The .308X1.250' was the smallest case (left). used in Ardito's test: The full size .308 Win. case (right)

2200 f.p.s. seems to be the limit of any lead alloy bullet capable of shooting 10 shot groups under .600"consistently. The .308X1.5" case capacity is perfect in this respect. It will shoot a 200 grain bullet, using 26.5 gr of RL-7, at 2200 f.p.s. utilizing 90% of the case capacity. This is a hot load, and would recommend its use only in a strong action like the Remington 40X or M-700. When you think about it, the velocity is really very high from such a small case, especially from a 200 gr bullet. The full size .308 military match ammo, using a 173 gr bullet, is only 350 f.p.s. faster at 2550.

By Jeff Brown.

In 2011 I was fortunate enough to be gifted a Martini action rifle barreled in .310 Cadet (Greener). From day one it proved to be a challenge to get to shoot accurately when burning smokeless powder in brass created from .32-20 cartridge cases. Everything I read both online and on paper said .32-20 brass could be sized then shortened to suit the .310 chamber providing the rim of the case was thinned down to suit the Cadet specifications. I followed the instructions and was rewarded with nonexistent accuracy and barrel leading galore. Eventually I gave up and sourced some Bertram Brass .310 Cadet cases from Australia and have been shooting with them since however in the back of my mind I have been continually irked that I have not been able to make converted .32-20 brass work when so many other folk report great results. That was until YESTERDAY (Dec 8th, 2022) but more on this soon.

First a bit of background on .310 Cadet brass. There appears little agreement on the true OAL of the cartridge case. Cartridges of the World list Cadet brass at 1.020 inches. Bertram brass comes ex factory at 1.090 inch. Original Berdan primed Cadet brass from broken down ammunition measures 1.096 inch. Wikipedia states 1.120 inch for OAL case length. That is 0.100 inch or 2.5mm difference between the longest and shortest suggestions which is A LOT. So what length should one use and how do we establish this? I'll come back to this.

BELOW: Top, converted .32-20 brass with .321/.315 bullet, case length 1.180 inch. Bottom, Bertram brass at 1.090 inch.

Secondly, a quick look at .310 bullets. The .310 Cadet is essentially an oversized .22RF. Featuring a heel bullet design where the section of bullet held in the cartridge case is smaller than the driving bands of the projectile and is required to 'slug' up to full diameter upon firing the round is what is referred to as an 'outside lubricated cartridge' as the bullet lube is not in grease grooves as with modern bullets but applied to the exposed bullet. Like .22RF ammo the Cadet was manufactured with cup based bullets that allow for the rapidly expanding gases operating at high pressure to swell the base of the bullet up to 1) act as a gas seal and 2) bump the heel diameter up to match the bullet driving bands to deliver superb accuracy. In addition much of the factory ammo featured a crimp of some sort to hold the bullet firmly in the cartridge case and to provide a degree of resistance up firing building up pressure to properly 'bump' the bullet heel to correct size. Bullet alloy was soft by nature in the region of 6 BHN so not a great deal harder then pure lead. An original bullet pulled from loaded ammo measured .304 on the heel and .318 on the driving band requiring the heel to slug up a full 0.014 inch to match the rest of the bullet hence the soft alloy. Short of a special order bullet mould all those available for the handloader are bottom pour with flat bases handicapped by a lack of a cup to assist with obturation of the heel. This is where the fun begins.

BELOW: An original (disassembled) .310 Cadet factory round showing cup based bullet with heel of 0.304 inch and driving bands of 0.318 inch.

If we work backwards from chamber dimensions and fire case measurements we begin to see where the challenges of loading modern Cadet start. My rifle's chamber at the case mouth measures 0.334 inch. Fired brass comes out of the chamber with the outside diameter of the case mouth the same; 0.334 inch. Original brass measures 0.011 in the wall at the mouth giving up a total of 0.022 inch. 0.334 minus 0.022 equals 0.312 inch. That means that when the cartridge lights up an original 0.304 inch heel would be left unsupported 0.004 either side which is why the cup was so critical in expanding to take up the slack. Failing that the bullet would not stay true to the barrel axis and accuracy would go the way of the Dodo bird. It gets worse still. Our modern bullets have no cup in the base so rely on inertia and resistance from the bullet slamming into the rifling in order to obturate the bullet heel. Now we have a bullet that must begin to travel forward prior to the heel slugging up to full size so both the nose and heel are unsupported and only the driving bands engaging the rifling. Where the driving bands engage effectively creates a pivot point allowing the bullet to cant in the bore kissing goodbye to all hopes of accuracy. So now we know the challenges let's look at how to make an accurate cartridge for our Cadet.

FIRST. Measure your chamber. Do a chamber cast using the likes of Cerrosafe or plain old garden sulphur (sulfur). There are plenty of tutorials on the web that will help direct a newby through the process. A chamber cast will allow for accurate measurements to be taken for further calculations.

BELOW: Sulphur chamber cast. Origin of rifling visible to the left.

Not to be beaten I embarked again on the quest to convert .32-20 brass to .310 Cadet for use with my go to Cadet load of 4.5gr Unique lit by a CCI small pistol primer. Taking one R-P case from my .32-20 stock it was run through the Cadet FL sizing die to form to Cadet chamber dimensions (nominal). Using my trusty mini lathe I thinned the rim down to 0.045 inch from the original 0.060 inch. Removing material from the head of the case then required the primer pocket to be restored to correct depth using the Lyman took I had on hand. The cartridge case was then trimmed to previously established OAL of 1.180 inch for loading.

My CBE 323-125 mould casts in 40-1 alloy a bullet measuring 0.323 on the driving bands and 0.314-0.315 on the altered heel. A chamber cast had established driving bands of 0.321 were required and as luck would have it my Cadet seating die when used like a Lee push through die sizes exactly to 0.321 inch. Alox/wax treated bullets were sized (driving bands only) and seated in the altered case over the prescribed dose of 4.5gr Unqiue.

Shootings at 50m/55y and loading the same cartridge case each time produced one of the best groups the little Martini has ever turned in. The first shot lubed with alox/wax was predictably out of the group and I called one pulled shot. The balance of 5 rounds when into less than one inch with 4 of the 5 in 5/8 inch!!!

BELOW: 50m/55y group.

FINALLY!!! A smokeless powder load using .32-20 brass converted to .310 Cadet that actually shoots accurately, doesn't lead the barrel and doesn't deposit bullets sideways on the target.

Strangely enough powder coated bullets that shoot very well out of the Bertram brass did not do so in the converted brass. They exhibited the same inaccuracy as experienced in the past and this remains a head scratcher. Fortunately the alox/wax coated bullets shot better than one might ever expect them to.

CONCLUSION.

Case length is absolutely critical in Cadet accuracy as is matching the diameter of the heel to the brass being used. Flat base bullets need full support at the time of ignition in order to stay true to the axis of the bore or zero accuracy will be achieved. Use soft alloy (40-1 lead/tin at the hardest) that allows the heel to slug up to full diameter at the relatively gentle pressures the Cadet runs at. Fit, fit, fit.

So what do the experts say about LE accuracy?Skennerton, Lee Enfield Story (1993ed.), p212:

“Accuracy tests for the No. 4 sniper rifle involved placing 7 out of 7 shots within a 5 inch diameter at 200 yards & 6 out of 7 shots into a 10 inch diameter at 400yards.”


From this report then the minimum standard for No. 4 “T” sniper rifles was 2.5 MOA out to 400 yards for at least 6 shots. In the case of the “T” series of rifles, these pieces were hand picked to begin with and then worked over completely by an armourer in order to maximize the accuracy potential. The rifles were still feed service issue Mk VII ammunition though my understanding is precision shooters used a “gauging system” to measure all ammo to allow rounds to be sorted into batches for peak performance. No doubt tailoring a specific handload to each rifle would have allowed for a greater degree of accuracy again but of course in times of conflict this is not practical. A latter day standard is a generic premium load IE: US GI National Match ammo. Sniper rifles aside what can a “standard” issue SMLE or No.4 rifle be expected to produce in MOA terms with Mk VII ammunition (174gr Spitzer bullet at 2440fps)?


Lynn Harris, Guns & Game (1998), p94:


“In simple terms, the accuracy requirement for the SMLE rifle on manufacture was that at 100 feet, four out of five shots must hit a rectangle measuring 1 inch wide x 1.5 inches high, which is roughly equivalent to the often quoted standard of 3 inch groups at 100 yards. As a further requirement, 10 percent of the rifles were then fired at 600 yards, where nine out of the 10 shots had to fall within a two foot circle.”


I personally feel the late Mr. Harris was a little generous with his “3 inch groups at 100 yards” statement as the extremes of the group could be 4.5 inches and THAT was only 4 of the 5 rounds. Where the fifth round ended up was anybody’s guess. In short if your unaltered, as issued SMLE is shooting inside 4 inches at 100 yards with military ammo you are getting better than minimum factory specified accuracy.


OK, rifle aside, what did the authorities expect from .303 Mk VII ammunition?


Lynn Harris on .303 Mk VII ammunition accuracy, P96:


“….we find that a consignment passed if the batch undergoing examination did not exceed a Figure of Merit of 8” at 600 yards.”


