No1 Mk111*

[pe4king]

Having not worked for the last week or 2 I decided to get some of the rifles out and have a dig around.
Anyway this one a No1 Mk111* made in 1943 by BSA I thought, well I was nearly right what it turns out to be is a complete matching Dispersal rifle, not made up from bits and bobs as such , this was planned after severe bombing of the Birmingham weapons plants by the Germans and to satisfy the need for weapons after Dunkirk, apparantly not a great many of these survived intact as they were either scrapped or sold on after the war.
When I got her earlier in the year she was covered in varnish which I have now removed and applied liberal coatings of BLO so now looks the part. anyway some pics not great quality as they are from my phone

[dromia]

No you don't see many dispersals over here although they seem plentiful in the states. How well does it group?

[pe4king]

Ive only ran 20 rds through it quickly all were on the target at 100. Im planning to start reloading 303 later in the new year so ill let you know will probably stick with 174gr bullets and N140

[jjvc]

pe4king, 174g fmj and 40g N140 is my go to load for .303, it works well in all my Enfields.

Joe

[pe4king]

Thanks
Ill bear that in mind when I start reloading for them

untill then the PPU stuff seems ok to run through them

[Alpha1]

I use the same bullit 174grain full metal jacket but I use 41grains of vitavouri N140 works in all my 303 rifles including my P14.

[dodgyrog]

You guys MUST start using cast boolits (not just 'coz I sell 'em) - it will save you lots of money.
They are just as accurate, you know.

[jjvc]

Iv'e been worshipping at the silver stream for a few years now Rog

[pe4king]

What would be a good load with a cast bullet then ?, how fast can they be pushed ?, and what is the max range?.
I remember from my pistol days ending up with a "smoothbore" revolver from pushing lead cast bullets to fast

[dromia]

You can shoot cast to jacketed velocites, performance and better. The trick is good boolit fit, not too hard/brittle an alloy and good lube. When I used to compete in Service target rifle competitions I could easily keep my jacketd average out to 1000 yrds with cast.

Do a search on the forums here for cast boolits/bullets there is a bit of information here already as well as reading E Harris's Cast Bullet Military Rifle article posted in the library forum.

For top accuracy at high velocity cast boolits ususally prefer a slightly slower powder than jacketed so that the pressure doesn't peak 'till the boolit is well into the bore and fully supported. For the .303" I'm currently using AA 4350 with a 198 gn boolit, I'd have liked a heavier boolit but the rifle I'm using has an unworn barrel on it, so to get the mould to fit the throat that was the best I could with the limitation of boolit length.

Getting accuracy at high velocity does take a bit of work but it is a lot easier and cheaper than following the current post modern vogue of building rifles to fit mass produced condom bullets.

Of course there is always the easy cast boolit route to high velocity, paper patching.

The reason your pistol was leading wasn't due to the velocity but and/or poor boolit fit/ too hard an alloy.