Lever Action Rifle accuracy

[Miseryguts]

Hi, I have a couple of Lever action rifles in 357Mag and 44Mag calibres. I shoot these at 50m and 100yards (Club range is 50m, my range is 100yards) Struggling to get 10 shot groups under 1 MoA mean radius on a repetitive basis. Am I expecting too much? Rifles are Winchester 94 and Henry Big Boy. Using home loads with plated bullets or jacketed bullets. Sd values are in single figures

M

[Laurie]

When I did a lot of load development with 357 and 44 with a pair of pre Rem Marlin 94s some years back, I got down to around 0.4 inches or just below at 50 metres with 10 shot groups in 357 with light subsonic loads and quality cast lead bullets. It wasn't a quick or easy job - took me a very long time to get under half-inch (or evenmuch  larger sizes) at this distance. 

100 yards, nothing like so good with this sort of load - not enough grunt.

I can't remember my best 44 Mag group sizes but IIRC 50M was about the same as 357 with the best 240gn / 1.100 fps load combinations, but very much better than 357 at 100. Remember, in terms of MOA, groups don't expand in a linear fashion with extra distance but grow more, and that tendency is likely much greater with all but the very highest quality cast lead projectiles than with the very high quality jacketed match and BR bullets available these days.

[1066]

I would be thrilled to bits to get anywhere near 1 moa at 50 yards, never mind a hundred, with my 94.

[terryh]

Miseryguts,

Been a long time since I played with pistol cal lever rifles but something to note, plated bullets are not up to much, at least that seems to be the case with the guys at my local club, they were having accuracy issues and when they sectioned the plated bullets the plating was not even in thickness, it looked liked the bullets were plated then swaged to size.

Just a thought

T

[Laurie]

1 hour ago, 1066 said:

I would be thrilled to bits to get anywhere near 1 moa at 50 yards, never mind a hundred, with my 94.

 

Yes, you're correct there Allan! Never write anything from memory alone. 

In mitigation, it was a VERY long time ago. Doing a check saw me pull my old records for 2000-2003 out and speed-read through screeds and screeds of carefully notated records of literally dozens, maybe even scores, of brass / bullet / powder combinations; tests using different dies etc, etc (even ammo loaded with a Redding Pistol Competition seater die just like the rifle model with spring-loaded support sleeve - I still have it somewhere if there is anybody here desperate to own such a device. It's available cheap - honest).

What I remembered as a red-letter days wasn't a sub 0.5" 50M 10-shot group but sub 1.5" at somewhere around 1.3 /1.4 inches C to C, 1.5 having seemed an unbreakable floor until then.  

Subsequently I got the better cast-lead bullet loads down to just above the inch, a (small) number of combinations capable of 10 shots in 1.1 and 1.2". I can't find any where all 10 stayed in an inch or less - a few times, the notes say "9 ex 10 in 0.9" or even 0.75", but one flier took the 10 out to .........." This was off a wooden, but reasonably stable bench and with a simple plastic front rest and light pillow bag between it and the rifle stock. Shooting offhand in my case, under six inches would have been good, miraculous even!

The range I shot leverguns on back in those early millenial days didn't allow jacketed bullets and would just tolerate electroplated designs like the US Berry bullets. These did as well as the best of the cast lead examples with some powders, but had to be at even lower charges / speeds if anything - they were so soft, the rifling would peel the copper plating off and back like a partially peeled banana. (I say no jacketed bullets allowed, but a couple of police forces trained on it. After a thunderstorm one night a lot of backstop sand was washed away and arriving the next morning I and others could see literally hundreds of shiny 9mm jacketed projectiles  glinting in the sun. i also saw one of these forces use 5.56 SIG assault rifles on a no-danger area range in this complex that was limited to .22RF rifles and had a motorway so close to the backstop that you could clearly read company names on high sided HGV trailers. When challenged , the nation's finest said they had 'crown immunity' and could do what they liked - which they didn't as it had been abolished years before.)