‘Figure of Merit’ is defined by SAAMI (Sport Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers Institute) as : “One method used to measure ammunition and/or firearm accuracy capability. To determine the mean radius, the center of the group is located, and the distance to the center of each shot from the group center is measured and recorded. The sum of these measurements divided by the number of shots is the mean radius.”


In order to find the “true” middle of the group draw a vertical line through the middle of farthest left bullet hole and a horizontal line through the middle of the ‘southern most’ bullet hole. Measure the distance to the centre of each hole from each line and divide the sum by the number of shots. See figure 2.

Fig. 2

From this we can see that “Figure of Merit” is what the Americans call “Mean Radius”. As such eight inch “Figure of Merit” at 600 yards is equivalent to 16 inches ‘across the beam’ (on average) as the diameter of a circle is twice the radius. Therefore and in terms of minutes of angle 16 inches at 600 yards is a nominal 2.67 MOA (16 divided by 6). This is was the minimum standard for Mk VII ball ammunition.


From this we can see that “Figure of Merit” is what the Americans call “Mean Radius”. As such eight inch “Figure of Merit” at 600 yards is equivalent to 16 inches ‘across the beam’ (on average) as the diameter of a circle is twice the radius. Therefore and in terms of minutes of angle 16 inches at 600 yards is a nominal 2.67 MOA (16 divided by 6). This is was the minimum standard for Mk VII ball ammunition.


Another interesting figure from Lynn’s book, though not related to the LE or Mk VII round, is that the minimum standard or US National Match 7.62 NATO ammunition is 3.5 inch mean radius at 600 yards. That’s basically a maximum of 7 inches at 600 yards or a shade over 1 MOA! Not bad for mass produced military ammo.


Now that we have established a realistic performance standard from a factory rifle burning factory ammunition how can we go about tweaking both sides of the combination in order to achieve great grouping ability and prettier targets?


Considerations for post military accuracy.


There are a few things to consider when attempting the wring the tightest possible groups from your LE rifle. They are internal barrel dimensions, barrel condition, stock bedding, barrel pressure points, sights and reloading ammunition. Let’s look at each individually.


- Internal barrel dimensions.


Nominal dimensions are bore .303, groove .311. HOWEVER war time LE rifles are renowned for “generous” bore and groove dimensions. I have heard of groove diameters as tight as .309 and as loose as .322! Jim Allison of Cast Bullet Engineering in Australia tells me that every bore he has measured though is spot on at .303 inch. Strange how the bores can be consistent but the grooves extreme in dimensions. Fortunately for me both my SMLE and No.4 MkII have post war barrels that are good and tight at .311-312 in the groove. It goes without saying that if regular size projectile (.311) is launched down an grossly over size bore the accuracy results are most likely going to be disappointing. I have had very good results with .310 bullets (lead core) in .312 grooves but I sure wouldn’t want to run a .310 projectile down a .315 or .316 groove barrel and expect to win a match. Rattle is a word that springs to mind. I advise that the LE owner slug their barrel to establish the internal dimensions and match a bullet as closely as possible. Slugging is very easy. Acquire a soft lead slug EG: 36 cal round ball or fishing sinker and apply a light coating of the oil to the bore. Start the slug in the muzzle with a soft face hammer and once the slug is inside the barrel push it through with a cleaning rod. Measure the slug and record the details. Five groove barrels generate a bit of a challenge in measuring and this is properly done using a V block. Ask your gunsmith or a machinist to assist.


- Barrel condition.


When we consider that LE rifles were first manufactured in the late 1800’s and ceased Western production in the mid 1950’s we suddenly realize that the youngest are 50 years old and the oldest over 100! Many have been FTRed (factory thorough repair) at least once (my SMLE has been done twice!) and possibly had new barrels installed while still in service but equally as likely is there are still a lot of ‘seen combat’ barrels in place on LE actions some of which will not be pretty. A frosted or pitted barrel is not necessarily all bad however. I once owned a model 92 Winchester in .32-20 that had a barrel that, internally, resembled a dry river bed but it shot like a house on fire. There’s no telling till you try. I prefer mint/pristine condition as this removes one more variable from the black art that is LE shooting especially when sending cast projectiles down range. ‘Trademe’ online auction site still turns up a few “unfired” SMLE barrels and a lucked onto a brand new BSA No.4 barrel only a few months back so replacements still exist. Or, shout yourself a brand new barrel; MAB in Australia make a .311 tube.


If you REALLY want to get serious how about converting to .223 calibre? The following link to the Surplus Rifle website tells of how a good keen Ozzie shooter converted his No.4 to 5.56mm.




- Stock bedding.


In order to generate consistent vibrations and thus consistent accuracy from shot to shot the stock and action must be mated as closely as possible. Critical bearing surfaces need to be matched and mated that they remain in contact as all times without deviation. The most straight forward way to achieve this in our modern age is to apply a synthetic bedding compound that adheres permanently to the stock and takes a perfect impression of the action thus creating a match of the two pieces that does not alter. The stock and action may be separated (provided a release agent is used at time of bedding per the instructions….yes, read them) and as the bedding compound stays intact in the stock with an impression of the action when reassembly takes place the mating is once again perfect. Upon discharge of the rifle the stock and action vibrate in the same manner each time. LE action bedding is very similar to any other bolt action but the critical areas are per figures 3 and 4. Some discussion exists as to whether the Knox Form (chamber area of the barrel) should be bedded. I have shot my No.4 MkII with this area both bedded and floating and can not detect any difference. I guess this is a “suck it and see” situation. The same can be said for the area where the rear faces of the foreend wood meet the front of the butt stock on the receiver (see figure 3, red star). When I first bedded the No.4 MkII I merrily slopped bedding compound into this area and the rifle really played up spraying shots all around. I removed the compound and left a void between metal and wood and the accuracy returned. In contrast my SMLE has this area bedded and is perfectly happy about it. The benefit of using compound is that it is easily removed should you discover a negative effect an as such I tend to use it with gay abandoned and should the results not be favourable – out it comes.

Fig. 3

Fig 4.

- Barrel pressure points.


Rifle barrels vibrate when the firearm is discharged. They vibrate up, down and sideways. The amount of vibration is proportional to the wall thickness of the barrel IE: thicker barrels vibrate less violently than skinny barrels proportional to the bore diameter. A one inch diameter barrel in .224 calibre will vibrate less violently than a one inch barrel with a .50 calibre hole down its centre simply because the walls are thicker and more resilient to movement.


This is where the fun begins with the LE rifle. LE barrels are skinny. The purpose of this is to keep the weight of the rifle in a usable range for the foot soldier. The down side such a light weight barrel is that on firing it flaps around like a window curtain in a Canterbury nor’wester. Further, light barrels heat up very quickly and the combination of these two factors is greatly increases group size. One way of minimising the effects of the barrel vibrations is to introduce points along the barrel where packing is used to hold the barrel tight between the top and bottom woods. Pressure pointing, as it is known, dampen the sine wave generated by the node and antinodes of the vibrations and go some way to simulating a stiffer barrel. Both my SMLE and No.4 MkII have show very favourable improvements after the addition of carefully placed bedding points.


So where do the pressure points go I hear you ask? There are two schools of thought here – at the muzzle only and at the muzzle and middle. Muzzle pressure is standard with both No.1 and No.4 rifles and in theory they both left the factory with 4-6 pounds of upward pressure on the muzzle end of the barrel. See figure 5. If a rifle has a factory pressure point I would remove it and start from scratch – this way I can control and changes and alterations. My SMLE is pressure pointed at the muzzle top and bottom with layers of firm cardboard whereas my No.4 MkII is pressured pointed at the muzzle on the top side only with 1/8 inch engineers’ felt. The No.4 did not respond at all well to upwards pressure on the barrel nor did it like top and bottom force. The benefit I have found in using cardboard is that layering can be used to increase the depth of the pressure point and subsequent pressure and this allows a range of variance to be trialed to establish the best. A base of bedding compound would work equally well and shims of thin media could be added to experiment with great load.


Fig 5.

Fig 6.

I have had no success in free floating a LE barrel in the way Mauser action rifles are. Even my MLE action .38/303 wildcat BPCR rifle prefers a pressure point in the shortened foreend. Horses for courses really. Listen to your rifle.





- Sights.

Battle sights are not designed for precision shooting. In fairness the SMLE has really good open sights that my ‘pushing 40 years of age’ eyes quite like (obviously my mother was wrong about me going blind!) but these sights don’t allow for the same degree of accuracy that a quality target aperture sight will. The same goes for the No.4 rifles with their variety of peep sights. Fortunately there remains a good supply of second hand Parker Hale (PH), Central, Singer and countless other types of the target sights designed fit LE rifles and calibrated to the Mk VII round. I have a PH5A for my SMLE that attaches without alteration to the rifle thus retaining is ‘original’ state and a PH5C for my No.4 MkII for which one hole has been drilled and tapped for fitting. The PH5A has an eye piece with a disc of varying sized apertures and the PH5C has an iris like the human eye and a dial with a disc of coloured filters (blue, green, yellow, opaque, clear) for varying light conditions. The addition of these sights greatly increases the potential accuracy of the rifles.


