Hello to Forum. I have a '29 Savage 99 250/3000 Rifle. I've only had it since March of 19 and have so far reloaded ammo using Hornady 75 grain and Speer 87 grain jacketed bullets. Have had excellent results mostly using 3031, Varget, and RL15 powders. I'm also a bullet caster, casting and reloading for seven handgun calibers and eight rifle (good chunk of them MILSURP rifles). Several of the revolver calibers are also loaded up for straight wall lever rifles. I want to cast up some bullets for the 99, but not sure which brand mold/bullet to go with. I searched the web and found a lot of suggestions as well as searching this forum. Doing a search on this forum didn't result in a lot of results, several suggestions, but not a lot. The resulting search pages just had a few posts, but then the rest of the search results deviated to other calibers. I 'know' that there has to be more info on this forum, but just can't find it. I started going page by page, but after around 25 pages didn't find much. There's a lot more pages to search, but thought I'd just take a short cut and post this.
I want to keep my cast bullet weight under 100 grains, preferably around 70-85 grains. I don't plan on hunting deer with the rifle (Illegal in Iowa, no plans to hunt out of state). My cast bullet 250 Savage loads will mostly be target shooting, might take a shot at a coyote once in a while with it, but will be doing that with Hornady, Speer, or Sierra jacketed bullets. I also shoot and reload for a Ruger Model 77 in 250 Savage using the described factory jacketed bullets and would like to use the same cast bullets for the Ruger 77 for target work. I know every rifle is finicky about what bullets it likes, ie. rifles of same caliber liking their own diet, even those of the same model and caliber. Would be happy to have a cast bullet that both 250 Savage calibered rifles both like.
What I did find on my web searches was posters liked and suggested the following molds. (1) Lyman 257420 (65-70 grain). (2)RCBS 25-85-CM, 85 grainer, which is a mold used by many who cast up for the 25-20 caliber lever gun. Several posters advised it works well for the 250 Savage. (3) NOE 260-80 RF and NOE 260-89 FN. A lot of posters gave the NOE bullets high marks for the 250 Savage and advised of good results in the Model 99. As I wrote, I know rifle barrel's can be finicky, but I don't want to play the game of buying 2-4 molds at around $65-90 a crack. Don't want to buy mold A then find out I should have bought B, then find out I should have bought C from the get-go.
If any who have had good experience with any of these molds or others of the 70-85 grain range, would appreciate any input. Plain base or gas checks, what ever works. The gas checks would be preferred, but open to what ever has worked for any of you. Thanks for any input.
Maybe you could buy some pre-cast bullets from one of the bullet casting companies. Some places will sell small "samples" to see what works best for you.
Rim Rock bullets come to mind. https://rimrockbullets.com/xcart/tsh...?category_id=9
But at $51 for 500 why bother casting!!
Thanks Big Al1-I considered doing so. Checked around various sites for .257" bullets. Might do what you posted, at least for a start. I do though enjoy casting, sizing, and reloading just about as much as shooting. Trimming brass has always been my most despised thing though. Hated it with a passion. I did purchase a Little Crow trimmer with four different caliber collets last winter which took away a lot of the headache of timming. When I first started reloading some 43 years ago I started out using those Lee hand 'twist' trimmers, which took forever, bought a Forester rotary hand crank setup, which I thought I had 'hit trimmer heaven' (still a good setup), but was still time consuming, and then bought the Little Crow. Sure speeded up the process for the bottle neck rifle calibers that need it from time to time.
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