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Posted: 10/16/2008 2:44:54 PM EDT
Speer LE 64 grain Gold Dot  Speer has expanded its line of Gold Dot ammunition to include rifle ammunition in 223 Remington. The ammunition examined for this post is loaded with a 64 grain bonded soft point bullet that has less exposed lead at the meplat than Federal’s 62 grain Trophy Bonded Bear Claw bullet that is used in their LE223T2 load. The 64 grain Gold Dot bullet has a boat-tail and a cannelure. This load is charged with a ball powder that according to Speer is a “flash suppressed propellant.” The primers are sealed and crimped in place, however, there is no sealant at the case mouth.     The 64 grain Gold Dot load was chronographed from a 20” Colt M16A2 barrel, a 16” Colt light-weight barrel and a 14.5” Colt M4A1 barrel. All of the barrels have chrome lining, NATO chambers and 1:7” twists. 10-shot strings of the load were fired over an Oehler 35-P chronograph with “proof screen” technology. All velocities listed are muzzle velocities as calculated from the instrumental velocities using Oehler’s Ballistic Explorer software program.    Accuracy testing was conducted following my usual protocol of firing 10-shot groups from a concrete bench at a distance of 100 yards using my 24” Krieger barreled AR-15. This barrel has a 1:7.7” twist. The free-float rail of the rifle rested in a Sinclair Windage Benchrest and the PRS stock was stabilized in a Protektor bunny-ear rear bag. Wind conditions were monitored using a Wind Probe. Sighting was performed using a Leupold Competition Series scope with a mirage shade. The scope was adjusted to be parallax free at 100 yards.  Prior to testing the 64 grain Gold Dot load, I fired a 10-shot control group using hand-loaded 69 grain Sierra MatchKings. That group had an extreme spread of 0.86”. Three 10-shot groups of the Speer LE 64 grain Gold Dots fired in a row had extreme spreads that measured: 1.11” 0.91” 1.30” for a 10-shot average extreme spread of 1.12”! I over-layed those three groups on each other using RSI Shooting Lab to form a 30-shot composite group. The composite group had a mean radius of 0.33”. For comparison, previous testing of the Black Hills blue box 75 grain MHP load fired from the same set-up as above produced three 10-shot groups at 100 yards that had an average extreme spread of 1.14” and a mean radius of 0.37” for the 30-shot composite group.  |
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I think the "Gold Dot" label is misleading. A Gold Dot is a specific type or design of bullet in their lineup. This is just a SP bullet, correct? Thanks, Molon! www.speer-ammo.com/products/gold_dot_const.aspx |
Not true, the Gold Dot Rifle uses a SP bullet similar to the Fusion line of ammunition. Many of the features that make the Fusion bullet effective were inspired by the Gold Dot handgun bullet design. |
Cool, thanks. |
Not just a soft point, but a bonded soft point . . . and I’m here to tell you, the jacket will not be easily separating from the lead core.  From ATK’s website: “Like their handgun counterparts, the Gold Dot rifle bullets are constructed using Gold Dot technology. The process of joining the jacket and core one molecule at a time eliminates the potential for the leading cause of bullet failure—jacket/core separation. It also ensures impressive weight retention through barriers as tough as auto-glass.” |
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Great report Molon: Question have you any experience with American Eagle, XMAE223SP, .223 with crimped sealed primers, no sealed casemouth and 63gr SP cannelured bullet? The pics from your test look very close to the round I described above, could they possibly be the same cartridge w/ different packaging? I'll get pics of what I have if interested. Hope this isn't a hijack, Thanks again, LittleLamb |
+1 I'd like to find out some more on the performance of the XMAE223SP since I was wanting to try it out on the small whitetails we have here but I don't want to experiment on them. |
ATK does list a entry on their website for a same weight Gold Dot load that runs 50 fps faster than the load I tested, but I have yet to see a living version of this animal. |
No hijack at all. I have not tested the load you mentioned. I can tell you for a fact that the bullet from the #24448 load does indeed weigh 64 grains. |
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