Telescopic sights can also be added and numerous mounting systems exist for said. My No.4 MkII has a quick detachable mount using a rail mounted on the left side of the receiver. The scope rings attach to a bridge style mount that slides on and off the rail returning very close to perfect each time. Using this I can make my No.4 into a faux No4(T).


- Reloading ammunition.


The days of blazing away en mass with military surplus Mk VII .303 ammunition are long gone for most of us. A few astute shooters covert stashes of CAC 54/55 ammo and the likes but by and large .303 ball ammo is no more. Quite simply, once the 7.62 NATO round was adopted there was no call for further production runs of the venerable “three oh three” so it stopped 50 years ago. What is surprising to me however is the state of preservation of the vintage CAC ammo and that it still shoots remarkably well to this day.


Enter handloading:


The .303 British round is a prime candidate for handloading. Components are widely available and with the variation in internal dimensions of chambers and barrels a well developed handload is often the only way to extract the very best accuracy for a LE. Without going into too much specific detail to handloading, numerous books on which exist, there are a few .303 specific rules I follow.


i. I fire form all new brass by flaring the case mouth to fit tight in the chamber neck and charging the lightly oiled case with 15gr of fast powder (eg: Green Dot) topped of with corn meal. On firing the case forced back against the bolt head then expands to match the internal dimensions of the chamber. The oil allows the brass to slip in the chamber and the flared neck helps keep the case centralized. The case will expand both longitudinally and radially and create a headspace between the chamber should and bolt face as per rimless cartridges. It is this headspacing that goes a long way towards greater case life.


ii. Once I have fire formed the cases I use only a Lee Collet die for neck sizing in all subsequent loading to avoid working the brass and shortening the life of the case. Neck sizing with neck sizing dies will not alter the position of the case shoulder and the headspace generated by the fireforming action above will remain constant. This practice greatly increases the number of loading cycles a cartridge case will withstand as the brass is not being overworked (expanding on firing and sizing during loading) and due to the shoulder headspacing the case will not stretch lengthwise as such a great rate as full length sizing would promote.


iii. I anneal case necks approximately every 5th firing. My No.4 MkII is very fussy about neck tension and as the brass is work hardened on firing and sizing the tension begins to vary and this is reflected on the target. Neck walls on .303 brass are very thin and annealing will prevent necks splitting. Interestingly enough .30-40 Krag brass can be shortened and fire formed with good results in .303 British chambers in order to get a case with a heavier neck wall.


iv. Load projectiles that are as close to groove diameter as possible. Bullets are available in .310, 311, 312 commercially and .313, .314 and .316 from boutique sources. Cast bullet shooting allows the handloader great control over bullet diameter again. I match my cast bullets to the chamber THROAT diameter these days and in the case of both of my LE’s I size cast projectiles to .314 with great success.


v. Remember the limits of the .303 British round and don’t try and “magnumise” it. You will definitely burn out brass quicker and likely damage your rifle(s) and person by asking more of the round than it can give. If you must chase high velocity with your LE please consider the .303 Epps; an improved, blown out version of the .303 British developed by Mr Epps of Canada matching .30-06 performance. Search the internet for Epps details.


A word of warning for competition shooters. Before launching into the accurising process make sure to be totally familiar with the rules of the clubs you are likely to compete with. Certain service rifle events call for true “as issued” rifles IE: EXACTLY as they left the factory. Others allow for modifications to specific levels only so best be safe than sorry and get the information PRIOR to any modifications.


So there you have it. Everything that has worked for me and some. I can’t reinforce enough that to be fair to yourself and your rifle(s) your expectations of what a LE can do should be realistic. With a lot of after factory work and time my No.4 MkII is a reliable 2 MOA rifle now and on a good day (for us both) it will go sub 2 MOA. The best it ever turned in was 0.875 inch at 100m with cast bullets as witnessed by a local shooter. A combination of good luck and hard work. When my eyes allow the SMLE with tailored cast loads is a 2 MOA rifle also. I firmly believe that 2 MOA is a realistic expectation of LE rifles but anything better than this is a bonus. My believe if based on my experience with 5 and 10 shot groups at 100m.


So there you have it. Everything that has worked for me and some. I can’t reinforce enough that to be fair to yourself and your rifle(s) your expectations of what a LE can do should be realistic. With a lot of after factory work and time my No.4 MkII is a reliable 2 MOA rifle now and on a good day (for us both) it will go sub 2 MOA. The best it ever turned in was 0.875 inch at 100m with cast bullets as witnessed by a local shooter. A combination of good luck and hard work. When my eyes allow the SMLE with tailored cast loads is a 2 MOA rifle also. I firmly believe that 2 MOA is a realistic expectation of LE rifles but anything better than this is a bonus. My believe if based on my experience with 5 and 10 shot groups at 100m.


Tight groups.


Fig 7. 100/110y, CBE 313 215 bullet, air cooled WW with 2% tin. Load 13.8gr 2400.

Not wishing to purchase a hunting specific flat nose bullet for Cadet the solution is to alter the nose profile by some means. In the past I have very successfully converted Cadet bullets to HP by carefully aligning them in the chuck of my mini lathe and running a center drill into the nose and when cast in go to nominal 40-1 alloy these made for excellent wallaby hunting bullets. Other being rather time consuming to create a HP of this nature is unnecessary for small game in a .31cal bullet as has been previously proven when shooting the old Lyman 311008 FN at subsonic velocities from my suppressed .32/20; a load more than capable of downing our very large European hares.

The solution has been in the form of a cylindrical jig created into which a complete loaded round is inserted and when fully seated exposes just the very tip of the bullet. A coarse file is then used with repeat strokes until the nose material has been removed level with the top of the cylinder. The process takes very little time and accuracy is generally on par with an unaltered round and certainly more than sufficient for small game hunting at ranges suitable for iron sights.

I am now looking forward to Easter and another trip to rabbit rich country on Matarae Station with big brother. He will likely again roll his eyes at my choice of firearm as he prone to do but if history is any indication will be suitably impressed by the end results.

I dragged the hog out of the vegetation andconducted an impromptu field autopsy. The wee Bator bullet entered a little belowof where I had aimed. It broke a rib going in, clipped the heart, and brokeanother rib going out. The second rib had about a .30 caliber exit through it.The blood trail had come entirely from the entrance wound because the exit holewas plugged with fat.

I am really happy with the Ruger Hornet'sperformance using cast bullets. I would not choose it as my primary hog rifle,but it sure validates the old cowboy's wisdom that placement and penetrationtrumps everything else.

For those not familiar with the Lee Autodisc it is an automatic powder dispenser that screws into a through charging/neck expanding die. Designed for pistol loading primarily the measure is activated as the cartridge case is run into the expanding/charging die, engages the expander plug and the resulting force of the brass case being pushed onto the plug lifts the powder dispenser activating the cross slide that drops the given charge of powder. The hopper holds 1/2lb of powder and has a shut off allowing for changing of discs while powder is still in the hopper removing the need to decant propellent between charge changes. Worthy of note also is an adaptor kit available that allows stacking of measuring discs allowing for a great range of powder charges to be dispensed.

See the following video from Lee for an overview.

Loading of my .310 Cadet or .32-20 can be achieved as shown but for throwing charges for other cartridges I have to utilise an adapted .303 British case previous run into the case forming die for my .303 Pygmy wildcat cartridge. The long, skinny, untrimmed neck is sufficient to act as a faux .32-20 case fully entering the charging/expending die and activating the dispenser. Of course the powder charge must still be poured into the correct cartridge case in the loading block but this still makes for great utilisation of the Autodisc.

As I have at my disposal a mini lathe I have been able to make up a handful of expander plugs for the Autodisc to suit loading of the aforementioned .310 Cadet and .32-20 cartridges. I bought my Autodisc secondhand and the expander plug that came with it measures .309 found to be far too snug for loading either cartridge so I fabricated a .311 for loading jacketed bullets in the .32-20 (long since ceased; filty habit) and another at .313 suitable for charging the unsized .310 brass or for loading of .314 diameter cast bullets in the .32-20.

Strangely enough I have found the chart supplied with the measure I have does not accurately reflect the actual weight of any given powder charged thrown by the device so to that end I have made up my own chart. This is kind of neither here nor there as far as I am concerned as regardless I know what I am loading. At one end of the spectrum the smallest charge of H4227 is 3.7gr used as a kicker in my duplex black powder .310 Cadet loads and at the other extreme the largest dose of the same powder is 20.6gr. See here for Lee's chart.

Retailing new (as shown on the Lee site at the time of writing) the Autodisc is a USD58.00. Would I buy one again? Without a doubt. It is an accurate, adaptable, sturdy bit of kit that does exactly what it should.

Ed Harris and the late Frank Marshall have both written about gallery loads; handloads assembled for very short range shooting in both indoor and outdoor facilities. Ed favours fast powders like Alliant (formerly Hercules) Bullseye in very small amounts for loads up to and matching rimfire velocities. Having a near full canister of Bullseye on hand and my Husqvarna .30/30 bolt action seeing little use of late it seemed rude not to put some loads together to see what fun I could have.

