If you buy the best that Lee do and then really take care of them they are as good as RCBS standard stuff. RCBS have great quality and superb warranty and will ship parts next day often at no cost!

OOh Fight Fight...

In the Green corner RCBS and in the Red corner Lee.... :D

IMHO Lee are extremely well engineered, but are easily damaged...
RCBS however will last a lifetime!
(though my current favourite are CH - http://www.ch4d.com/ )
I ordered a 8mm Lebel set from them on the internet - brilliant - fast service and extremely well made....

I don't ever crimp target rounds - a good tight neck resize is all you need if you want to reuse your brass. Crimping is only needed if:

a. you are hunting and using a magazine OR
b. You are using an autoloader or a machine gun..

My point was that as Matchkings do not have a cannelure, you have to be careful with the bullet positioning. Bullets with a cannelure are easier to check (provided of course you have done your case trimming correctly...)


Stoats - S&B .311 - yes I have and yes they are.. (mild steel jackets)
dunno what you have got, but they are not the normal S&B bullets available in UK... Actually mid steel is not really a problem provided it is well coated/plated. The jacket is thin and well annealed and should not cause significant wear. The main drawback with steel cased bullets is corrosion. If you are really concerned, moly coat them...

Aluminium cases and jackets however....

My AR 15 likes a little bit of factory crimp on its match kings, even when single loading. Don't know why, it just does. Probably something to do with consistent neck retention before jumping the chasm to the leade that a magazine length round takes. The latest batch I have made are 52 grain match kings loaded to three thousandths of an inch off the rifling, but I still gave them just a touch of crimp. We will see on Thursday how they go!

Originally Posted by stoatman

My AR 15 likes a little bit of factory crimp on its match kings, even when single loading. Don't know why, it just does. Probably something to do with consistent neck retention before jumping the chasm to the leade that a magazine length round takes. The latest batch I have made are 52 grain match kings loaded to three thousandths of an inch off the rifling, but I still gave them just a touch of crimp. We will see on Thursday how they go!

As I said:

a. you are hunting and using a magazine OR
b. You are using an autoloader or a machine gun..

:D

Even with soft point hunting ammo I usually rely on neck tension rather than a crimp and it rarely lets me down!

Here goes!

Target round: with 174 Grn Sierra Match King and 41.3 Grns VihtaVouri N140 (this load is supposed to replicate the original Mk VII regarding MV) I use it in my smellie (the one fitted with target sights) out to 1000 yards and on a good day it works well for me.

Service rifle round: for these I use a bulk buy bullet from the Dutch guy who usually attends the Trafalgar meeting at Bisley, last time I bought a 1000 bullets for about £70, and for this I use 40 Grns of N140 and from memory the bullet weight is 174 Grn, I have just tested them for copper and lead content and can not make a magnet stick to them!
I believe that they are made by Privi Partisan

Historic round: This is where I use the 215 Grn BES bullet in my Long Lee using the slower N160 VihtaVouri, currently 36.3 Grns seems to cut the mustard.

HT - Are your "Dutch" bullets flat based or BT?

they are BT with a cannelure; I have just weighed one at it does come out at 174 Grn, I think the Selliot & Bellot ones come out at 180 Grn?








Edited for p1ss poor grammar.

Originally Posted by Henry_Tombs

there BT with a cannelure; I have just weighed one at it does come out at 174 Grn, I think the Selliot & Bellot ones come out at 180 Grn?

I'm sure S&B are 180 grain. They are basically for the Moison Nagant etc.

I thought that having spent 10 minutes typing a reply to a PM I would share it with you all;
The question posted was to develop a load that was the most accurate for the service rifle yet still perform accurately at longer and shorter distance, couple this with the desire to create a load that would allow the use of soft point ammo for stalking with the same rifle but using the same sights albeit set to the correct distance.
I had a similar issue and this was my reply;

Thats easy enough to do, find a good bullet, say 150 grain sierra soft point and load it so that the POI matches your FMJ at say 200 yards without adjusting the sights. I did this to match two soft point loads one of 125 grain, one of 150 grain with a PMP and a Norma factory soft point load. You need a digital camera, a chrono is handy but not vital and a screen target covered in 1 inch orange squares.
Start with a load that matches the Mv and possibly the Me (debatable) of the fmj,load down from that by 5 grains in 2 10ths of a grain steps and up by 1 10th of a grain steps to max safe load. It takes persistance but you should shoot a group at the screen, then measure and photo. This allows you to refer back later. Write the load data by the group.
Then having allowed the barrel to cool do the same again at the next aiming mark.
The bench mark will be a group of 5 factory rounds fired as a test group (record in the same way) at the beginning and end of the shoot!
You will find then what load allows you to group adequately at that distance and still be within an acceptable variation of the factory ammo group.
This takes all day even if you do it in a wood with a mate but it allows you having got your load and acceptable variation to tweak for accuracy (closing the group) and also to create a predictive down range ballistic graph for predictive fire.
Having that laminated on the point looks pretty good especially if you can then dial in the difference on the vernier sight and score without sighters!
Thats all down the road but the load development will teach you a lot about how your smellie performs with different loads, barrel yaw and harmonics, bedding and whether its an up or down shooter which affects fixed bayonet shooting comps!
I hope thats not too much info. I may put something up on load development for arrsepedia later. The practical side is very enjoyable and I dissapear for days doing it at home but then I have my own range.

It works and allowed me to develop a load for a lighter bullet that still shared a common poi with the factory load at the distance I typically engaged targets in my case deer! It also meant that with the trajectory table I could predict the point blank distance for tthe correct acceptable variation in the curve. I was looking for a point blank of between 60 and 140 yards with the curve starting two inches low and peaking at 2 inches high allowing me a 4 inch kill area!