Went to the range again today just for some plinking on my lunch hour.

Hunter's sight-in days were still going on, but it was snowing, and early afternoon. I figured it would be deserted.

Nope.

4 guys sighting in, and 3 guys manning the spotting scopes.

So of course when I whipped out an AR and proceeded to dump 3 mags downrange, I got a few looks.

Then someone noticed my brass, and of course I had to explain that.

Ugh. I never realized it was such an attention-grabbing weapon. Just wait until I put a can on it.

[quote]I got a few looks.[/quote

There is always one when you are trying to sight in a rifle,apparently you have kin in Georgia.

Managed to score a pound of Lil Gun today.

Anyone have any pet loads with Lil Gun with either 125SMKs or Hornady 150's?


Speaking of Hornady 150's.. ARGolfer - did you get any of those loaded up and have a range report for us? What was your load?

Exx, I did work ups for my Remington using the SMK 150gr using lil gun. See page 7 in this thread for the results.

Remington 7.5 primer
Once fired LC 5.56 brass converted
17 gr Lil Gun
OAL 2.120

I also did some later work ups increasing the OAL but the load above worked best for me.

quote:

Originally posted by TKO:
Exx, I did work ups for my Remington using the SMK 150gr using lil gun. See page 7 in this thread for the results.

Remington 7.5 primer
Once fired LC 5.56 brass converted
17 gr Lil Gun
OAL 2.120

I also did some later work ups increasing the OAL but the load above worked best for me.

The Hornadys have a cannelure, so playing with OAL isn't something I want to do (intend to crimp into the cannelure). They are the exact same bullets that were posted on pg 14 at ARGolfer bought a bulk 2100ct box of..

Gotcha. Mike posted some load data for his loads in here as well. If memory servers he was loading his to 2.120 as well.

quote:

Originally posted by exx1976:
Anyone have any pet loads with Lil Gun with either 125SMKs or Hornady 150's?

Here is my load for the 125SMKs:

Remington 300BLK Brass
CCI400 Primer
17.2gr Lil' Gun
2.210" OAL
Light crimp with Lee FCD
Avg velocity unsuppressed: 1925
Avg velocity suppressed: 1864

The plated X-treme's just showed up today.

The weather here is bitter cold, but the forecast shows this weekend in the 30's perhaps.

I'll try to get a load report and range report up as soon as I have them.

Argh...speaking of hornady 150 gr. fmj's...I ordered 600 from brownells on 2/25, and they showed up today. Forgot all about them. Guess I have plenty to do this week now...convert some lc brass and load them for plinking.

Sounds like fun! What's your load?

14.0 gr of Lil Gun at 2.065. I think it clocked around 1850 fps IIRC...

Excellent, I just picked up a pound of that. Thanks!

A buddy gave me some 4198 and some 5744 today. I also picked up a set of dies from my LGS but they will be a Christmas gift so I will have to feed my baby the expensive vittles for a while.

I just loaded up some of those Xtreme plated 150's.

CCI41
15gr W296
Xtreme Plated 150gr FP
2.055"

I'm gonna head to the range shortly to function check them. The reason I picked this as a starting point is several others on another forum reported good function with it. We'll see what happens. I don't think I'm going to take the chrono, the range is a swamp right now.

Ok, so that didn't go so well.

I had three rounds that failed to feed. The first time it happened, I fired the round anyway. Probably shouldn't have, based on what happened to the OAL of the other two rounds. Luckily, since these are loaded gently due to being plated, it turned out ok. Note to self, check that next time.

Anyway, the two that failed to feed that I didn't fire:





They are both set back. The one on the left now measures 1.978" and the one on the right now measures 1.928"

Guess I need some more crimp just to make sure..

The good news is that the bolt did lock open on the last round, and aside from the flat point of the bullets getting stuck, it cycled fine.

Now to play with OAL and see what I can find as far as feeding.

These rounds were loaded in a 20-round [I think Gen2] unmodified PMAG, with a black follower (not the PMAG in the pic in the previous post - that's a Gen3, and the rounds wouldn't properly load in it).

I'm going to load some more up. The next OAL purported to work well is 1.927" I obviously wanted to try the longer rounds, but..

Also, this time, before I head to the range, I'm going to make a bunch of dummies and cycle them by hand. Save time and powder.

I'll keep you all posted.


ETA - I compared the 20-round mag with some 30-round Gen2 mags, and I think the 20-rounder I used may have been a Gen1. I noticed the bullets were a little "nose down" in the mag when the failures happened, could be due to the straight body. I'm going to load up a few dummies and see if they'll cycle through my Gen2 30's.

Be right back.

Yup. I think it was the mag.

I just made 5 dummy rounds, same OAL, no primer or powder, and cycled them through a 30-round Gen2 PMAG 4 times. I did this by inserting the mag on an open bolt, and dropping the bolt. Then, with the help of my extended bolt release, I locked the bolt open each time I yanked the charging handle.

They cycled flawlessly.

This is much better than before. When I was at the range, the first round I dropped the bolt on got stuck (the one I ended up firing).

I'm going to load up a couple mag's worth of that same round as before, and run them through my 30-rounders.

Off to the press, then the range.

I'll report back later.

Your ramp is taking away the BCC of you bullets,but you knew that.

Ok. So, I loaded up 20 of the exact same round, and 10 each of varying shorter rounds.

I have come to the conclusion that I now have a LOT of bullets for my better half's 30/30.

Check out this picture:



No, that's not an optical illusion. They are leaning over.

The right hand rounds did this. Drop the bolt, jamb. Drop the mag, strip that round. Drop the bolt on the left round. Good. Bang! Fail to feed again on the right round.

After this happened several times, I decided to strip the mag down to 5 rounds. Those rounds all cycled fine, not a single issue with the action. I loaded 5 more several times. Each group of 5 worked fine, so long as no more than 5 were in the mag.

But, I use a "Magpul grip" on this AR. It currently wears an AAC BrakeOut (see previous pics of rifle). One of the bullets struck the baffle in the brake, and I had to pick a rather large chunk of lead and copper out of one of my knuckles on my left hand. It was in there pretty good, needed to open it up a bit with my pocketknife to get it all out. Not a deep injury, no stitches or any crap like that, but certainly annoying.

After all that madness, I sent 5 full mags of 125gr SMK's downrange. Not a single hiccup, flaw, fart, misfire, failure to feed, nothing.

They might be more pricey, but I'm not exactly poor, and in some cases, saving money isn't worth the associated aggravation.

For me, this is one of those times.

For anyone else that ordered these bullets, I really hope you have better luck with them than I did.

For those of you that did not order any, do so at your own risk. I feel that I gave them a fair shot. Even if the accuracy had been poor to fair, I would have been ok with them as a plinking round as long as they could hold minute of beer can at 50 yards. But this many function problems? I'll stick to the more expensive bullets since they seem to work.


Oh well.

Don't beat yourself man,sound like some of my tinkering about thirty years ago.
We learn as we go,what time I have left I tend to buy what has worked in the past on rifles.
the pistol thingy I still play with molds,mostly I have given away all my old shit I used to use, to an upstarter that just likes to plink and a barrel size target.

Thanks 45. I'm good, no worries. In the grand scheme, it was a cheap lesson (a little time and less than $100), and I do have another rifle in the house that can use them, so it's all good. I just wanted to make sure to post my findings here since several other posters were interested to hear my results since the bullets seemed like such a deal. How's that old saying go? Something about too good to be true? C'est la vie.