The first step with the shiney new 40-1 (7.8 BHN) bullets was to decide to lube or poly coat. Fired, unsized cases for my .30/30 accept and hold snuggly .312 diameter bullets so logically tumble lubing and shooting as cast was one easy solution however having both Lee and Lyman sizing dies in .312 and the possibillity of also using the bullets in .303 British requiring slight more girth for best results I elected to poly coat. One coat of Eastwoods vermillion (orange) increased the diameter of the bullets to .315 inch very suitable for the .303 and for loading in the .30/30 a one way trip through the Lee nose first sizing die was required. Tumble loading, especially with hybrid blends utilising floor wax, make for very good results but right now I am focused on poly coating the finished result of which is less messy.

Ed suggests from 4.0gr of Bullseye for gallery loads and checking my Lee Autodisc cart I found that the 0.46 hole throws that exact amount with the 0.49 and 0.53 metering out 4.3gr and 4.6gr. Dealing in measures of 0.3gr of a grain of powder in such a large case seemed needless to me so test rounds were assembled charging Winchester large rifle primed R-P brass with 4.0gr and 4.6gr respectively. Initial groups shot at only 25m showed tremendous promise producing clusters of bullet holes measuring no more than an inch. Subsequent testing at 50m returned groups averaging in the region of 1.5 inches; more than accurate enough for informal shooting.

Both loads, yet to be put over the chronograph, produce a sonic crack though the lesser load of 4.0gr does sometimes drop a subsonic shot suggesting that powder load is producing transonic velocities. I suspect the 4.6gr load is matching HV .22LR ammo speeds. Of course velocity is not the goal with such loads but it is always interesting to note the speeds and consistency of handloads as a point of note. Moreover it is staggering to realise that from a 26 inch barrel such a pinch of powder can push a 91gr bullet to supersonic speeds.

Eastwood powder coating paints are widely recommended by experiences PC coaters.

The poly coating adheres to bullets remarkably so and whilst it may be scratched with a sharp object I have seen countless photos of fired bullets recovered with the coating still in tact. Indeed, it is possible to squash the bullet with a hammer or in a vice and have the coating adhere to the lead alloy in its entirety. I took a pair of bullets and pounded them flat on an anvil using an engineer's hammer and the coating stayed stuck the alloy.

PC coating adds, in my experience, 0.002 inch to the girth of a bullet. My .310 bullets measure nominal .308/.320 (320-120 pattern) and .312/.323 (323-125 pattern) so a PC treatment bringings them up to .310/.322 and .314/.325 respectively. The larger bullet often requires the heel to be run into a .314 sizing die just to squeeze the heel down a shade. On the subject of which, PC coated bullets take to sizing well and can be run through traditional base first and nose first dies with great results.

How do they shoot in the old Cadet? Easily as well as traditional lubed bullets and quite possibly a little better. Shooting at 50m/55y with open sights my rifle will group into an inch when I do my bit. Recently I shot a 10 shot group where 8 where in an inch, 5 in on hole and a couple of wide shots operator induced. A further bonus is due to the slick nature of the gloss finish paint I use there is a small velocity increase. I have yet to clock the Cadet loads but my .32-20 suppressor load averages 1030fps with lubed bullets and 1060fps with PC bullets.

I am sold on PCd bullets for my Cadet at the very least. Further experiments I need to run for all my other cartridges and bullet patterns but progress thus far is very encouraging. Aside from looking cool the bullets are tidier to handle as there is no exposed lead and for cartridges the likes of the .310 Cadet that require outside lubricated bullets the advantage of no messy expose lubricant is a real bonus. More to come.

Comparsion of rounds fired into bakery margarine at a distance of 50m/55y.

TOP: .32-20, 115gr Lyman 311008, muzzle velocity 1030fps.

BOTTOM: .22RF CCI Mini Mag HV HP.

Three factors are at play here in making my .32-20 small game load the superb performer it is on hares.

• An expanding bullet sheds velocity very rapidly as frontal area increases in size and resistance. The result is a short wound channel.
• Momentum; mass X velocity. The .32-20 subsonic load has twice the energy but three times the momentum. Energy relies on squaring the velocity. Momentum does not.
• Nose profile. The work is being done by the transfer of energy from the flat nose bullet. A round nose bullet would not have created such an impressive channel. Indeed I have used RN bullets in the Martini with very poor results on small game.

A rather sobering revelation came from this experiment also in regards to over penetration. Upon firing the subsonic and supressed .32-20 round I heard a distinct “TWACK” of lead striking wood. A quick evaluation of the path of the bullet caused me to walk 100 yards beyond the test medium to discover the FN bullet lodged about 1 inch into a pine fence post. To recap, the bullet departed my company at 1030fps, travelled 50 yards, went end to end through 15 inches of shortening, travelled an additional 100 yards and embedded itself a good inch into a pine post. And that my friends is why we make sure there is a good back stop behind our targets!!

Another good example of what a soft lead bullet moving sedately can do is an experiment using my .310 Cadet rifle and wet phone books placed at 100m (110 yards). The 120gr round nose, 40-1 alloy bullet left the muzzle at 1370fps, traversed 110 yards and penetrated a full 13 inches of wet telephone book.

About this time I was ready to pack it all in for the day when my friend arrived. He immediately recognised the Veritas as a model that had been widely used by Kiwi’s at Scott Base, Antarctica until fairly recently but are now out of service. He works for Antarctica NZ and surmised there might still be some of the maintenance kits left over so set off to find them. Within an hour he was back and presented me with a complete and unopened service kit for Dad’s old stove! Not only does the kit have all the replacement washers, seals, jets and leather piston device, it also has the specific tools with which to remove the parts. I was absolutely thrilled and figured father would be suitable proud and pleased that his long suffering stove would live on. What a remarkable coincidence of timing.

Contrary to popular opinion, I don’t think obturationplays the role with cast bullets that many shooters suppose. In at least some cases (with hard cast bullets),obturation apparently occurs neither in the throat norwith the peak pressure, even with very powerful loadsintended to produce such base upset at any cost. Imake this statement on the basis of .30-06 bullets (bothlinotype and wheelweight alloys) recovered and inspected as the powder charge was increased until the shooting became wild.

Now let me disavow any notion that the informationI’m about to relate came from any massive scientific program like Col. Harrison’s exploration of bullet lubes.Some portions of it actually were designed ladder studies to carefully investigate some unexpected observations, but some of it was simply accumulated over yearsof shooting, and pieced together as other informationbecame available to link earlier observations. But it hasall come together to form what I think is a pretty goodexplanation for what is going on with high pressure hardcast bullet rifle loads. A lot of people are going to disagree, but I’d like to hear any hard evidence to the contrary.

Yes, I’m aware that the base of some bullets like a.22 long rifle and .32 Colt were designed to expand. Inmy investigations, I did some work with them. (Firing a.22 rifle or revolver underwater is a hoot, and so is ‘hunting’ bluegills!) Recovered bullets left no doubt at all thatrounds like these DO expand at the base. But these areloaded with the softest bullets it is possible to manufacture.

I don’t know how soft a bullet has to be to upset, butI know that it has to be pretty darn soft: Even pure lead.32 Colt bullets will often fail to expand and obturateunless the bullet is of hollow-base design. This is thesame approach used by Keith in his 358431 design, andinnumerable swaged wadcutters: Soft bullets, often witha hollow-base design assist.

While I recognize that obturation CAN occur undersuch circumstances, soft pistol bullets and hollow basesare not the subject of this particular ‘ramble’. I intend toaddress what I’ve found happens to hard cast rifle bullets at higher than ‘normal’ velocities, and the followingcomments should be understood in that context.

Bullet recovery during these tests was achievedmostly by firing into deep pools of water (at anglesexpected to preclude ricochets) and swimming down togather what I could of the bases. (The nose portionsfrom powerful loads were usually shattered or badly distorted, but it was seldom that the lower half of the bulletcouldn’t be recovered.) Some were recovered by happenstance from stacks of boards or Styrofoam, wetnewspapers and even sand banks. While most of thesewere much more destructive to the nose of the bullet, Iwas still able to retrieve some pretty clean bases inmany cases.

Granted, these (generally) mushroom shapedrecovered bullets were seldom in a condition thatencouraged me to rely on diameter measurements.However, I am not blind, and it was easy to see that thegas check shank was still substantially smaller than thediameter of the gas check or the bore riding body of thebullet. Expanded as the base may have been by impact,the step was still there: A blind man could see it, or atleast feel it with his finger nails. If the base had expanded, it would have filled the neck and throat portion of thechamber. And when it was swaged back down by passage into the bore proper, it would have obliterated thegas shank, and any upset lube grooves.

This did not happen. The gas check shanks andlube grooves remained intact. The depth of the ‘stepdown’ from the full bullet diameter to the gas check didnot change. The depth and width of lube grooves did notchange noticeably. No evidence of base upset (obturation) or other damage that could be attributed to propellant pressures was observed. In fact, it was observedthat small imperfections in the base of the recovered bullets (sprue marks) had been telegraphed through thegas check, and were quite visible on the bottom of thebullet. Any conversion of the bullet to a putty-like consistency under the pressure of firing (as postulated byDr. Mann) would have eliminated both sprue imperfections and gas check shanks. The upsetting lead shouldhave conformed to the shape of its surroundings likewater in a bucket. This did not occur.

