Explain this - bullet stability in .303 Brit

JMS906

Well-Known Member
On the range yesterday, one of the shooters on another lane had bullets striking the target side on, keyholing. I suggested his bullets were clipping the grass before striking the target, but he refuted this. (We were shooting at 100 yards from fire trenches, not raised berms.)

He was using factory loaded PPU, he said it was 174g FMJ though I didn't inspect the box. His rifle is a well battered 1943 No 4 that had probably been round the word twice and fought in every campaign. He thought the rifling looked good: I thought it looked eroded but as I didn't have my bore scope with me, I was only able to use the Mk I eyeball.

So I fired ten rounds of the PPU through my 1954 No 4. (This is one of the rifles from the 'Irish contract', one of 50,000 sold to the Irish goverment and mine probably never left the armoury.) In my rifle the PPU factory shot about 18" higher than my handloads with Hornady 174g FMJ-BT. They formed two groups, one of five rounds and one of four (one shot went just over the target board), both groups were under 2", all bullets had struck nose on. Nothing wrong with the PPU ammo, then, must be his rifle.

I then fired ten rounds of my own handloads in his rifle, two groups of five. Again, they formed two groups of 2" (OK, one errant round went out ot about 5", I probably snatched the trigger). So, nothing wrong with his rifle.

So why was his rifle keyholing the PPU bullets? I still say he must have been clipping the grass en route.

-JMS
 
So why was his rifle keyholing the PPU bullets? I still say he must have been clipping the grass en route.

That's the most likely cause. I have seen 303 military rifles though whose barrels were so worn and/or badly specc'd that they wouldn't stabilise bullets. A guy turned up at Paul Lane range in West Yorks with an SMLE some years back whose bore looked dark but good, but could hardly hit a three by three ft frame at 100 and those that did hit mostly went through sideways leaving a near perfect 174gn Mk7 cut-out. After a lot of puzzling, John Farrel whom many Yorkshire stalkers will likely know suggested pushing a 303 round that was known to shoot well point first into the muzzle. The bullet slipped in easily until the case-mouth stopped it, so the bore diameter had to be greater than 0.311 or 0.312", and the groove diameter another eight or ten thou' on top. No wonder the bullets keyholed - it was like shooting then through a smoothbore.
 
Pull one of his rounds and mike the bullet , 303 is actually about .312 and in my opinion it's unlikely to be clipping the grass causing the problem ?
 
One of our club members bought a "new" P14 from Kranks a few years ago and that keyholed at 100 yards with every shot using a variety of ammo. One look at the bore and the muzzle gave you a very good idea why this was happening. There was no blades of grass on our indoor range.

Kranks replaced it after only a slight amount of argument. So much for the story that was told when selling him the rifle that it had done very little shooting and that it had been used mainly for ceremonial drills.
 
Much of the European 303 is made with .310" -311" bullets. Many aging 303's have .316" groove diameters and .306" bores. The mating of bullets to barrels is essential with the Enfields. Rifling can look very good and be very worn, resulting in pie-plate accuracy. Other 303's can have light frosting of an otherwise dimensionally excellent bore and shoot really well.

Deflected by blades of grass?? Not likely.~Muir
 
Much of the European 303 is made with .310" -311" bullets. Many aging 303's have .316" groove diameters and .306" bores. The mating of bullets to barrels is essential with the Enfields. Rifling can look very good and be very worn, resulting in pie-plate accuracy. Other 303's can have light frosting of an otherwise dimensionally excellent bore and shoot really well.

Deflected by blades of grass?? Not likely.~Muir


These mismatches are pretty common and seen a lot here - we have a lot of 303s in the UK (surprise!) and many are wartime spec / well worn (surprise!). However, 5 to 7-inch 100 yard groups are one thing, keyholing bullets quite another.

When the OP said 'clipping the grass', I'm pretty sure he wasn't referring to bullets being deflected by intermediate blades of the green stuff. Since the shooting was from fire trenches that makes it an Mod or ex-MoD range and they all come with damn great mantlets in front of the butts, usually clad in good thick turf, the British Isles being a great (wet) place for cultivating grass. Sights set low will skim the mantlet and often go through the target - but sideways.