The various makes of hardcast bullets produced on Magnacast machines and automatic sizers rarely managed to get below 3 inches, and there were more than the occasional 5 to 6-inchers. ..... And they produced horrendous lead fouling that would take a couple of hours to remove from the throat and start of the rifling. All in all shooting leverguns must have taken up a large part of my life back then - my records say that I loaded and shot 3,250 38 spcl / 357 rounds in 2001 and although they were loaded on a Lee Turret, it was used as single-stage batch processing tool, not semi-auto, and nearly every charge was individually weighed. (I wish I'd had one of your Targetmasters - it would have saved me many tedious hours!)

At 100 (which I'd only shoot occasionally, a different range and shooting was prone) the best of the low MV combinations were about the five to six inch mark, one problem being lack of scope elevation adjustment. I later tried some expensive Hornady FMJ FP SIL bullets - jacketed flat-nose jobs designed for US Metallic Silhouette pistol competition with relatively warm Alliant 2400 and Viht N110 loads which were much better suited to this distance - 5 round groups of four / five inches the norm shot prone off a Harris bipod. At 200 yards which I shot once, the 2400 powder loads just held the 4-ring of the the then operative NRA rifle target (4-MOA?, maybe 5-MOA?) Actually, more impressive than my memory told me - but the 44 Magnum carbine was a MUCH better tool for 100 yards or beyond and a good subsonic lead bullet load still performed at this distance unlike in 357.

Another thing where memory alone proved misleading was 38 Special which I remembered as being poor throughout. It certainly was top start with, six-inch 50M groups pretty common, but after I'd felt I'd wrung as much out of 357 as was going to get, I returned to it and eventually managed to get some reasonable results in the 2-inches or sometimes less from 10 shots at 50M, even a 1.1" group on one occasion.

I never cast my own bullets but there were still individuals around back then hand-casting in outhouses and producing some really good bullets, advertising their wares in the old Target Gun magazine. I have a strong feeling that these guys laboured long and hard for very modest returns on their time and likely went to an early grave from organ failure or blood disorders brought on from ingesting lead fumes and goodness knows what other toxic smokes and gases that smelting and casting lead alloys produced in outhouse conditions. the mass produced Magnacast bullets rarely performed well IME.

Finally, an interesting snippet from the records, the very first in fact stating:

.357 Mag Marlin 1894CS L/A carbine bought from David Shaw (Reloaders Ltd) for £200 on 20.10.2000.

Wow! Inflation! This was a mint, as-new rifle and couldn't have been that old in the year 2000 as it had the later 'Ballard' type deep rifling, not Marlin's 'Microgroove'. Another £13 bought me a Weaver type scope rail and a pair of Tasco mounts. What's one of these worth these days secondhand in good condition - £700? More?

I later bought a brand-new M1894P 44 Mag carbine - short barrel from David (a lovely fellow, long dead, who ran a reloading supplies business from a Victorian terrace house in Sdelightful chaphorpe - his front parlour had hundreds of thousands of primers stacked up in it not to mention cartons and cartons of powder, several hundred pounds of it). The 1894P had a very short barrel and two lines of holes drilled in it just behind the muzzle as muzzle brake type ports. It shot better than the 357 1894CS, but people kept banning me from ranges because of the ports which ejected partially burned bits of powder out to the sides onto other shooters. I learned a year or two back that only 10 were imported into the UK and they're now regarded as collector's items worth a grand or so. (I paid £325 for mine.)

[Laurie]

Sdelightful chaphorpe

from my post above - the UKV nasty word destroyer strikes again! It's a north Lincolnshire steelmaking town whose name has an unfortunate four-letter combination contained therein that used to give rise to not very funny jokes on the lines of ....

You know Fred Bloggs? Well, he's the **** in Sdelightful chapthorpe!

[Miseryguts]

Hi perhaps I should clarify - my 1 MoA is MEAN RADIUS as in OP - I need to go back to my records to get C- C figures to compare my results with yours Laurie, as I think it very unlikely that I am getting anything like the groups some one like yourself shoots!!

M

[Davy]

I am always delighted with anything sub 2.5" under glass at 100 yards with a .357 Marlin 1894C. We tried one out to 300 yards once and it was superb sport trying to hit a 12"x12" plate. We were probably on the plate 1 in 15 shots once everything was zeroed. Who says only accurate rifles are fun

[Miseryguts]

Yes Davy, are they not just good fun - and cheap to run if you load your own!