Relatively mild loads provided recovered bullets thatappeared to be mirror images of the bore through whichthey passed. As the powder charge increased, the firstevidence of damage was not base upset, but etching ofthe lead alloy immediately in front of the gas check. Thisetching was initially limited to a small spot in front of theedge of the gas check, right where it was engraved bythe rifling lands. The remainder of the gas check shankshowed no initial damage or upset.

As the powder charge was increased further, theetching became more extensive. It grew mostly alongthe line of the engraving until it eventually began toencroach on the bottom of the base driving band.Etching marks also enlarged horizontally until it encircledthe base of the bullet.

Initially noted only on the lead gas check shank atthe edge of the engraving of the gas check, the etching shifted its location when it extended forward to the basedriving band. The etching on the base driving band (andon all forward body bands) invariably began on only oneside of the land engraving and was later far more severeon that side than the other.

Investigation and study revealed that the side of theland engraving which received little or no etching wasthe side pushing or rotating the bullet. At the same time,the trailing edge of the rifling was extensively etched inrough proportion to the powder charge: More powder,more etching, and the further the etching ranged towardthe front driving band. In all cases, etching was farworse toward the bottom of the bullet.

Most interestingly, the width of the rifling alsoincreased far beyond the width of the rifling that produced it. This could be observed very dramatically byplacing recovered bullets from light, moderate and heavyloads side by side. It was also observed that in allinstances where this land enlargement occurred, thevisual severity of the etching was heaviest on the side ofthe rifling that was opened up. As the land forced thebullet to rotate, it apparently wore against the side of thebullet against which it pushed. Rotational forces kept thedriving side of the land tight against the (worn) side ofthe bullet, and the wear was evidenced by an increasinggap on the trailing side of the land. This gap was notclosed by obturation at any point. Instead, it provided achannel of escape for propellant gas to etch the bullet.As the width of the engraving enlargement graduallyincreased, the etching of the trailing edge of the landengraving continued to increase in width and depth,while the more recently exposed area of the enlargedengraving on the bullet was etched less due to shorterexposure.

Interestingly, these loads seldom gave any evidenceof leading until the charges were increased to exaggerate effects. The first leading was in the form of traces offlashing at the muzzle which also began along the trailing edge of the land. This leading did not appear untilenlargement of the rifling began to become quite evident. This marked the end of the finest shooting, andaccuracy quickly deteriorated as the charge wasincreased thereafter.

I found it interesting that the engraving enlargementwas quite uniform: If the evidence of the etching wasignored, the result would have been the same as if thebullet had been fired through a bore with much wider lands.

As noted, this enlargement of the rifling engravingwas proportional to the power of the load, though I can’tput a number on the proportionality. And these testswere many years ago, but as I recall, shooting becamepoor when width of the bullet engraving was about 120%to 140% the width of the rifle’s lands. Higher power produced even greater enlargement until the shootingbecame wild.

Now what makes all this pertinent to the question ofbase upset or obturation is the fact that at no point wasany obturation or base upset observed, even when pressures (or at least powder charges) were well into jacketed bullet territory, and shooting was wild. The progression of symptoms / results was quite uniform, and therewas absolutely no evidence of any upset or obturationthat should have filled any enlargement or erosion.

Removing gas checks from the base of recoveredbullets didn’t show any marring or smashing of the spruemarks that all cast bullets have. There was no evidenceof base upset in the throat, where pressures were beginning to smack the base hard enough to get it moving intothe bore. There was also no evidence of any upset taking place further down the bore, where peak pressuresgenerally occur. I saw no evidence of anything resembling base upset at any pressure level that might haveoccurred at any point in the bore.

Now I grant that these tests – though encompassinga good deal of work on my part – were limited to relatively hard alloys and gas checked Ideal bullets – specifically Lyman 311291. I make no apology for that; it wassimply my area of interest at the time. Someone working with softer alloys and / or plain base bullets may wellhave different results, but I’d recommend care in his testsand conclusions: Dr. Mann produced some very extensively upset lead bullets – that couldn’t possibly haveoccurred within his barrels simply because the throat andbore diameters were too small. It is self-evident that theywere expanded outside the barrel. It is my personal conviction that their expansion resulted from muzzle blast,and as recently related, I’ve been able to correlateapparent muzzle pressure and maximum loads too.

But for what it’s worth, I drew several conclusionsfrom this work that I would like to present, along withwhat I think are some reasonable speculations:

1. Base upset – though condemned by Dr. Mann andmany other skilled and knowledgeable shooters – isapparently not the primary failure mechanism of hardgas checked cast bullets. That’s not to say that damaged or deformed bases will still provide good accuracy.They won’t. But hard alloy bullets apparently do notdeform (by upset) on firing.

2. Enlargement of the rifling by sliding wear of the bulleton the driving side of the engraving is apparently a primary failure mechanism of hard gas checked cast bullets. At the very least, it encourages both etching andleading, and may be entire cause of both of them.

3. When enlargement of the engraving is sufficientlyadvanced, it is indistinguishable (for all practical purposes) from ‘stripping the rifling’, a condition that was formerly blamed for gross inaccuracy.

4. A sufficiently enlarged engraving width will obliteratethe land engraving altogether, and should be comparable to a bullet with NO engraving. This would essentially convert the rifle into a smoothbore for all practical purposes. This would account nicely for the leading andloss of accuracy that has been typical of cast bullets atvery high (jacketed) power levels.

5. This enlargement mechanism also seems to accountfor the difficulty that many have reported withMicroGroove bores: The shallow rifling would producemuch less depth of engraving on the bullet, which wouldbe less resistant to wearing on one side, and cause morerapid enlargement of the bullet grooves.

6. Granular fillers like Cream of Wheat could be reasonably expected to ‘plug’ any channels opened by abrasive enlargement of the rifling and prevent gas blow-by.While I have no direct evidence that this is the case, itwould account nicely for the rather remarkable ability ofCream of Wheat to completely prevent leading with powerful cast bullet loads.

7. Paper patching is currently the premier technology forobtaining enhanced cast bullet performance at highpower. It (lubricated paper) is not subject to etching, andapparently will not wear to permit enlargement of therifling engraving. I know of no way to recover a shedpaper patch in a condition to confirm this directly, but theevidence from paper patched bullets in even magnumrifles without leading suggests strongly that it will notabrade in the bore. The enlargement of rifling engravingappears to require such abrasion.

8. The next step up in performance – jacketed bullets –are also immune to etching, and I have never noted acase of rifling enlargement with them – though it must beadmitted that I seldom use them, and have not lookedcarefully for any evidence of enlargement. Suchenlargement seems most improbable, given the muchgreater strength of the jacket over that of even the hardest lead alloy.

So there you have it: Within the limited scope ofhard, naked gas checked cast bullets, I believe that leading and loss of accuracy in high power cast bullet loadsis primarily due to etching and abrasive wear enlarge ment of rifling engraving on the bullet. I see no evidenceof base upset, much less any empirical evidence that anyobturation that may occur has any influence on bulletaccuracy or performance. I also believe that there isexcellent reason to expect these conclusions to hold trueover a much larger population of cast bullets, should anyone wish to explore further.

Interesting old information still applicable to this day. I know of a gentleman who made a muzzle loading rifle from a singleshot bolt action .22RF that only ever shot with fair accuracy. His ingition is a shotshell primer that I always considered a bit grunty for setting off 10gr of 3Fg black powder under a 45gr bullet. The table above appears to agree.

Waste not, want not. Go forward and commence to dumpster diving.

Legend: Average and standard deviation of five, ten shot, 25 yard groups. SIG 225, Saeco 377, 120 gr., 2/6 alloy, BHN 16, sized 0.357, Orange Magic lube, CCI 500 primers, 3.1 gr. Bullseye, 940 fps.

The first process is to cut a flat nose section onto the nose of the bullet so the drill has a square section to start on. The bullets set in the collet consistently using the top lube groove as a reference. A parting tool adjusted to cut one tool width is run onto the bullet cutting a perfect flat then the drill run unto the bullet slowly to a set depth to produce the HP. The lathe I run at a slow speed and a good coating of oil is applied to the drill in order to prevent the lead strands adhering and binding up on the bullet. The entire process takes 20-30 seconds at most.

Range tested the bullet in its original profile (108gr) showed preference for 12gr of 2400 over a Remington 9 1/2 primer. The same load was put under the hollow pointed bullet now weighing 98gr with superb hunting accuracy.

Loaded HP rounds in Carcano brass ready for the range. Load is PPU brass, ACWW alloy nose first sized to .268 inch over 12gr Alliant 2400 and a Rem 9 1/2 primer. Est velocity 1400fps.

50m55y group, 10 shots in total from the FAT41 6.5X52mm Carcano equipped with a SeeAll sight.

My 6.5X52mm Carcano has always been very hard on brass. Split necks have been the bane of myexistence and no amount of traditional annealing seemed to help as the casenecks are over worked during each sizing operation due to dies being ground tosqueeze down necks to hold .264 jacketed bullets; I shoot .268-.269 castprojectiles and expand to suit. As suchmy necks fired measure inside diameter of .271 then size down to .262 and backup to .268 – that’s a lot of work. Ihave been forced to anneal necks after each firing however using a butane torchproved inconsistent and far from ineffective as I can never be sure to annealthe entire neck with 100% uniformity all the way around. Now using the AMP prior to leaving the clubrange I run all my Carcano brass through the device and ensure soften necksprior to sizing. Today I sized all mybrass without the loss of one case.

