pulled surplus bullets that won't shoot worth a darn

[john keyes]

A buddy gave me a bunch of old .308 that was so old the cardboard was falling apart.  none of the rounds would fire despite good primer strikes.
so I pulled all of the bullets hoping to use them as plinkers.  they weigh in at about 142 grains, and the best I can get out of the diameter seems to be about .3065.  I measured some speer,hornady and sierra hunting bullets I have and they all got an honest good .3075,






I tried to show the cup in the tail and the crimp indentation







I shot them out of both a .30-06 and a .30-30 (single shot of course) and they were terrible

any body got any ideas why I couldn't get a decent group out of em?

[LaOtto222]

Military bullets are notoriously inaccurate. Those of foreign manufacture can be especially bad. I have a bunch of .224 boat tailed 55 grain ball ammo pulls. They were given to me so there is no cost - I would not have paid any money for them. Now that I have them - I use them for fire forming loads and for rough siting in my scopes. I do not use them for any thing else. I suspect that the jacket thickness is not held to very high standards in some of the military ammo. Good Luck and Good Shooting.

[Larry Gibson]

Those are obviously some M80 type 7.62 NATO bullets.  As to "accuracy" it depends on what you mean by "terrible".  If terrible means they don't shoot as well as Speer, Hornady or Sierra's then you are correct.  However, for acceptable accuracy for milsurp bullets they should shoot not more than 4 moa out of your 30-30 and '06.  If they shoot worse than that then they probably are "terrible".  They still may be decent "plinkers" though if loaded with reduced loads using Unique, 2400, 4227 or 4759 from 1800 fps to 2400 fps.

Larry Gibson

[iiranger]

I have a buddy who trained in WW II as an aerial gunner and he cleared this up for me. The reasonable weight machine guns the military has so many of cannot be expected to return to battery before the next round fires THEREFORE you get a shotgun pattern... Unavoidable. --Nothing sporting types have to worry about.-- And so... they do not seek "high accuracy" /"consistency" in the military ammo that may be used in these weapons. The service sets a standard, say 3 inches at 100 from a bolt action and works around that. You want sporting consistency... well you will be disappointed. If you want to weigh each bullet and group them, you can improve things but if you think you will reach "Hornady" standards (or Speer or Sierra, etc.) wrong. Now military match is another story. There they seek the performance of civie ammo. Otherwise, "it goes bang..."  Luck.

[drdougrx]

Interesting....I have about 1000 korean war vintage 30 cal FMJ BT bullets.  I haven't loaded or shot them, I also think they weigh 174gr though I may be mistaken.

[SLAVAGE]

hmmm
try paper patching one see how it turns out that is if it can be done