Was this tested with carbines or rifles? If carbine how was the kick? 
Finally success reloading the 8 X 56R for an M95!
Ok now, give me a little leeway because it has been too cold to get out my chrono, but after many, many rounds out of three different M95's it appears that success is within grasp.
Will not even go into the thousands of different castings, based on multiple different molds that I have had to go through. An experimentation of various hardness, sizing, and design. Along with different powders, weights, and overall cartridge lengths. A good two years of trial and error has yielded this:
Mould: Lee C338-220-1R
Yep, that's correct, for a .338 caliber bullet. Drops at .339"
Sized to .3315" using a Lee .329 sizer, honed out to .3315" using a dowel and emery cloth w/cutting oil (made two of them, one on a lathe, the other in a vise using my drill can not tell the difference!)
Bullet weight with gas check: 218.55 grains
Tried two different lubes, ended up going to the cheap stuff...Lee Alox, did not seem to matter to any of the guns, so went with the cheap stuff.
25.0 grains of H4198, started at 20 and moved up, took until 24.0 grains to get a good chamber seal (on all three M95's). Tried Unique and 2400. Unique was way too position sensitive and could not get the velocity/pressure timing in line with chamber sealing to eliminate blow back. At 16 grains of Unique, the chamber sealed but the pressure went too high causing bullet fragmentation and still the velocity was under 1650fps. The 2400 powder I ran all the way to 22 grains at which point the chamber started to seal, but again velocity was too low with bullet frag. By the way, my lead had a hardness of BRN 16 and cast 92-5-3 lead-tin-antimony.
25.0 grains of H4198, sealed the brass with no blow back, threw the pills down rang with authority, and yielded an average group under 2" at 100 yards with all three rifles. Will run through the chrono as soon as the weather clears a bit.
Oh yeah, COL of 2.995 seemed to be the longest I could go before the oglive would touch the rifling on two of the chambers. This left me with .015" of clearance. On my 208gr JSP HDY(43.5 grains of H4895) loads I can set 'em at 3.110 with a .010 clearance, so the blunter cast bullet needs to have a shorter COL.
Hope to get 1650-1700+fps, then we'll dial in for longer range.
Will not even go into the thousands of different castings, based on multiple different molds that I have had to go through. An experimentation of various hardness, sizing, and design. Along with different powders, weights, and overall cartridge lengths. A good two years of trial and error has yielded this:
Mould: Lee C338-220-1R
Yep, that's correct, for a .338 caliber bullet. Drops at .339"
Sized to .3315" using a Lee .329 sizer, honed out to .3315" using a dowel and emery cloth w/cutting oil (made two of them, one on a lathe, the other in a vise using my drill can not tell the difference!)
Bullet weight with gas check: 218.55 grains
Tried two different lubes, ended up going to the cheap stuff...Lee Alox, did not seem to matter to any of the guns, so went with the cheap stuff.
25.0 grains of H4198, started at 20 and moved up, took until 24.0 grains to get a good chamber seal (on all three M95's). Tried Unique and 2400. Unique was way too position sensitive and could not get the velocity/pressure timing in line with chamber sealing to eliminate blow back. At 16 grains of Unique, the chamber sealed but the pressure went too high causing bullet fragmentation and still the velocity was under 1650fps. The 2400 powder I ran all the way to 22 grains at which point the chamber started to seal, but again velocity was too low with bullet frag. By the way, my lead had a hardness of BRN 16 and cast 92-5-3 lead-tin-antimony.
25.0 grains of H4198, sealed the brass with no blow back, threw the pills down rang with authority, and yielded an average group under 2" at 100 yards with all three rifles. Will run through the chrono as soon as the weather clears a bit.
Oh yeah, COL of 2.995 seemed to be the longest I could go before the oglive would touch the rifling on two of the chambers. This left me with .015" of clearance. On my 208gr JSP HDY(43.5 grains of H4895) loads I can set 'em at 3.110 with a .010 clearance, so the blunter cast bullet needs to have a shorter COL.
Hope to get 1650-1700+fps, then we'll dial in for longer range.
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