POORBULLET DROP OUT.

Castbullets should drop freely from the mould. If they do not then no more than a couple of taps on the mould handlehinge should free them. Failing this thecavity or cavities are in need some attention and most likely microscopic burrswill be present that are enough to snare the bullet and prevent it fallingfreely. Again, Lee aluminium moulds areoften prime candidates for this doctoring and have giving birth the term“Leementing”. The oft referred ‘CastBoolit forum’ on the internet is my daily place of visit and has a combinedknowledge of casting that is beyond belief. One of the more well written and experienced casters and posters,“Buckshot”, coined the phrase ‘Leementing’ as a topic that refers to fixes forthe most common ailments with Lee bullet moulds. The most critical aspect is how freely (ornot so as the case may be) the bullets drop from a mould withoutassistance. As already eluded to, themost likely cause of bullet hang up will be tiny burrs on the edges of thefaces of the cavities and though not noticeable to the naked eye such burrswill bring a grown man to tears as he beats the living daylights out of a mouldin order to release the fruits of his labour.

The‘Leementing’ process is essentially two steps. First, take a magnifier and inspect the edges of the bullet mouldcavities for any obvious burrs. These,in the case of an aluminium mould, can easily be removed with the careful useof an art knife or scalpel – precise work and not for those with shakyhands. Second, follow the instructionsfrom the RUST section above but drilling a hole in a bullets, installing ascrew and lapping the cavity out using a fine abrasive. I own only two Lee moulds and the most recentis a semi custom 6.5mm purchased for my Carcano (see NZ G&H 122). From the outset the mould did not releasebullets freely and a goodly dose of ‘Leementing’ was unleashed on it withsplendid results. One cavity now dropsbullets out immediately upon opening and the other cavity takes only a rap onthe handle hinge to free its bullet. Besure to thoroughly clean the mould upon completion of the process in order toremove and greasy compounds that will inhibit production of properly formedbullets.

A

"Beagled" mould with a brass shim fastened to one half in order to increase the girth of the finished bullets.

Two designs of nose pins for casting HPs exist. The traditional method utilising a single cavity mould with a pin manually inserted into the base of the mould prior to pouring then upon solidification of the alloy removed before the mould is opened and bullet ejected. The other design lends itself wonderfully to multiple cavity moulds where pins are fixtures in one half of the mould and swing out upon opening allowing the bullets to clear the cavity and fall free of the forming pin. MP moulds favour this method – see the 452-374 below.

NEI .30 Wasp Waisted bullet beside a Herters waisted jacket projectile.

A quick search of the CBA forum using the key word “gallery”came up with dozens of posts. Ed Harrishas written a great deal on the subject and I encourage anyone interested toresearch his material for reference.

Jeff.

The search function on the CBA blog can be found on the right hand side of the page immediately under the list of catagories.

Not all CBA members are competition shooters myself included and many of us merely enjoy the challenge of producing accurate ammunition for a purpose be it plinking, hunting or just inquisitive experimentation. Either way it’s always beneficial to have sighting equipment that allows for easy of use and can aid in reflecting the true accuracy potential of a firearm and/or load. The answer to a better sight picture on the Carcano came in the form of the SeeAll Sight. SeeAll makes a range of parallax free, single plane sights that use shaped Polycarbonate to magnify a reticle on a green background. Eye relief is not a consideration and the sights can be mounted on rifles over or in front of the action, on handguns, shotguns and muzzleloaders. This was particularly attractive in the case of the Carcano as it is fed via an en bloc clip so mounting any sort of sight over the action is out of the question short of being offset to the left. Not a holographic sight per se as one might expect to picture the likes of an AimPoint with an aiming dot hovering in a lens but more device incorporating a semi illuminate reticle the shooter looks over to align. Best of all the sight does not require batteries.

As I was planning to travel to the USA with my family I bought the sight online and had it delivered to Indianapolis where we would be visiting. My host was good enough to mount the sight on his M44 Mosin Nagant carbine via Picatinny/Weaver base and away shooting we went. After bore sighting the sight with its triangle/pyramid reticle was adjusted to print approximately 3 inches high at 50 yards to allow for ball park zero at 100 yards with the reduced loads furnished for the rifle. Aiming the sight is very intuitive. Being a single sight plane device it is just like an aperture sight in so much as the eye need only focuses on one item with the target in the background. No pesky rear sight to align. The black triangle/pyramid is a piece of cake to line up and the 12 inch gong at 100 yards was as easy target. Upon returning home installation on the Italian stallion was easily achieved by mounting a Weaver style base from the receiver ring to the rear sight and sliding the Seeall sight into place. Too easy.

Left - .45cal rifle bullet laid out on a patching board prior to application of the paper patch.

Left - a pair of .45-70 cartridges loaded with paper patched bullet ready for competition or hunting.

I carry a Ruger Single Six 4-5/8” .32 H&R Magnum as a trail gun. I don’t anticipate too many encounters with grizzly bears or AK-armed banditos in the hills of West Virginia, so six rounds in the revolver plus a dozen spare rounds is enough for my usual weekend outing. The .32 Mag. is far superior to any rimfire for the occasional feral dog, rabid fox, raccoon or skunk and is a dandy 50-yard meat getter for groundhog or (if in season) wild turkey.

This article written by Joe Weist appeared in the May/June 2002, #157 issue of the Fouling Shot.

In a discussion with Tom Gray once he mentioned that he thought the .35 Remington should make agood bench cartridge for someone wanting to shoot a .35caliber bullet. I had a T/C Contender in .35 Rem. onceand had trouble with it.I picked up 7,000 .35 caliber gas checks at a gunshow and a Hoch mould from Pat Iffland. (Editor: Isn’tthis how it always works — you pick up a few relativelyinexpensive components for which you have no earthlyuse, and say, “Gee, I need a rifle to use these in.”) I hada 40X action with a PPC bolt that had been modified totake a SAKO extractor. The bolt face only had to beopened a little to accept the .35 Rem. case.

I picked the brains of Tom Gray, PatIffland and the Editor for a recommendedtwist, added everything together and took theaverage — a one turn in 17 inches. Douglasmade me a pre-fitted barrel 28” long, weighing9.8 pounds. The throat is .359” by .125”long. All my bullets seat to the base of thecase shoulder, which puts the top of the GC atthe base of the neck.These pre-fitted barrels are chamberedshort. Normally, one would have tohave a chambering reamer and a headspacegauge to finish the job, but since this rifle is formy own use and it’ll never see a factory cartridge,I opted for a slight modification to thecartridge instead of buying or renting thereamer and gauge. I pulled the bullet from anew factory round, deprimed it and used thiscase for a headspace gauge. I faced off thebarrel shoulder until the bolt would close on the new case, but not close if a .002” shim was placed onthe bolt face under the case head. The barrel is tightenedon with a leather “strap wrench.”For moulds I now have the Hoch 360268 274 gr.,Eagan MX2-35 250 gr., an NEI with two different cavities;one for their 358255 250 gr. and the other the 358268280 gr. (without the DD rings). I had both cavities cutoversize to cast .362” bullets. The bore-ride noses cast.351-.352”.I bored a Lyman Lubrisizer die to .360” and madea .378” neck sizing bushing. I made a plug to fit a Lyman“M” die that tapers from .355” to .361”. This leaves theinside of the neck tapered from .354” to .360”.The gas checks have to be expanded to fit theEagan and NEI bullets so they are all annealed first.I took a factory 40X stock and took a bunch ofwood out of the forend and buttstock and filled the areaswith molten lead. The action is glassed in on pillars. Thetotal weight of the rifle is 17 lbs. 8 oz.

As luck would have it, it was deep in the winterwhen the project was finally done. The range wassnowed in, and I had to carry all my equipment 100 yardsto the bench. This first time out only a few of my loadedrounds would fire, and some of them took three strikes ofthe firing pin (shades of the T/C Contender problems!).The next time out I used pistol primers and things workedmuch better.Now that I had fire formed cases, I switched backto the rifle primers and was plagued by misfires again. Itook the bolt apart to install a new 32-pound firing pinspring and found the insides badly rusted. The rust wascleaned out and the inside of the bolt lapped smooth.The first outing with the new spring and rifleprimers didn’t go much better than the previous trip. Butby now I have managed to fire over 300 rounds and havesome promising loads.

The misfiring problem had to be fixed. I checked the “headspace” and found it had not changed. My neck sizing bushing was not pushing the shoulders back and the firing pin protruded .062” from the bolt face. It dented pistol primers deeply and rifle primers deep enough that they should fire. A friend looked at the problem with me and suggested I remove the spring-loaded ejector. The next time out I had no misfires with rifle primers. The pressure of the ejector, coupled with the tiny shoulder on the .35 Rem. case apparently was enough to push many of the cases far enough away from the bolt face that the firing pin couldn’t strike rifle primers hard enough to fire them. Now that my ignition problems were solved, I went back to pistol primers since they had proven the most accurate.

