Making .308" bullets fit, .311" bullets fit better

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   Hi all... back again after my original user account here disappeared sometime during Wuhan Flu.

Probably not the best time for me to start this discussion when my schedule is loaded for the coming weeks, but here we go.

Given all the discussion that goes on here and at other forums regarding handloading for LE rifles, my mind is turning to making jacketed .308" bullets fit to increase the number of choices of bullets available to those who want to do the extra work.  Not quite as easy as with cast bullets however.

I HAVE reloaded .308" caliber bullets for the Old Boys in the salad days of my youth, the ones who hunted with my Dad and friends' fathers who were still using their LE's, as they cried in anguish as the heavy .303 loads from Dominion disappeared from the local sporting goods store.  I loaded heavy .308" Nosler Partitions for them, sighted them in, and never got a complaint back.  I doubt any of them ever shot beyond 150 yards at a moose or an elk (or deer); given the condition of a few of those rifles, not surprised there were no complaints.

Back to the subject at hand, I am going to experiment with using various .308" bullets out of pure curiosity.  I enjoy the experimentation almost as much as shooting these days.  I see two ways to attempt this.

1.  Powder coat the bullets as I do for my cast bullet loads.  With cast bullets, one powder coat of what I'm using adds .002" to .004" to the bullet diameter - depending on technique used.  Recovered cast bullets from the butts show the powder coating is still in place.  So there's one method where you could 'bump' the diameter up to at least .310", .312",  or bigger.

Or for that matter, bump up .311" bullets in size if trying to get better results out of a rifle with a really oversize bore.

But... there is a major concern to be dealt with first (any metallurgists hanging around here?).  That powder coating involves baking the powder coating at around 425 F. for about half an hour.  I don't know if that kind of heat would have any annealing/hardening/softening affect on the copper jacket.  

A lesser concern is how it might affect the Brinell hardness of the lead core of the bullet if the intent is for hunting, depending on the alloy composition of that lead core.  I was hardening cast bullets to get the best grouping ability out of my LE and my grandfather's 1895 Winchester in 30 U.S. back in the early 1990's.

In our current days of slip and fall tort lawyers and corporations fearing that crowd, I doubt any bullet manufacturer will answer any questions I might have regarding metallurgy, their copper and lead and heat when I tell them what I'm thinking about.

2.  Second option: Dipping the bullets in a MDS solution that I bumped into while doing safety work in pulp mills long ago.  

I originally did that with the original Barnes X-bullets for my 30 Newton and 358 Norma Magnum.  The grouping was superb (for about five rounds) and they were awesome on game.  But the copper fouling was instantaneous and horrible, and hours spent lead lapping my bores didn't help a bit.  I dipped the bullets in a solution of this MDS product diluted with MEK.  Let the bullets dry sitting on their bases on parchment paper, and that was the end of the copper fouling issue.

This product when it dried did increase the diameter of those bullets, but I don't have one at hand right now to measure for comparison.  I only did one coat because the result was harder than woodpecker lips, and the few Barnes bullets I recovered from game before better versions were introduced had all the coating still intact after whacking a moose or an elk.

Sooo... any thoughts on this before my curiosity experimenting starts beginning?  I am NOT going to do anything with baking powder coating on bullets until I can get information with somebody knowledgeable about the metallurgy that would be involved in that process. 