet to 9mm, which increases my choice substantially.

[akajun]

Load them in a 7.62 x 54 or 7.62 39 and blast away.

[owlcreekok]

Great ! :cry:

I just pulled a dumb trick. I bought MANY thousand pulls from a reputable vendor. Last night I had a couple bullets with some black goop on them. Tossed them aside. This morning, I cleaned them and noticed this oval biz. I had one that I tried from the handful I measured that was as small as .289" on the small dimension.

I plan to find out what result folks are getting with these. What really sucks is I have loaded almost 350 alread. Dammit.

[perdurabo]

As long as they exit the barrel without destroying your rifle and will hit basically Minute of Bad Guy, who cares?

BTW, who exactly did you buy these bullets from?

[owlcreekok]

Perdurabo, I got them from Hi-Tech Ammo. I am going to call and ask Dan his take on this in a few minutes. I will post up the gist of this call as soon as I get off the phone.

I have noted that some advertise their pulls as "Sized and polished".

I sez to myself this morning, "Owl, well DUUHHH"

I am going to use them. Worst case, I get a die like posted above.

Live and learn.

Edit: I just pulled the flyer from Hi Tech to get the number to call. The item I bought is the "M80 Ball, yaddayadda, SIZED AND POLISHED"

This will be interesting.........................stay tuned

[richbug]

http://www.midwayusa.com/eproductpage.exe/showproduct?saleitemid=235241

$13

probably won't win any matches with them, but they should shoot safely.

[perdurabo]

Hmm, I just bought 6000 of these from Dan at hi-techammo as well. Lets hope they arent too out of round.

[lmoody]

I have several thousand oval bullets also. Some were about .295 at the narrow section. Can't say what the total variance was, since I only measured about 20 or so. I justed sized 1000 of them in the .309 Lee die I mentioned above and loaded all 1000 of them. I tested about 50 random rounds in a case guage and all were within spec. When I shot about 80 of them after Christmas, all chambered with no problems, no sign of pressue noticed, and I got about 1 1/2 to 2 inch grooups at 100yds in an M1 Garand with the gas system disabled. Load was 46.5 (+/- .5 grain) grains of 4895 pull-down, LC 68 brass and CCI #34 primers. All caveats apply, work up to listed load, YMMV, not responsible for damage to rifle or shooter, etc.

[owlcreekok]

Just got off the phone with Dan. Let me say this up front. Dan is ready to do whatever it takes to make me happy. When a fella sells millions of bullets a year and will stop what he is doing to help a pissant like me, well, he is okay in my book.

I bought what is listed as sized and polished. Dan says it is not likely, but is POSSIBLE that the bullets missed the sizer as they proceeded toward the polishing stage. He is going to go out to the shop floor and measure sized AND unsized bullets to see what the variance is for each. He will call me back later. I can't ask for any more than that.

I have already told Dan that I do not wish to send these bullets back. I want to use them. If I have to buy a Lee die and run them through it I will.

Dan has also indicated that many pulls get shot without sizing to no ill effect that he has heard of. I personally know that folks have shot true 7.62 x 39 Russian (.310 - .311 bullet diameter) in Ruger Mini Thirty rifles which are .308's (if I am correctly informed).

As was said on here and Dan echoed, "If it will chamber and fire, and not show signs of over pressure, there is not a problem." If I want sub minute of angle I will load Sierra Match-Kings.

More info to come as I get it.

[owlcreekok]

I really need to stop this and get doing what I am supposed to be, else I will be here all night playing catch up.

I just got down and measured over 100 bullets of the 4000 I have opened the cans on. Looks like I got all excited over the odd chance I measured the worst first. Of the ones I just measured, I had THREE that were what I would call scary. I lost the one that was 0.2875 at the smallest, dammit. The worst one I have in front of me measures .2965 - .311 . (minor - major axis, respectively) MOST of them measure within .001 - .003 from minor to major.

I drove a .2965 - .311 through a Rhodesian barrel. After, the bullet measures .301 - .3075 (average with .0005 variance) from land to groove. The bullet came out concentric. Each graving of the bullet by the rifling looks uniform in depth. (yes, Slow, I used a magnifying glass) I see no wrinkling of the jacket material that would indicate a shift between the core and the jacket. This I kind of expected to happen if the bullet core was grossly misshapen and then forced down a uniform bore.

I then took a few rounds that I loaded last night and manually cycled them through my Imbel. No failures to go into battery in the least. I will try to get to the range tomorrow.

Synopsis: A false alarm on my part, overall. A few more things (range trip) need to happen before I am fully settled on this. At this point I do not expect any further issues with these pulls from Hi-Tech Ammo.

More in a day or two.

[fire for effect]

Originally posted by fire for effect


Well it really isn't a one time use. You see if you happen to get any 8mm ammo, you can pull the bullets and resize them to .308 The ring dies are handier than you think.
as I said I use one all the time for 9mm. The choice of bullets is limited for 9mm, but with the ring die, I can resize any .357 bullet to 9mm, which increases my choice substantially.


Note:
I miss spoke here, you cannot resize 8mm Bullets to .308.
you can only resize a bullet .003 of an inch without serious problems.

The problem is that the copper springs back slightly, but the lead core doesn't, so resizing more that .003 of an inch causes the lead core to become loose in the Jacket.

So, you will be able to resize .311 bullets to .308, but not .323.

Sorry for the miss information.

[owlcreekok]

I thought about starting another thread, but thought better of it. (?)

I took the Imbel (on GL upper) to the range this morning with a few rounds of the ammo I loaded with the "oval" bullets I have. (I would not truly call them oval, but in the spirit of the thread,,,,,,) Hopefully the notes on the target will explain it all. Not really a group to brag about, but from an elbow rest, low light, yadda yadda. It was just after sunup and fog was rolling across the range. At one point I lost all sight of the target at 100 yards for a minute or so.

I give these bullets from Hi-Tech TWO thumbs UP. :bow:

http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b98/owlcreekok/target002.jpg

[perdurabo]

Thats definitely Minute of BadGuy. I'd say thats pretty damn good.

[owlcreekok]

Thanks, man. Kinda surprised me own self. (if you knew how bad my eyesight is,,,,,:rofl: )

[MAINER]

Glad to see ya got a decent group with these m80s Owl. I bought a couple thou of these from the same place. They look lots better than the M2s do.

Have you tinkered with your load? My rifle likes 41.5gr IMR- 4895 better than anything less. Hot enough for me, havn't tried uping the charge any higher.

Thanks for postin your results, good info.

Mainer