Tag: .308 Winchester

Biggest Boolets for Beginners

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Anything beyond these you have to enlist to get.

Yesterday we looked at that deadly midget of a round, the .223/5.56. Today let’s do a comparison with some bigger league stuff, true “high-powered” rifles. We’ll see a few more boollet types as well.

Left to right: .223/5.56 FMJ; .243 Winchester JHPBT (new – Jacketed Hollow Point Ballistic Tip); 6.5 Creedmoor JHPBT; .30 – ‘30 JSP (Jacketed Soft Point); .308 FMJ OT (Open Tip), and .30 – ‘06 FMJOT.

You can see that the itty bitty .223/5.56 is dwarfed by all the others. .30 – ‘06 was the standard American infantry round for WW I, WW II and Korea. In 1957, the 7.62 NATO/.308 was adopted by the US, first as a true assault rifle (select fire between semi and full auto) in the M-14, then as a designated marksman round. Vietnam introduced the M-16, shooting the 5.56 NATO, also select fire.

One last comparison:

.30 – ‘06 JHPOT, 30 – ‘06 M25 (Tracer), and .50 BMG (Browning Machine Gun). No, I don’t shoot .50 BMG, so I don’t have a bullet to show you. Dammit.

That’s it for Beginner Boolet Basics. Now, go shoot some of them!

Learn something new every day.

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One thing I learned in the military is that equipment should be made so that it can’t be reassembled incorrectly. If there is a way do so, Private Snuffy will find it.

Imagine my surprise when one of my long range guests suffered a major jamming issue with his AR 10. It would fire one round, but the empty brass would jam in the left side of the chamber. Under great force, of course, requiring the release of both pins and complete removal of the lower, then much force on releasing the charging handle. After the brass was removed and the rifle reassembled, we tried loading a round and then ejecting it without firing. This was the result:

Another hard jam on the left side of the chamber, and the bullet now deeply seated. Light bulb goes off. Is it possible that the bolt could be installed 180 degrees out? Now, every M16/AR15 pattern rifle I have disassembled, the bolt cam pin hole is eccentric on one side and round on the other. It is physically impossible to insert the cam pin on the wrong side.
We found the exception – round all the way through. So 50% chance of reassembling it bass-ackwards. Huh.

And what have you been up to?

RI RedLeave a comment

Mmm, shooting, I guess.

Good thing this is Mrs. Red’s car. I wouldn’t stand for it in mine.

And the detritus of destruction?

Approximately 150 freshly tumbled cases, once-fired .308 brass, with a few 6.5 Creeds in the mix. And my buds are using the good stuff- Federal Gold Match! Single digit Standard Deviation and Extreme Spread. But as our mentor says, “Yeah. Good practice ammo.

So I went back to the range.

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In the rain. The rifle performed flawlessly. The three shots in yellow were Hornady 140 AMax, followed by the three in blue, which were Sierra Game King 140s. Disregard all the .22 holes – it was raining and the target was down there.

I talked about the issue last night on Ace, with the following as maybes: tight chamber, need a small-base die, hot chamber. But I’ll go with this one: Socks too tight, and the Range was angry that day, my friend.

Still thinking . . .

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This is the case that jammed. It sat in a hot chamber, enough to get scorched. But the bottom of the shoulder is bright, meaning (I think) that it was hard up against the end of the chamber.
I compared it to a just-sized case:

Bad angle – it looks bigger – it ain’t. Both pop in and out of the go-no go headspace/length tool (whatever its name is). Another view shows manual extraction scrapes:

No conclusions yet. Going to rain all day. I guess I’ll get wet at the range.

Reloading Day

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Yes, I got back to the bench and worked up 3 different .308 Winchester loads – Hornady 168 A-Max, Sierra 165 Game King, and Hornady 178 BTHP Match. Should hold me over while I order some more bullets.

I took a look at the .308 round that FTE’d.

It did not finish going into battery and I had to apply pressure to seat it. Then, because the trigger did not cock, it would not fire. At home, I had to “tap” the charging handle backward to unseat the round.
You can see that the middle of the case is scorched, but that the bullet and powder were fine. I scoped the bore (and was amazed how clean it still was) and found no obstructions or anything out of place.

I pulled the bolt carrier group and noticed that the bolt rotated a bit slowly, so cleaned everything. After reassembly, I locked a magazine and loaded a round, then extracted it easily. The second round needed a bit of effort, as did the third. I’m not in the habit of extracting unfired rounds much, so I’m just not sure if there is an issue.

Only way to check – back to the range.

More customer service.

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I sent the box by USPS on Tuesday. Vortex sent an email today (Wisconsin) confirming receipt and letting me know what to expect. So far, so good.
So what did I do with the rest of my day?

Ranging the distance to all the targets by drone!

I used up three complete batteries because I hovered and maneuvered next to each group to get an accurate distance(although the latter targets are off because the drone updated its home location after leaving the bench).

Well, once the drone work was done (and I warmed up in the car (39 degrees, and a brisk damp wind)), I uncased the .308. Yes, I had brought gear in the event I really wanted to shoot. Amazing.

Ballistics were perfect at the 525 boulder, very close at 750 (but with 5 MOA windage correction) and, after a number of rounds, hit 900. Elevation was great, but the wind was all over the place. Very satisfying hearing the steel ring about three seconds after the shot!
Maybe I’ll do some drone footage tomorrow.

AR 10 feeding

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No, not what type of ammo they like. Feeding. As in going into the chamber.
A buddy sent an SOS. Federal Gold Medal Match 168s will not feed in his Aero AR10. The tip catches on the lip of the chamber using all different magazines. Evidently, Aero was less than helpful when approached.

He sent me this pic:

I took pics of mine for comparison:

Do you see what I’m seeing? I think his barrel has a sharp lip, while mine is definitely chamfered.
I’d be tempted to get my dremel, a wool brush and some metal polish and smooth out the lip right in front of the two feed ramps. But then, I have a high tolerance for DIY and risk.

Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. Sometimes you do both.

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Back to the range with the Predator 6.5 and the AR-10 after their deep cleaning.

No snow!

The AR loved the deep clean. First fouling/sighter shot in the center target. The next 4 were in the upper left target. But the 6.5? POA was lower left target. POI was lower right. 12 MOA to the right? No wonder I couldn’t hit anything on the Long Range last week.

I adjusted windage several times and all I got were the two on the bottom left. I loosened the windage set screws, reset them, checked out far travel on both sides and still got way left.
I think my trusty Vortex Viper 6x24x50 has a problem. Over 3k rounds may have disturbed something. I contacted Vortex for the Lifetime Warranty. We shall see.

But the .308 group was .683”, so I am happy.