Nosler combined Technology 180grn .308 bullets

[akinswi]

I just ordered some 180grn .308 Nosler combined Technology silver ballistic tip bullets and was going to try some in my M1 anybody have any experience with this bullet in M1?

I wanted the 168 grain but nobody had them in stock, so i thought i give the 180's a try . 300 to 400 yds is what ill prob be shooting distance wise.

thoughts

[Jimro]

Do you have an adjustable gas plug in your M1?

Jimro

[Unclenick]

A popular Garand load is the 168 over 47 grains of IMR 4895. QuickLOAD thinks 45 grains will give you the same barrel time with the 180 grain CT, close to the same velocity and, with the slightly lower charge, will actually reduce gas port pressure a little, so no plug adjustment required. Anyway, that's where I'd start. My own gun prefers 47.5 grains of 4895 under the 168, but I'd still start at 45 and figure that between there and 46 grains I'd be likely to find a happy point.

[Jimro]

Unclenick,

I asked because accuracy isn't always optimized in an M1 spec load when you go outside of the 150-175gr range. Not that you can't make an accurate load, just that it seems easier to do an accuracy workup with the adjustment full open (turning the M1 into a single shot) and then dial it down to get functionality with that load.

Jimro

[T. O'Heir]

Millions of rounds of 180 grain ammo has been fired out of M1 Rifles with no fuss long before an adjustable gas plug existed.
Hodgdon gives 45.5 to 48.7 of IMR4064. IMR4064 is your friend for every bullet weight out of an M1 Rifle. Far more consistently accurate than either 4895. Who made the bullet doesn't matter. Nosler's are kind of pricey to shoot regularly though.

[akinswi]

I wanna to try them because they reduce barrel wear. I wanted to buy the 168's but can't find any instock

[Unclenick]

I don't think anyone has produced consistent results trying to reduce bore wear with bullet surface treatments. Most of the bore never does wear out, anyway except in full auto weapons. It's mainly the throat that breaks down. Norma has photos of a 6.5×55 barrel section that has lasted 10,000 rounds shooting moly-coated bullets and it is better looking than one that fired the same number of conventional rounds.

However, when Sierra tested moly bullets for accuracy and for how long it took to shoot a barrel out using .308 Winchester, the main effect they identified was the barrel built up less copper fouling. The tests were in Precision Shooting in 1998, IIRC, and the barrel's didn't last longer and accuracy was actually slightly poorer with the coated bullets in their tests, but I don't believe they were sure that it was a statistically significant difference. That is, it may have been a random result.

Walt Berger got still different results, showing a slight increase in ballistic coefficient for most moly bullets. IIRC, it was on the order of half to one percent. Since, as Bryan Litz points out, individual bullets can vary 3% in BC coming out of the same box, this is an improvement that largely lost in the noise for practical purposes. Berger believed it to be due to the lubricated bullet self-centering better in the throat. That would tend to improve precision on the target if correct. It would be an easy theory to test, and I think I'll put that on my bucket list to do.

Bottom line: If you want more bore life you can get your barrel (and action, if you don't have a barrel vice and wrench) cryo-treated. Sierra's tests that same year got about 20% increase in life doing that with stainless barrels. They didn't test chrome-moly steel, but in tooling it gains even more from cryo-treating than stainless does. Whether that will translate to proportional effect on throat wear in a gun, I can't say.

[akinswi]

T.O'Heir, thanks for the info was exactly what I was looking for. I have a hefty supply of IMR4064 so that will work perfectly

thanks