Thread: bullet help please

Originally Posted by Russian 22.

That'll be good practice.

How much is it to join? I want to get into long range shooting

50 bucks a year man, they have a hunters class too https://www.sporty.co.nz/akaranacity/

expect to be on target at 800m on the day! I was shooting 223 to 600m after 5 rounds

Originally Posted by Blisters

50 bucks a year man, they have a hunters class too https://www.sporty.co.nz/akaranacity/

expect to be on target at 800m on the day! I was shooting 223 to 600m after 5 rounds

Wow. Sounds awesome!

Haha impressive. Exciting times

Originally Posted by Micky Duck

I recall being told the issue was the .303 rounds where you found red plastic inside tip....some had alloy some cardboard...if you trimmed too far they could seperate and leave core behind.....like finwolf...not sure if its a real thing or a one in couple of thousand occurance...maybe in worn bore or very nickled up barrel.....I would shoot them off at range being cautious of any that didnt sound/ feel right....
and yes a quick twirl of the inside case mouth deburring tool qill remove crimp from primer pockets and allow the new primer to seat with ease...I presume these arent berdan primed...

That is true an old gunsmith friend of mine showed me a pile of .303 barrels he had pulled and replaced all with bullets suck up them, This was back in the 60's when everyone hunted wth a .303
a replacement barrel was about 20 pounds fitted and took 10 minutes to do the job.

ShooterNZ,

I have read the same story about projectiles Separating in the bore over here. I also know the practice was widely adopted by every roo shooter in Oz post ww1 until rifles in commercial loading s become widely and economically available to reduce skin damage and downgrade. Have never seen or heard it happening from anyone first hand and my father and his 3 brothers would have used more than 10 000 rounds of tipped .303s a year shooting for skins to pay their properties off.

We used to use the emery paper grinders in the shearing shed to tip them, a ice cream bucket stock a time as a kid.

how much was a roo skin worth? what were they used for? cheers

Blisters,
'how much was a roo skin worth? what were they used for?"

The last time I sold roo skins was back in the mid 80's. We used to get paid by size. ranged from about $3.50 for small or skins with holes and tears up to about $8.00 for really big greys and reds. we would salt and fold them and when dry pack them up in boxes on pallets and send them to the skin Buyer (ME Humfress & Co) in Brisbane. Humphress and Co would sell you rifles, brass, projectiles etc at wholesale rates and claim it on your tax etc. The skins went mostly to Europe to be tanned for shoes. Adidas was a large user in their football boots and sandshoes. Other shoe companies also. Kangaroo leather is the toughest leather for its thickness, not stretching too much and very even grain so stains well. It is really nice to work with.

The roo industry changed from skins driven to petfood orientated (meat) and subsequently changed in operations. It is now a shadow of its former self due to the political lobbying of PETA type groups who have shut down the market for roo skins and pet meat from Roos overseas and here. If you get tags now for roos and can sell a carcass you get paid by the kg for a gutted roo minus the head, tail and with arms and legs removed at the elbow / knee joints. A really big roo carcass treated as per this way weighs up to 45kg and was worth 25 - 30c /kg. You have to drop them into the refrigerated boxes (shipping containers) before 6 am in the morning. It's all late afternoon shooting and spotlighting.

@Blisters the primers might be berdan so impossible to reload with normal reloading tools

Originally Posted by 300CALMAN

@Blisters the primers might be berdan so impossible to reload with normal reloading tools

Greetings All,
There were a few specialist military target loads in .30-06 but to my knowledge all of the M2 ball ammo was boxer primed. The domed shape of the primer was common at the time. Had a look in the shed and all of the M2 odds and ends were boxer. Some had been necked down to .270 and re primed with standard boxer primers. All original had the domed type primer.
Regards Grandpamac.

Originally Posted by zimmer

IIRC they were boat tail 150gr but could be wrong about the boat tail.

Yes, the .30-06 M2 should have been made with a boat tail but was in fact a flat-bottom spitzer... even though the advantages of boat tails were well known at the time.

The M2 was deliberately made flat-bottomed to decrease its maximum range, allowing it to be shot safely on certain US Army shooting ranges. This inbuilt handicap goes some of the way to explain why the .30-06 M2 goes transsonic at less range than the .303 Mk VII, the Mk VII in fact overtaking the more powerful .30-06 M2 downrange when fired simultaneously. The heavier, longer tortoise vs. the short, light, faster hare, but a friendly match.