200 yard group with the NEI SP bullet

.35 cal. bullets used in these tests: Hoch 360268, Hoch 360280, NEI 358268 (280gr.), NEI 358255 (250 gr.), Old West 360270, Eagan MX2-35

One of my best 100 yard loads, one that shootsinto 1/2”, is the Hoch bullet loaded with 36 grains ofAA2495 for a velocity of 1773 f.p.s. However, this loadopens up to 6” at 200 yards. This bullet will shoot under1” at 100 yards with H322, AA2015, RL-7, Benchmark,Varget or 4064.I haven’t worked with Eagan’s MX2-35 250 gr.very much yet, but so far it shoots into 1-1/4” at 100yards. The NEI 250-grain bullet loaded with 38 grains ofAA2495 will shoot to 2045 f.p.s., gives 1-1/8” groups at100 yards and holds up well at 200 yards. The 280-grainNEI bullet grouped around 1” at 100 yards with 40 grainsof 4064 at 2030 f.p.s. and did not do too well at 200 yardsuntil I modified it.

I figured the bullet’s longbore-ride nose needed to be alittle larger, so I carefullylapped out the cavity until Ibrought the as-cast size up to.354”. However, at this size,the bullet was pushed welldown into the case whenchambered.I had purchased a.360”x1° throating reamer,intending to throat the rifle andmake a matching bump die. Idecided to make the bump dieand use it to taper-size thenose on this NEI 280-grainbullet, leaving the throat as-is.I adjusted the bump dieto taper-size the nose from.354” to .351”. The base of the bullet now seats part waydown the case neck. The bullet shoots much better. Mybest group at 100 yards is .374” and at 200 yards, 1.6”.I have used both straight linotype and 1/2 lino 1/2wheel weights, with no difference detected. Wagner’s J2lube has been used and leading has not been a problem.This has been a fun cast bullet rifle but a realcannon compared to my .30 BRs. After firing a shot, alook through the scope will find the rifle pointing at thenext target to my right!I’d like to try another barrel with a little faster twistto see if I can get better accuracy at 200 yards. I’d alsolike to try a 280-grain pointed bullet for the long targets.If I don’t wear it out, I’ll be shooting it at the 2002CBA National Tournament in Kansas City. See you there!•

The .35 Whelen is an old, but good cartridge which doesn’t need full loads to fill the woods role gotten off the ground. It would be easy to take a .30-30 Remington 788 or .30-40 Ruger No. 3 and have it rebarreled. It also has fine potential for heavy game. A 300-grain cast .35 Whelen load at around 2000 f.p.s. would be strong medicine for elk, moose or bear. The .35 Rem. would also hold real promise in a rifle with a 12” twist, like the Savage 170 pump, which could give results comparable to the .375 Win. with 250-grain cast bullets.

Properly tapered chamber throating aligns (i.e. centers) the bullet in the boreat the beginning of its travel, thus is critical to achievingconsistently high levels of accuracy.At left are two pure lead slugs formed in the forward chamber/bore breechareas of two Browning Model 71 lever-action rifles - no tapered throat, simplyan abrupt step-down into the rifling. This is one of many cost-cutting manufacturingtechniques of traditional type lever guns that translate into poor levelsof accuracy. Third from left is a lead slug formed in the same region of afalling block Ruger in .458 Win. Magnum chambering. Note the well-taperedgradual leade from the chamber-into the bore. This is as it should be. (A fired.458 case is at right).

5. Cast your chamberor slug your throat to see thelatter’s diameter vs. that of thebarrel groove diameter. Toachieve top accuracy youmight have to use a bulletmore closely fitting the throatand which tends to be overlylarge for the grooves. Mostalways the best for cast bulletsis a long-tapered throat: themore abrupt and shorter themore inaccurate it’s inclined tobe.

6.The more bulletdiameter is reduced in size ina sizer-lubricator the more distortionis created, thus morecompromising of accuracy, soyour mould with your chosenalloy should perhaps only castabout .0015” maximum overrequired diameter but this isvery individualistic as to yourfirearm’s preferences.

After making certainmy lubrisizer has beenmachined on-axis I’ll minimizethe tendency to bullet distortionby cutting the sizer diebevel to a more tapered 60-degree angle.Incidentally sizer die pistons are usually cut to a slight concave radius whichis utilized to keep lubricant off the bullet bases. However,I most always prefer mine cut to a flat surface. Somemanufacturing mistakes occasionally release these pistonswith mis-machined or poorly machined tops perhapscut irregularly convexed, which is wrong. (Return theseto the factory for correction or replacement).

As has proven to be the usual approach, I mostalways seat bullets, cast and jacketed, out to solid chamberthroat contact. Over decades this has most alwaysproven to be the best for my rifles and given the bestaccuracy.

Micro-groove-type rifling can often shoot castbullets magnificently but the bores must be mirrorsmooth,dimensionally consistent and bullet selectionideal ... no bore-ride or narrow-nosed styles. With thistype, having shallower grooves and more numerouslands, bullet distortion during bore travel is minimized.

With narrow-land rifling bullets with short nosesand long shanks generally shoot best. Wide-land barrelstend to promote inaccuracy with cast bullets because thistype generally increases bullet distortion.

Remember the importance of consistencies - fromevery conceivable factor and at all times. Without it, all bullet performance suffers. Of course, impeccable tuningof rifles and exacting mechanics regarding cartridgesare a huge part of shooting successes; another is theeffect of fouling on your shot placements. Other ones ofmajor importance are accurate reading of the wind andaccurate gauging of distances, both of which can beextreme challenges indeed. •

Stoeger's ''Peerless" remodeling of the M1891 included a Pacific RI ap­erture sight mounted on the cocking piece. The new stock greatly im-­ proved the rifle's handling qualities as well as its ap­pearance. Together with the polished and reblued barrel, these improve­ments helped justify the 1940 cost of $24. Sadly, the long and soggy trigger pull remained unchanged. Although the trigger mechanism is durable and completely satisfactory for military purposes, its possibilities for improvement are limited. Direct interaction of the two parts operates the trigger and sear mechanism The sear is a long thin bar flexible enough to serve as its own spring. It passes under a lug at the top of the trigger to limit sear engagement with the cocking piece while also acting as the trig­ger spring. The lug also serves as the boh stop. Dennis Bruns' article in CB-118 illustrates the mechanism nicely.

No. 36 on Russian 7.62 m/m Shipping Weight 4 oz.

FOR RUSSIAN RIFLES Model Rl for Russians adjustable for windage and elevation. It is the only practical sight for this type of rifle. Allows the full use of the safety, a very important item with any rifle, is close to the eye, making it especially good for a quick follow shots and built strong enough to stand hard useage. Price for one hunting or target disc.................................$4.00.
EN6. Similar to Rl, but for use on bolt sleeve of Enfield Model 1917.

Lightening the trigger pull by thinning the sear from the underside is safe enough. It reduces force on the trigger, but does not change the engagement of the sear with the cocking piece. Consequently the trigger
pull is lightened but is just as long as ever. Lowering the sear adding shims as descnl>ed in CB-118 should be done cautiously because it can change sear engagement as well as lighten the trigger pull. Cardboard shims are adequate to establish a safe thickness. For final instal­lation I would prefer shims made of metal.

Fred W amer of Og­den, Utah descnl>ed a more complete solution in the June 1931 American Rifleman. He hoped his sketch shown here ''would be of use to those trying to make a gun out of something that is a rather tough proposi­tion". The sear is hinged on a pin forward of the trigger. A block brazed to the back of the trigger holds a light coil spring to operate both the trigger and the sear. This arrangement allows independent adjustment of spring resistance and sear engage­ment. Mr. Warner notes that he "made the whole layout in a few hours with a hacksaw, file and drill, with the services of a welder to braze the block to the trigger and harden the sear block." I have never seen a M1891 trigger altered this way, but the op­erating principle appears completely sound.

''Russian Springfields" sold by Bannermann for $14 are nothing more than ordinary M1891 Mosin ­Nagants with the 7.62x54R chamber reamed to take the longer .30-06 cartridge. Bad idea. The rear of the 7.62x54R chamber is about .02" larger in di­ameter than the .30-06 case. This invites the case to rupture on firing. M1891 actions do not handle es-­ caping gas well.

No amount of alteration makes the M1891 rifle completely satisfactory for sporting purposes. Yanking and twisting the cocking piece to make it serve as a safety is not really satisfactory for a game rifle. Cranking the cumbersome bolt from its far forward position is slow and awkward. Nothing can make the Russian rifle the field or target range equivalent of a remodeled Springfield or Mauser.

The best M1891 rifles are increasingly pre­served as issued. Well finished specimens produced by Remington and New England Westinghouse are proudly shown as ''king of the klunker klass". Even the roughly finished newer rifles made in Russian and China are now altered less and less. The Lyman and Pacific sights for the rifle are no longer made and the days of low cost remodeling are past. As issued M1891 rifles of any kind nearly always bring a higher price than those that have been altered.

M1891 Mosin-Nagant Rifles are still widely available at comparatively low prices. Cast bullet handloads provide an interesting and inexpensive way to enjoy a rifle of particular historical signifi­cance.

The load with 15 grains of 2400 with the 215-grain bullet gave an average velocity of 1179 fps., with an extreme spread of 77 and standard deviation of 29.

