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Old March 6, 2013, 02:34 PM   #13
Unclenick
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Join Date: March 4, 2005
Location: Ohio
Posts: 21,063
Veral Smith has a book about getting cast bullets to jacketed bullet velocities. But as Snuffy hinted, it takes some real serious effort. You need a nearly perfect bore surface, usually achieved by firelapping, bullets with gas checks, and bullets made of something hard enough to withstand the acceleration forces involved without being squashed to a groove diameter lump before clearing the muzzle. Nonetheless, Lyman has examples of their cast bullets made of #2 alloy getting to 2400, to 2500 fps in .30-06 (24" barrel). These bullets have gas checks, though, and they use IMR 4198 as about the slowest powder choice. 760 is way too slow for a bullet that slides into the bore as easily as lead does. It needs more resistance to get burning well.

If you want to shoot those bullets in a gas gun, you still may be able to, but you'll need to something like dip them in Lee Liquid Alox to enhance the lubrication, then let it dry with the bullet sitting on a NECO P-wad to substitute for a gas check (scroll down on this page). You'll want the faster powder, of course.

Once you get have something approaching the velocity you want, it doesn't guarantee your scope setting won't change. Rifle zeros depend on the phase in the muzzle swing at the moment the bullet exits. You can have two different burn rate powders that produce the same velocity with the same bullet and yet have a half a foot difference in vertical point of impact at 100 yards just because the barrel time doesn't match.

But even supposing you could get the same velocity and point of impact at 100 yards from this bullet that you can with a jacketed hunting bullet. The more blunt and less aerodynamic shape of the lead bullet will give it a much lower ballistic coefficient (not to mention having a flat base rather than a boat tail) so it will lose velocity faster and drop further getting to 300 yards than a typical spitzer nose, boat tail jacketed hunting bullet of the same weight and muzzle velocity. As a result, its trajectory will diverge much more from the jacketed bullet trajectory after passing the first couple of hundred yards. It takes that kind of distance to show the problem up because at the shorter ranges the transit time is quick, so gravity doesn't have much time to act on the bullet. Further out, because the fall velocity is proportional to the square of the transit time, the effect becomes much more noticeable.

So, from the standpoint of your original request, the ballistics gods, both interior and exterior, are against your original stated objective.
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