The 8mm Mauser would take them both in that comp, only goes transsonic after a kilometre or more, but I have decided to disqualify it because it hurts your shoulder... )o:<

Originally Posted by Cordite

Yes, the .30-06 M2 should have been made with a boat tail but was in fact a flat-bottom spitzer... even though the advantages of boat tails were well known at the time.

The M2 was deliberately made flat-bottomed to decrease its maximum range, allowing it to be shot safely on certain US Army shooting ranges. This inbuilt handicap goes some of the way to explain why the .30-06 M2 goes transsonic at less range than the .303 Mk VII, the Mk VII in fact overtaking the more powerful .30-06 M2 downrange when fired simultaneously. The heavier, longer tortoise vs. the short, light, faster hare, but a friendly match.

The 8mm Mauser would take them both in that comp, only goes transsonic after a kilometre or more, but I have decided to disqualify it because it hurts your shoulder... )o:<

would shooting the m2 that i have be reasonable at 800m on the range? cheers

Originally Posted by Blisters

would shooting the m2 that i have be reasonable at 800m on the range? cheersAttachment 138101

Half the answer is in seeing how accurate it is at 100m.

How consistently were the tips filed and drilled?

And do they clickbang?

Also as bullets are lightened with a slightly blunter tip, so BC must be less.

Who knows. Probably OK, but if they go off fine you definitely have a small shoebox of mighty fine bush hunting rounds.

Greetings All,
The story about how the US got to the M2 30-06 cartridge may be of interest. The US adopted the 150 grain load in 1906 replacing the original .30-03 220 grain load. This followed the Germans adopting a 154 grain load for their rifle the previous year. The original claim for the maximum range of the 150 grain load was 4,700 yards. The US came late to WW1 woefully under prepared and with no machine gun. Initially US troops used either .303 Vickers or the French Hotchkiss machine guns which worked fine. Eventually Browning .30-06 machine guns turned up but were notably lacking in range. Later the maximum range of the early .30-06 was found to be between 3,300 and 3,400 yards or about 65% of what they had been using and more importantly what the Germans were using.
After the war a M1 .30-06 cartridge was developed with a 174 boat tail projectile and a maximum range of 5,500 yards. This round had more recoil and shot past the danger areas of many ranges so the US reverted to a 152 spitzer flat base projectile for shoulder fired weapons which is the M2 ball we have been talking about. Julian Hatcher covers this in his book Hatcher's Notebook for those interested.
Regards Grandpamac.

Grandpamac you forgot to mention that the 174 grain rounds caused functioning issues with the recently adopted m1 grand so back to the little 150 they went.
Ironically the longest case full power round used in shoulder arms during the war was throttled back to where a case 2/3 of the size would have produced the same ballistics and been much easier to configure a semi automatic action around.
The 300 Savage would have been a prime candidate in my opinion.

Originally Posted by Marty Henry

Grandpamac you forgot to mention that the 174 grain rounds caused functioning issues with the recently adopted m1 grand so back to the little 150 they went.
Ironically the longest case full power round used in shoulder arms during the war was throttled back to where a case 2/3 of the size would have produced the same ballistics and been much easier to configure a semi automatic action around.
The 300 Savage would have been a prime candidate in my opinion.

You are actually correct -300 Savage was the initial start for the 308 -straight from Wikipedia. found some other articles that backed this up.
During the 1940s, the .300 Savage became the basis for experiments on behalf of the U.S. Military that resulted in the development of the T65 series of experimental cartridges. The original experimental case design by the Frankford Arsenal was designated the T65 and was similar to the .300 Savage case, but with less taper. The experimental cases were made from standard .30-06 Springfield cases which gave a little less capacity than standard .300 Savage cases because the Frankford Arsenal cases had slightly thicker case walls. The later T65 iterations were lengthened compared to the original T65 case and provided a ballistic performance roughly equal to the U.S. military .30-06 Springfield service cartridge. Over forty years of technical progress in the field of propellants allowed for similar service cartridge performance from a significantly shorter, smaller case with less case capacity.[2][3]

Winchester saw a market for a civilian model of the late T65 series designs and introduced it in 1952, two years prior to the NATO adoption of the T65E5 experimental cartridge iteration under the 7.62×51mm NATO designation in 1954. Winchester branded the cartridge and introduced it to the commercial hunting market as the .308 Winchester

I don't think the projectiles have been drilled, there are some marks on the end of the shown ones where I had put them in a drill to polish off the crap on the outside of the cases, will put up pic of an untouched one later on