[Firehand]

Looking for something that might be a little more effective than ball, I've tried a couple of different bullets. Remington 110-grain softpoints have the same profile as ball and shoot well. Tried the Speer 110-grain flat-nose hollowpoint, cycles through the action with no problem but when you get to 100 yards accuracy is falling off(very nice groups at 50).

While digging through the Midway site ran across the Sierra 110-grain Varminter hollowpoint. Couple of the reviewers had tried it in their Carbine with good results, so I got a box to try. Loaded with 14.0 grains W296, it gives me 2" or a little better groups at 100 yards and the same point of impact as ball. Don't know the velocity(battery crapped out in the chrono), though next time I hit the range will find out.

Just wondering, has anyone here tried this or other pointed bullets in this cartridge?

[Lone_Gunman]

In what way would a pointed bullet be more effective in this case?

Do you mean more accurate?
Or are you trying to improve terminal performance?

[loadedround]

I agree with Lone Gunman. At 30 Carbine velocities which is usually around 2000 fps from that 18" tube, what difference does a pointed bullet make over a 110 gr SP? Accuracy and/or expansion should be the same. and I also question the reliability of feeding them thru the G.I. mag.

[QuickRick]

I never found much advantage using pointed bullets in my carbine. If they had reliable feeding and printed noticeably better I would have stayed with them. Ended up using 115 round nose commercial cast bullets for practice/plinking and 110 RN soft points like your Remingtons when expansion is desired. They both shoot to virtually the same POI with equal loads. A nice situation. One sharp pointed bullet that I did like was the Hornady 100 grainer. It is of the half jacket design with a sharp pointed soft lead point on the front half. They expand violently and cost less than regular jacketed bullets. Midway sells them as well. Good shooting and God Bless....

[Grump]

I've gotten only so far as function-testing the Sierra Varminters, and they feed fine from a 15-round mag.

Chrono problems, too. I'm going to get around to it someday.

The pointy ones are likely to be much more effective beyond 100 yards, as they don't slow down so much swimming through the air. I'm pretty sure that the Sierras will expand all the way down to 1200 fps for some reason....

[Firehand]

Lone, better terminal performance.

I'd love to compare ballistic performance at longer ranges, but right now the longest I have access to is 100 yards.

[Sunray]

"...accuracy is falling off..." What powder? W296? Try IMR4227 with the Speer 110 grain HP. 13.0 to 15.0(compressed)

[Firehand]

Sunray, I get a chance I'll give that a try.

Damn, one more powder...

[Firehand]

Finally was able to hit the range and try out the load over the chrono(amazing how things work with good batteries).

Load I tried out was 14.0 grains W296 with the Sierra 110-grain Varminter bullet. Average over ten rounds was 1925fps, and it gives 1.75 to 2.00" groups at 100 yards.

I've got a friend saving milk jugs, when have a bunch I'm going to try the bullets for expansion at that distance.

[Firehand]

so headed to the range today. Built a rack to hold 1-gallon milk jugs filled with water, set five in it with a bullseye low on the front jug to make sure the bullet had the full width to travel and fired the first shot at 50 yards.

Water flew nicely, and I found the jugs as follows:
jugs 1 and 2 pretty well torn apart,
jug 3 split on one side, hole on the other,
jug 4 with a hole on each side,
jug 5 with a hole on one side and the spent bullet in the bottom, looking like this:
http://bp3.blogger.com/_L1K7psLgldA/R6eerot4PeI/AAAAAAAAAag/eU192IdUrNE/s400/DSCF3111.JPG
after penetrating right at 24" of water.

So fired a second shot. Jugs same condition, bullet looking like this:
http://bp0.blogger.com/_L1K7psLgldA/R6eeb4t4PdI/AAAAAAAAAaY/lu2h6vLZhsU/s400/DSCF3113.JPG

Note that on both, the hollow point is barely deformed, but the bullet jacket ruptured and tore open. Not the result I expected, but interesting.

I need more jugs, to try this at 100. And see how many ball will penetrate.

[rcmodel]

Your basic pointy 110 grain .30 cal. bullets are designed for .308 - 30-06 velocity levels.
They are pretty tough little bullets for any kind of expansion at long range M-1 Carbine velocity.

The other problem, as I see it, is they are much longer for their weight then a RN Carbine bullet.

So they have to be seated deeper to fit the magazine, and take up too much case capacity in the little .30 Carbine.
You could run into pressure problems with the same load data used for RN loads.

Be very Careful you don't shoot your eye out!!

http://i81.photobucket.com/albums/j219/rcmodel/KTOG/1224.gif
rcmodel

[kir_kenix]

the sierras penetrated quite a bit deeper at 50 yards then i would have thought. these bullets certainly dont turn the m1 carbine into a super varmint rifle, but if they function well and are accurate they look to be an excellent plinking round.

[Firehand]

I think I figured out why the bullets reacted as they did.

While back found a post at Box o' Truth on testing some WWII British .303 ammo, Mark VII ball with a wood insert in the nose: http://www.theboxotruth.com/docs/bot37_2.htm. These bullets were made to be base-heavy, causing them to go unstable very quickly after hitting a soft target, allowing the FMJ bullet to do more damage.

Looking at the picture of the bullet they recovered, and the state of the two I did, I think the same thing happened. The design of these Sierra bullets seems to leave a fair-sized space between the front of the lead core and the point, which would move the balance point further back, and I think that caused these bullets to act just like the Mark VII ball: go unstable and deform dramatically after impact. Only with the lighter jacket, these bullets actually tore open.

Kir, I'm getting 1.5 to 2" groups at 100 yards with them, and I've had no failures to feed or eject. Actually better results there than I'd hoped for.

RC, the max load listed for 110 grain bullet and W296 is 15.0 grains. I measured the length, figured how deep I'd have to seat the Sierras and reduced the charge by 1.0 grain. That gives a very consistent 1930 fps average, just a fraction below the standard for WWII ball ammo, and no signs of excess pressure on the cases or from the rifle. Believe me, I did some sweating over that while working this up.