Seen that scores of times and had many a cup of coffee ruined when marking by some fool failing to check his sights so that those behind the mantlet are showered by soil, bits of grass and pulverised sheep dung! If one thinks this has been happening, the easiest way of checking is to ask the butts crew. In fact, the Butts Officer should report this to the RO and scores should not be awarded where shots have ricoched off the mantlet.

On one occasion, My fellow marker and I had a 'serial offender' shooting on our target and a 144gn 7.62 Nato bullet ploughed through several feet of turf before lodging in the pine target frame. It lost so much velocity, it only penetrated as far as the cannelure (having apparently remained in a fairly straight line of flight) and after it had cooled we recovered it and presented it to the owner after we finished for the day suggesting he get a decent loading manual and put enough powder in the case for the bullet to go through the target. He refused to believe it was his bullet though, convinced we'd found it in the butts area. Its jacket was badly scratched thanks to its considerable passage through the ground as if it had been rubbed down with a coarse abrasive or file.
 
These mismatches are pretty common and seen a lot here - we have a lot of 303s in the UK (surprise!) and many are wartime spec / well worn (surprise!). However, 5 to 7-inch 100 yard groups are one thing, keyholing bullets quite another.

When the OP said 'clipping the grass', I'm pretty sure he wasn't referring to bullets being deflected by intermediate blades of the green stuff. Since the shooting was from fire trenches that makes it an Mod or ex-MoD range and they all come with damn great mantlets in front of the butts, usually clad in good thick turf, the British Isles being a great (wet) place for cultivating grass. Sights set low will skim the mantlet and often go through the target - but sideways.

I see. I was thinking blades.
I collect Enfields and have a couple od dozen of them left; military and sporters.
FWIW I have seen Enfields rifles punch keyholes. I've rebarreled at least two for that reason. A dual trumpet like bore combined with an undersized bullet were the culprit: Rifling worn almost smooth at the rear and wallowed badly at the muzzle. Combine that with an undersized bullet and you get almost nothing for stability. (Coincidentally, they were both Lithgow rifles.)
Admittedly, most rifles in that condition never make it to the range- it's either been attended to or the rifle put up.~Muir
 
I make and sell cast bullets .303 being my biggest seller, I ask my customers to get their barrels slugged so I can supply the correct size, so far I have never had one sized .312"
most are .313" and bigger a couple were .317" in the throat and .314" at the muzzle, no way would they shoot with any sort of accuracy, and a lot of them need recrowning
being worn with the use of pull throughs. Robert.
 
I make and sell cast bullets .303 being my biggest seller, I ask my customers to get their barrels slugged so I can supply the correct size, so far I have never had one sized .312"
most are .313" and bigger a couple were .317" in the throat and .314" at the muzzle, no way would they shoot with any sort of accuracy, and a lot of them need recrowning
being worn with the use of pull throughs. Robert.

Dead on. I shoot cast bullets in 99% of my 303's and I recently had Lee make me a 6-cavity mold that is .317" x .307'"x 190 gains to accommodate the very worn battle veterans. Even my .310" groove #4, MkII rifles have a .315 throat for which I load a .314" bullet. Nice to have another cast bullet shooter in the crowd.~Muir
 
Deflected by blades of grass?? Not likely.~Muir

It happens. This is a 90g 6mm Scenar bullet hole in the 1,000 yard target at Stickledown. I was marking, and I took the photograph. This was one of a series that struck the (tall) grass 'upstream' of the mantlet. It doesn't take much to destabilize a bullet. And no, it was nothing to do with the twist rate - I know the rifle in question (I used to own it). As soon as the shooter added a little more elevation, he produced nice round holes - as you can see in the orange marker, that being the subsequent shot.

Unstable 243 bullets at Stickledown, Apr 2010.jpg
 
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It happens. This is a 90g 6mm Scenar bullet hole in the 1,000 yard target at Stickledown. I was marking, and I took the photograph. This was one of a series that struck the (tall) grass 'upstream' of the mantlet. It doesn't take much to destabilize a bullet. And no, it was nothing to do with the twist rate - I know the rifle in question (I used to own it). As soon as the shooter added a little more elevation, he produced nice round holes - as you can see in the orange marker, that being the subsequent shot.

