I thought I might be able to make graphite work in a bullet lube, but the trick would be in making it stick to a cast bullet. The military uses it in conditions where oil would attract dust and/or sand and gum up the action. The moving parts of firearm actions is an excellent example. The more or less standard application for graphite is between moving parts that are not under a lot pressure. Graphite is a dry particulate and is an excellent lubricant in certain applications. Very shortly before I started working on my subsonic loads project, I did some experimenting with powdered graphite as a lube component. Like a lot of bullet casters/shooters, I have dabbled in my own experiments concerning bullet lubes. This article is about developing subsonic loads, but I’m going to spend a few minutes on bullet lube because I think it’s pertinent. There are myriad types of commercially manufactured lubes available and countless recipes for homemade bullet lubes. I deliberately loaded the cast bullets without gas checks to see if I could find accuracy with an unchecked bullet.Ĭast lead bullets require some sort of lubrication to keep the lead from coming off the bullet and being deposited in the barrel. I have a good friend in a gentleman that is also a member of the Cast Boolits forum that goes by the user name of “X101Airborne” and he provided these bullets toward my testing. It has a Spitzer nose with a bit of small meplat on it and a gas check shank. The other cast bullet I chose is also a 55 grain weight. It is a 55 grain round nose flat point bullet with a gas check shank. “Bator” is the user name of a member of the Cast Boolits forum and this gentleman designed the bullet. Lee Precision made a special order mold to cast what was named the “Bator” bullet. It’s good brass and relatively uniform in quality, so I decided to use that as opposed to commercially manufactured brass.ĥ.56 Lake City brass, decrimped and primed.ĥ5 grain full metal jacket boat tail bullets are very common and relatively economical, so I chose that weight and style for jacketed bullets.Īs for cast lead bullets, I chose two types. I have a fair amount of 5.56MM Lake City military surplus brass on hand. The caliber seemed to be the perfect candidate for this experiment. Recoil is virtually nonexistent even in full power loads in this caliber, so that issue would also be eliminated. Cast lead bullets for this caliber are usually about 50 to 55 grains, so again, I would not be wasting lead. The caliber does not require a large powder charge, so I would not be wasting a lot of powder in my experiments. The barrel has a 1:12 twist rate, so I thought it would lend itself well toward this experiment. The rifle I own in that caliber is an H&R single shot. If this proves to be useful to one person, I have met my goal. This is a long article, but I deliberately took time to explain things in detail. With that in mind, I’ll share with you what I did and you can decide for yourself if you want to pursue this and in what manner. I don’t care for instructions that suggest “This is how you HAVE to do it.” With respect to safe loading and shooting practices, that is the case in some situations, but not always. The purpose of this article is not to tell you how to do it, but to tell you how I did it. So, toward these ends, I set out to develop some relatively quiet low velocity loads. This would also lend itself well to general small game hunting and providing meat in a survival situation. Also, I’m an avid ‘coon hunter and thought it would be interesting to develop a subsonic load to hunt with. My wife enjoys shooting with me, but has a bit of problem with recoil and the high volume crack so common to hypervelocity centerfire rifle ammunition. I recently became interested in developing subsonic loads for a couple of centerfire rifles I own.
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