Lee Loader

The action of the guns prior to 31 is much smoother. During the transition they didn't only significantly shorten the action (moving the locking lugs forward to the bolt face), but also did they replace machined parts with stamped parts. The K31 oprod is a stamped part, the G11 oprod is machined. The older ones have less play and smoother edges. Charging my G96/11 feels like pulling a warm knife through a block of soft butter. Charging a K31 is not as satisfying.

Somehow I missed reporting on my tryout of 150 grain Hornady SP's over Varget. Best load was 47.0 grains. High 2701 fps, low 2668, average 2687 SD 12.13 fps. OAL 2.915, no crimp and shot at 50 meters. The flyer was my fault.

Not bad, good load and good shooting.

That is a nice load and good shooting. Thanks for sharing.

Although not reloading, I tinkered with the rifle a bit to tune its accuracy. The biggest improvement was gained by adjusting the tightness of the rear stock screw. I followed the instructions from an article on Swiss Rifles.com

http://www.swissrifles.com/sr/pierre/accurizing.html

Here is the web address for the Swiss rifle ammo http://www.swissrifles.com/ammo/ If you are going to reload the K31 rifle you "HAVE TO GET" the Redding K31 sizing die #81235 or the 2 die set #82235. The problem is the K31 chamber is different than the older 7.5x55 rifles. They will all shoot the military ammo but the K31 chamber is larger at the shoulder and when you fire the case in it the shoulder expands so much that when you try to size them with a regular 7.5x55 die the shoulder is pushed forward so much that action will not lock. It also over works the brass. The vol. of the cases when fired in a K31 go from the vol. of a 308Win to almost the vol. of a 30-06. The reason that the chambers are different is the fact that the Swiss developed a new Heavy MG in the late 20's and found that it worked better with the larger chamber. When they developed the K31 they used the MG chamber.

I use Lee dies. I have not experienced any problems with bolt not fully closing. The cases referred to in this post were on their fourth firing. PPU brass was FL sized when first loaded then the die was backed out so fired cases are sized just enough for easy bolt closure. I believe the earlier die may have been an issue but I don't know for sure not having used one.