View attachment 57744

Different scenario entirely. That's not a 303 British firing a 174 grain bullet at 100 yards.~Muir
 
Has anyone sectioned a PPU .303 174-gr FMJ bullet to see the construction?
The British bullet design is a hollow nose under pretty thing copper, which puts more of the mass to the rear of the bullet and to the perimeter of the axis of rotation. This distribution means more angular momentum, which helps the bullet "go to sleep", and spin about its axis without wobble, even at a lower forward velocity and RPM. A bullet which looks the same from the outside, but has a shorter body, more shank, flat base, or lead in the nose, is not going to stabilize as well, as quickly.

But this problem sounds like loose bore and throat, where the bullets are not aligning up well in the bore, so they exit with enough wobble to not settle down, but to increase their yawing as they travel downrange.
 
SOUTHERN is partly correct. The .303 Mk VII bullet was created with a tip filler not a hollow cavity.

Either aluminium or (at great expense) sterilised paper pulp. AS SOUTHERN says the idea was to create a bullet that is longer that its correct weight dictates it should be and with the mass at the rear. This was deliberate and specifically made to do two things. Give range (the "velopex" principle) just do today's closed hollow point match bullets or plastic tip bullets and to make the bullet unstable on impact to increase wounding.

This is 1907, remember, after the Hague Regulations that pre-dated the Geneva Convention outlawed out and out soft point (Mk IV) or hollow point (Mk V) .303 service ammunition. So the British designed a bullet that gave range but also had the benefit of causing horrific wounding.

The sterilised paper pulp was a WWII measure wen aluminiun was scarce. It actually cost more to make the bullets with the paper pulp as to comply with the Hague Regulations on ammunition that could cause infection the paper had to be sterilised. This is recounted in the book by a famous British forensic pathologist. He visited a factory making the bullets in WWI and noted the use of the paper saying how much cheaper it must be that using aluminium...he was soon corrected. It wasn't cheaper but in fact much more expensive.
 
At about age 14, I killed my first deer with a rifle using my .303 Jungle Carbine and surplus bulk ammunition. I pulled a bullet and ground down its side on a bench grinder, showing it was a flat nose of lead beneath the FMJ nose. So I ground the very tip off a couple of them, making a "hollow point". I shot a deer at about 90 yards with it, right in the heart, and blew a huge exit wound, killing it instantly.

The old Remington Bronze Point ( purchased from a Canadian inventor ), applied similar principles, and is a forerunner of today's Ballistic Tip and SST. It had a flat nose, copper jacketed lead bullet with an aluminum point plugged into it. It was not unstable on impact, in my experience, but inconsistent in how it opened, or didn't. I killed big deer and a mountain goat with it at long ranges, using just a 4x crosshair scope.

Back to the .303, my barely used .311 bore No.4 MkII, hand selected and tuned by Holland & Holland, shoots all holes overlapping at 100 yards, about a 5/8 inch group, using the aperture sight and 174-gr FMJ British or S&B ammunition.
 
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Has anyone sectioned a PPU .303 174-gr FMJ bullet to see the construction?
The British bullet design is a hollow nose under pretty thing copper, which puts more of the mass to the rear of the bullet and to the perimeter of the axis of rotation. This distribution means more angular momentum, which helps the bullet "go to sleep", and spin about its axis without wobble, even at a lower forward velocity and RPM. A bullet which looks the same from the outside, but has a shorter body, more shank, flat base, or lead in the nose, is not going to stabilize as well, as quickly.

The British 303 rifles' 1-10" twist rate is WAY higher than needed for any normal effective gyroscopic stabilisation with the length of the flat-base MkVII bullet, so any question of bullet construction X being superior or inferior to construction form Y is irrelevant in this context.
 
The British 303 rifles' 1-10" twist rate is WAY higher than needed for any normal effective gyroscopic stabilisation with the length of the flat-base MkVII bullet, so any question of bullet construction X being superior or inferior to construction form Y is irrelevant in this context.
That is my point; I am sure the PPU ammunition will shoot well in an accurate rifle. I intend to find some and find out, in my No.4 MkII.