Not got figures to hand for 100 yard stuff, but on checking my 50m stuff, I have best group for each calibre at 1.2 inches (2 MoA) C-T-C, but more normally at 1.6 to 1.8 inches for 6- 8 shot groups, and 2 inches for 10 shot groups (ain't there ALWAYS a flyer!). So perhaps things ain't so bad after all!!

M

[gruntus]

Hi Gents,

I am ready to start reloading for .357 and looking for guidance on what 158gr FMJ bullets you use and what crimping you apply.

I bought some LOS 158gr jacketed bullets (without cannelure) recently but based on the potential to knock the bullets into the casing (reducing COAl) during operation I have been warned that it may be best to use bullets with a cannelure.

So couple of questions, do you use straight jackets (apologies for the pun!  ) and if so what level of crimping do you apply?

If your using jacketed with cannelure what do you use?

Thanks in advance!

G

  

[Miseryguts]

Hi Gruntus

I use a factory crimp  die and as light a crimp as I dare.This equates to 1/2 turn of the crimp adjuster from case touching point -but you have to be sure all your cases are the same length. I trim mine and use the vernier to keep the length to +0/-1 thousands inch. Using accurate powder charges I have Sd between 4 and 8 for the 357. Not had a bullet pushed into the case yet - emphasis on the yet!!

No cannelure on my bullets

M

[gruntus]

Thanks M, 

I measured a few cases of once fired factory PPU  and noticed that the cases were of varying  length which I was a little surprised at. 

I will trim to length to a set size according. With regard to deburring the neck do you apply the same principles as bottle neck cases (a chamfer) or do you just remove the burrs (and no more) inside and out? 

All the best 

G 

 

[Dalua]

My experience is limited to hardcast unjacketed bullets, as the club competition rules forbid jackets.

I trim cases to the same length so that the crimping is even. From a 'normal' rifle reloading position (.308, .303, .270, .223, .22-250 etc.) the amount of crimp I apply seems terrific - yet a uniform and firm, bullet-gripping crimp seems essential to even iginition, consistent burn of powder and there to accuracy.

I certainly deburr the trimmed cases inside and out; but not to the extent that there's any internal chamfer to speak of, as I flare the necks to accept the lead bullets.

[Miseryguts]

20 hours ago, gruntus said:

Thanks M, 

I measured a few cases of once fired factory PPU  and noticed that the cases were of varying  length which I was a little surprised at. 

I will trim to length to a set size according. With regard to deburring the neck do you apply the same principles as bottle neck cases (a chamfer) or do you just remove the burrs (and no more) inside and out? 

All the best 

G 

 

Hi G, my trimmer does  the chamfer for me both in and out automatically, and is hardly noticeable, doing it by hand tends to be a bit rough - well it is with me anyway!

Dalua recommends a hard crimp, but I found that my Sd was way up(25min 60 max) using a "heavy" crimp(1 to 1 1/2 turn of the die adjuster from case touching) - but, horses for courses, see what suits you best

ATB M

[Miseryguts]

and as  Dalua says, flare the neck to allow the bullet to start easy

[gruntus]

Thanks Gents, 

Looks like there is a bit of trial and error to go through for crimping (with an appropriate level of caution as always). 

I should be swinging by Norman Clark this Friday to pick up bullet heads  are there typical "go to" bullets you guys use? I was going to go with 158gr weight just based on the standard ppu factory that works fine in my rifle.

NC look like they have a few Sierras to chose from. 

Cheers

G 

[baldie]

Pistol calibre dies when bought from Dillon, "flare" the case neck during the cycle, so negate the need for internal chamfering.

Well worth the cost, as the f/l sizers are carbide, and require no lube at all.

[gruntus]

Thanks Baldev, 

I bought RCBS carbide dies for that very reason!

ATB

G

[Alex Wheeler]

Solid 1 MOA with a lever gun would be an exceptional rifle...

 

[Ronin]

Welcome to the site Alex

[brown dog]

On 09/02/2018 at 8:29 PM, Laurie said:

Sdelightful chaphorpe

from my post above - the UKV nasty word destroyer strikes again! It's a north Lincolnshire steelmaking town whose name has an unfortunate four-letter combination contained therein that used to give rise to not very funny jokes on the lines of ....

You know Fred Bloggs? Well, he's the **** in Sdelightful chapthorpe!