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Hi Guys,
I'm trying to keep the bullets on the lighter side because, in the case of the 7.92J and the Gooey rifle, I don't want to be any harder on that old action than I have to be.
The 7.62x54R gets 147 to 150 grain bullets too, because I bought (five hundred, maybe?) years back for like $50, which seemed like a good price at the time for pulled bullets when stuff was hard to find, powder, primers, etc.
So you're saying that I will probably find best precision up around 2800fps with the Mosinka? I have plenty of room to work either which way.
The original 7.92x57J load used a 220 grain bullet. Loading 200 grain jacketed round nose gets me very, very good precision, but I'm not 100% sure that the heavier bullets aren't stressing the action, even with a relatively sedate 2200fps (or so).
Plus, those 0.318" bullets are expensive! About 37 cents apiece for the 150 grain, the cheapest, all the way up to about 75 cents apiece for the 200 grainers.
I really need to call Lee about a custom sizer...
I'm going to call the 47 grains of Varget a middle-of-the-road load for the 147 to 150 grain bullets in the 7.62x54R. Might bump it up to 47.2 grains as I found some notes and recall that as being my accuracy load. A 47 grain load is published at a mean of 2800fps, and only one surplus load I can find pushes it into the realm of 3000fps. We'll see what happens there, I guess!
As for the 7.92x57J, I only came off the minimum of 45.5 grains (around 2500fps) because I was backing primers out. Turns out that was a bad run of R-P cases; Winchester cases haven't done that (formed them from .30-06).
I'm not really sure where I need to set my max for the J load at, but I'm likely very near it. These Gew88 rifles are known to hold up to surplus ammo which uses a higher velocity and larger bullet than is recommended, but this definitely shortens life and Turkish armorers noted catastrophic failures in WWI and II with the new JS ammo an the Gew88's action.
So, I'm going to work backwards on that one until I find optimum precision in the other direction. According to Hornady, I can go all the way down to 43.5 grains, their starting load, for a published 2400fps. Plenty of room to play there.
I need to actually buy a chronograph now as the guy I used to borrow one from passed back in Feb, but I just only found out about it recently! Life is strange like that sometimes. Might ask for one for Christmas.
I'm concerned about wearing out brass but have yet to find any signs of anything. I just keep them trimmed and run a wire to check for case head separation. I only neck size so as not to overwork the brass in generously proportioned chambers. How many loadings is brass usually good for?
But anyway, does all this sound like a sane, safe plan gents?
Thanks!
Josh
I'm trying to keep the bullets on the lighter side because, in the case of the 7.92J and the Gooey rifle, I don't want to be any harder on that old action than I have to be.
The 7.62x54R gets 147 to 150 grain bullets too, because I bought (five hundred, maybe?) years back for like $50, which seemed like a good price at the time for pulled bullets when stuff was hard to find, powder, primers, etc.
So you're saying that I will probably find best precision up around 2800fps with the Mosinka? I have plenty of room to work either which way.
The original 7.92x57J load used a 220 grain bullet. Loading 200 grain jacketed round nose gets me very, very good precision, but I'm not 100% sure that the heavier bullets aren't stressing the action, even with a relatively sedate 2200fps (or so).
Plus, those 0.318" bullets are expensive! About 37 cents apiece for the 150 grain, the cheapest, all the way up to about 75 cents apiece for the 200 grainers.
I really need to call Lee about a custom sizer...
I'm going to call the 47 grains of Varget a middle-of-the-road load for the 147 to 150 grain bullets in the 7.62x54R. Might bump it up to 47.2 grains as I found some notes and recall that as being my accuracy load. A 47 grain load is published at a mean of 2800fps, and only one surplus load I can find pushes it into the realm of 3000fps. We'll see what happens there, I guess!
As for the 7.92x57J, I only came off the minimum of 45.5 grains (around 2500fps) because I was backing primers out. Turns out that was a bad run of R-P cases; Winchester cases haven't done that (formed them from .30-06).
I'm not really sure where I need to set my max for the J load at, but I'm likely very near it. These Gew88 rifles are known to hold up to surplus ammo which uses a higher velocity and larger bullet than is recommended, but this definitely shortens life and Turkish armorers noted catastrophic failures in WWI and II with the new JS ammo an the Gew88's action.
So, I'm going to work backwards on that one until I find optimum precision in the other direction. According to Hornady, I can go all the way down to 43.5 grains, their starting load, for a published 2400fps. Plenty of room to play there.
I need to actually buy a chronograph now as the guy I used to borrow one from passed back in Feb, but I just only found out about it recently! Life is strange like that sometimes. Might ask for one for Christmas.
I'm concerned about wearing out brass but have yet to find any signs of anything. I just keep them trimmed and run a wire to check for case head separation. I only neck size so as not to overwork the brass in generously proportioned chambers. How many loadings is brass usually good for?
But anyway, does all this sound like a sane, safe plan gents?
Thanks!
Josh
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