My suspicion, like Muir's and other's, is that this is a sloppy bore. Shooting another brand and type of ammunition will probably sort that out.
 
At about age 14, I killed my first deer with a rifle using my .303 Jungle Carbine and surplus bulk ammunition. I pulled a bullet and ground down its side on a bench grinder, showing it was a flat nose of lead beneath the FMJ nose. So I ground the very tip off a couple of them, making a "hollow point". I shot a deer at about 90 yards with it, right in the heart, and blew a huge exit wound, killing it instantly.

The old Remington Bronze Point ( purchased from a Canadian inventor ), applied similar principles, and is a forerunner of today's Ballistic Tip and SST. It had a flat nose, copper jacketed lead bullet with an aluminum point plugged into it. It was not unstable on impact, in my experience, but inconsistent in how it opened, or didn't. I killed big deer and a mountain goat with it at long ranges, using just a 4x crosshair scope.

Back to the .303, my barely used .311 bore No.4 MkII, hand selected and tuned by Holland & Holland, shoots all holes overlapping at 100 yards, about a 5/8 inch group, using the aperture sight and 174-gr FMJ British or S&B ammunition.

I wonder how many US shooters... leaving our Canadian brothers out of it for a bit... grew up shooting the 303 British?? I have been shooting it since I was 10 or 11 years old. My Uncle Willie was a gunsmith and had dozens of like new No4, MkI rifles he bought through the US mail. When someone needed an inexpansive hunting rifle this was one of the rifles he sold them. I remember racks of No1 MkIII's in his basement storage racks as well. After the 1968 Gun Control Act he still bought them on his FFL. I remember him selling a highschool buddy a No4 303 still packed in grease for $35. Later, when I worked at a gunshop, we would get pallets in -stacked with rifle boxes from Century Arms International. All .303's. I bought my 6- Groove Savage #4 from that stack for $44 and got two boxes of boxer primed sporting ammo in the deal. We always had dozens of Enfields of all varieties. We used to wonder if there were any left in the UK! I got hooked on Enfields and cast bullets as I was always picking up old, oversized Ideal molds where they cut them .314" and expected them to be sized to .310. I shot them in my Enfields, often 'bumping' up the diameter in a sizer die. At one point I was buying them for $30 each from my store. (Eventually I focused on the No1 rifles with my favorites being the No1 MkI, MkV, and MkVI... all of which, amonget others, i have.) I still shoot 303 regularly and never felt it was a 'foreign' chambering. ~Muir
 
Muir,

we older historic arms shooters/collectors often felt very envious of you guys in the States as it was the first, and sometimes the only, destination for those huge shipments of pre self-loading rifles that were released onto world markets after WW2. (Although there was a many year long import ban, wasn't there?)

In one respect though, we were better off in that so far as the 303s went, most came from UK or British Commonwealth sources, and had been FTR'd during the 1950s before putting into storage, never shot again before been sold off. Although many of the Mauser K98s we saw had rifling as an optional extra, 303s whether SMLE, No.4, No.5, P'14, or Ross were usually pretty good. That was until recent years anyway. As supplies ran out, but demand didn't, sources and quality have become variable - more than a few sold as 'new' built out of parts too.

Unfortunately, large quantities of cheap surplus arsenal cordite MkVII were also available for many decades and I weep to think of how many pristine bore SMLEs and suchlike have been prematurely worn here shooting this stuff. In the days (pre 1968) of Service Rifle as our primary NRA prone target discipline using the No.4 and to a much lesser extent P'14s, Fultons of Bisley would rebarrel your rifle during the course of a day. Any serious SR competitor rebarrelled annually, and many of the top guys did so twice or more often per season. Fultons alone bought thousands of RSAF Enfield manufactured barrels when the UK government abandoned 303 and the No.4, and I'm sure A.J. Parker and a few others did so too. The former chief armourer at Fultons told me that nobody ever believed the supply of No.4 barrels would run out there were so many thrown up surplus, but of course they did eventually - and a lot quicker than people thought. (It wasn't just barrels either. Many people in the UK guntrade now mentally kick themselves for not hanging on to what seemed worthless parts that were proving to be an inconvenience cluttering up storage space with no obvious market. More than one such individual has mentioned hundreds if not thousands of unused No.4 rifle and P'14 stocks and handguards being used for firewood.)

Even so, whilst rifles like M1903s and especially KAR98k arrived here from wherever totally clapped out with severely cordworn muzzles and suchlike back in the 70s/80s, inherently faulty and really badly worn 303s of whatever model (Long Lees aside) are relative rarities, so it is very unusual to see one shoot so badly it won't stabilise a half decent bullet. As I say, you're more likely to have seen examples in the USA. The SMLE example I entioned earlier wasn't a wear / neglect issue - the bore looked unused in fact. Amongst the group who had a look down the barrel was a vintage Enfield dealer who reckoned the bore was perfect. It was so slack despite this, there had to be some unusual history around it, maybe rebarrelled with a barrel from a rejected out of spec lot that should have been destroyed or something but put into the surplus supply chain when the UK MoD stocks were sold off.
 
Muir,

we older historic arms shooters/collectors often felt very envious of you guys in the States as it was the first, and sometimes the only, destination for those huge shipments of pre self-loading rifles that were released onto world markets after WW2. (Although there was a many year long import ban, wasn't there?)

In one respect though, we were better off in that so far as the 303s went, most came from UK or British Commonwealth sources, and had been FTR'd during the 1950s before putting into storage, never shot again before been sold off. Although many of the Mauser K98s we saw had rifling as an optional extra, 303s whether SMLE, No.4, No.5, P'14, or Ross were usually pretty good. That was until recent years anyway. As supplies ran out, but demand didn't, sources and quality have become variable - more than a few sold as 'new' built out of parts too.

Unfortunately, large quantities of cheap surplus arsenal cordite MkVII were also available for many decades and I weep to think of how many pristine bore SMLEs and suchlike have been prematurely worn here shooting this stuff. In the days (pre 1968) of Service Rifle as our primary NRA prone target discipline using the No.4 and to a much lesser extent P'14s, Fultons of Bisley would rebarrel your rifle during the course of a day. Any serious SR competitor rebarrelled annually, and many of the top guys did so twice or more often per season. Fultons alone bought thousands of RSAF Enfield manufactured barrels when the UK government abandoned 303 and the No.4, and I'm sure A.J. Parker and a few others did so too. The former chief armourer at Fultons told me that nobody ever believed the supply of No.4 barrels would run out there were so many thrown up surplus, but of course they did eventually - and a lot quicker than people thought. (It wasn't just barrels either. Many people in the UK guntrade now mentally kick themselves for not hanging on to what seemed worthless parts that were proving to be an inconvenience cluttering up storage space with no obvious market. More than one such individual has mentioned hundreds if not thousands of unused No.4 rifle and P'14 stocks and handguards being used for firewood.)

Even so, whilst rifles like M1903s and especially KAR98k arrived here from wherever totally clapped out with severely cordworn muzzles and suchlike back in the 70s/80s, inherently faulty and really badly worn 303s of whatever model (Long Lees aside) are relative rarities, so it is very unusual to see one shoot so badly it won't stabilise a half decent bullet. As I say, you're more likely to have seen examples in the USA. The SMLE example I entioned earlier wasn't a wear / neglect issue - the bore looked unused in fact. Amongst the group who had a look down the barrel was a vintage Enfield dealer who reckoned the bore was perfect. It was so slack despite this, there had to be some unusual history around it, maybe rebarrelled with a barrel from a rejected out of spec lot that should have been destroyed or something but put into the surplus supply chain when the UK MoD stocks were sold off.

I believe the really worn rifles hit the US in the late 80's. Being a huge fan of the Enfield I paid particular attention Model, quantity of numbers that matched, and especially to the bores. Into the early 80's it was actually hard to find one with a bad barrel. Worn NoI MK IIIs, perhaps, but usually the worst you found was a slight frosting in the throat.~Muir
 
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