I started reloading for this cartridge because I was afraid the surplus ammo would soon be exhausted, as it turns out this has come to pass. Century Arms, Southern Ohio Guns and every other source is out of stock at this time. §

I have taken my deer at distances ranging from eight feet to 125 yards. Needless to say, the eight-foot shot was the most exciting.

I had been glassing the base of a butte about ¼ mile away, and located a small group of deer. By using adjacent draws for cover, lots of patience, as well as working the wind I was able to get within eight feet of the buck in the group. As he began to stand up from where he had been laying, I hit him at the base of the skull with the .41 Wyoming. The shot might have been impossible with a scope. Participating in silhouette competition with iron sights helps maintain the proficiency necessary to successfully take deer at longer distances, too.

L to R: H&G 220 gr., Hoch 240 gr., Hoch 280 gr. Hoch 296 gr., Hoch 325 gr.

The entry and exit wounds in deer taken with these cast bullet loads are usually the same size. I’ve been fortunate enough to place all my hits (except the eight-footer) in the ribcage area, behind the shoulder. Lack of expansion with these loads reinforces the importance of proper bullet nose shape for hunting.

Until my eyes begin to fail me, I’ll continue my deer hunting using the revolver. It offers an excellent challenge and pushes me to make a conscious effort to practice and prepare for each year’s hunt. This improves the total experience of the hunt, very little of which involves squeezing the trigger. But that’s a whole subject of its own. 􀀁

In the ensuing years, while reading through old gun books and magazines, I learned that in the mid 1880’s the factory load for the 3” BP EXPRESS cartridge was 167 grains of black powder and a soft lead bullet weigh-ing 610 grains which gave a muzzle velocity of 1650 f.p.s. and also a 570 grain hollow point bullet with a velocity of 1725 f.p.s. This apparently was the top load using soft lead bullets. When the loading companies switched to a hardened or alloyed lead bullet, it appears a higher breech pressure was developed caused by a higher bullet resistance to the deep riflings and swaging the bullet to bore size.

As a result this produced a higher bullet velocity and at the same time, took what was a manageable recoil level and upped it to being unmanageable. I can personally attest to that fact. Based on this information I estimated the muzzle velocity of my load of 185 grains of 2F and a 575 grain wheel weight bullet must have approached 1900 f.p.s. When I pulled the trigger something went down on both ends.

In the late 1890’s both Eley and Kynoch had segued to the new smokeless powder called Cordite. Loads ranging from 65 to 100 grains of powder and jacketed bullets weighing from 650 to 750 grains were produced. During this time the black powder loads went out of production and had all but disappeared by WWI. The nitro loads were still available up to the 1960’s. It appears the full nitro loads, 100 grains of Cordite and a 750 grain solid jacketed bullet produced recoil so unmanageable that big game hunters opted for smaller calibers like the .500 Nitro single or double rifle. The smaller calibers were more manageable. This ultimately led to the end of commercial production of this cartridge. With all of this history one would think this 120 year old cartridge would be dead, buried and forgotten, but not so. If one does a little searching bullets and boxer cases can be found. I even saw a set of dies on eBay for this cartridge.

About six years ago I saw Bertram’s ad for .577 N.E. basic brass, so I again purchased 20 cases. A short time after that I found an article on smokeless loads for big bore black powder double rifles. It seems the recommended load for this caliber was 73 grains of IMR 3031 for a muzzle velocity of 1700 to 1725 f.p.s. with a 570 grain lead bullet. This closely approximates the 75 grains of Cordite and a 650 grain lead bullet load that was popular in the early 1900’s.

Dumping those 73 grains of powder into that big case left approximately a 1 1/2” space between the powder and the base of the bullet. I solved this problem by using a 5/8” punch and a 1” sheet of Styrofoam to cut out a pile of wads. By cutting several wads in half and stack-ing a 1” and 1/2” wad I had a perfect wad column height. I then loaded up ten rounds and headed to the range with my son and his business partner.

In order to show it wouldn’t hurt them I fired off a round. It wasn’t nearly as bad as the black powder loads so I talked them into firing off two rounds each. Then with some degree of hubris I fired off the remaining five rounds, which I regretted for the next few days. This load seemed to be very accurate as we were able to hit an 18” steel plate at 100 yards. As I wanted to load up 25 rounds, at my next casting session I cast up 50 bullets then picked out 25 of the best by looks and weight. I shoot them unsized so I gave them a good coat of Lee’s Liquid Alox and let them cure for several days. When the lube was sufficiently dried I put together 25 rounds and headed for the range. Again the rifle was of great inter-est to the young shooters. The older curmudgeons, like me, knew better than to take up on the offer to pop off a round. I fired one round for show. I came home with four unfired rounds, the rest were fired up by several young guns. Believe me, I got more pleasure and less pain watching others shooting rather than doing it myself. I guess I’ll have to load up another bunch for the newcomers.

The peculiar feature of this rifle is that it doesn’t have the ear splitting crack or sharp recoil of belted magnums but rather an awe inspiring boom and a long heavy recoiling shove. Since I wouldn’t dare to shoot this rifle from the bench, I’ve taken the information gathered from shooting it to determine that the barrels are regulated to about 50 yards. If you want to hit something at 75 yards, I don’t think it would make any difference which barrel you use. Thanks to cast bullets this fine old rifle is once again alive and kicking. 􀀃

I did have to size them down from .312” to get neck clearance and I did this in my .309” Lee Push through die that sized them to .3095”. I decided to load Unique again but I dropped the charge to 10.0 grains, seated the bullet to 2.6” and lightly crimped in the third groove. This gun with it’s 4X Redfield scope grouped 1.75” to 2.4” at 100 yards for four 5-shot groups. Not great, but acceptable for the first time out.

I had a lot of vertical tendencies in the groups I felt were shooter induced so I loaded another 30 and did a re-shoot. This time I was being more careful of my bag handling. I was rewarded with round 1.4” to 2” groups at 100 and 2.75 to 3.25” groups at 200 yards. All were 5-shot groups and three consecutive groups at each range were shot. It was over 90 degrees and even though the gun was very hot its accuracy held up. So at least with this bullet and about 1400 f.p.s. velocity MicroGroove rifling works fine unless you consider about 1.5 MOA bad grouping in a lever gun!

Best 100-yard group with the 30-30 Marlin.

200-yard groups.

I like my 311466 4-cavity mould. It only uses 150 grains of metal, casts nice bullets with only about one grain difference from lightest to heaviest, and works great in three of my favorite 30 caliber plinking rifles. I still think there are better designs out there, but if you find one reasonable don’t pass it up. As for Unique powder it worked well and gives about 580 loads per pound at 12.0 grains. I will be trying it in other rifle loads now. (I was using a 20 year old lot so the new Alliant may need to be load adjusted when I run out of the old stuff.) So, two things I didn’t have faith in suddenly work for me, I wonder what else I have missed or bad mouthed over the years that works just fine? Probably more than I want to know. 􀀁

There was a simple, threaded, push-through cast bullet sizer made for the 310 tool. When pan-lubing bul-lets Lyman’s Kake-Cutter was useful to pop bullets out of a block of solid lube in the cake pan. These gadgets and the 310 tool are what Frank Marshall taught me and my school mates to use as kids in the 1960s. I never owned one until recently. Now that I am retired and have time to tinker, I asked around and Denny Lundmark found me a steel set in .30-30. I am enjoying my childhood memories and like sharing this experience.

Decapping on the 310 tool.

For best results, seat primers twice, rotating the case 180°.

Lyman “tong tools” and die sets frequently emerge from estate sales, yard sales and can be found periodi-cally at gun shows or on the internet. If you want to expe-rience some nostalgia in loading for your Dad’s WWII bring-back in .30-’06, 8mm Mauser, 7.7 Jap, .303 British, those dies are most common if you know what to look for. Tong tool dies are not marked by caliber, but are identi-fied by part number. So, unless you locate a boxed set, you must research compatible die parts in a pre-1968 catalog and search gun shows to assemble yours. This might require lapping out a “muzzle resizer” to best fit your particular brass and bullet. A collection of various diameter muzzle resizers for .30-30, .30-40, .30-’06 and .303 British is very handy.

Neck size dies can sometimes be used to improvise in loading similar rounds of the same nominal caliber and head dimensions. The .250 Savage and .257 Roberts dies can be adapted to each other, and the Roberts dies work on .25-06. A .32 S&W die set can also load .32 ACP, .32 H&R Magnum, .32-20 etc. The .30-40 Krag and .303 British dies each will load the other. There may be other possibilities.

.Mouth resizing.

Powder dippers can be made from fired cases.

Today’s Lyman 310 tool has aluminum handles machined from a die casting, with dies being offered only in the popular “Cowboy” calibers. http://www.lyman products.com/lyman/dies/lyman-310-tool.php. The 310 Shop http://the310shop.com/ offers new dies and han-dles as well as complete sets in most traditional and modern calibers, including many never available from Lyman. A link with more practical information on using the 310 tool is http://www.lasc.us/Brennan_Lyman 310Tool.htm.

Lyman never produced carbide sizer dies for its tong tool. Because they only neck-size, you must use cases originally fired in your gun, unless you full-length size range pickup brass on another press first. When using plain steel dies, fired cases must be clean and lubricated to avoid grit scratching the dies or your brass. Mechanical advantage and extraction power of the tong tool is very limited.

While you can brute-force an over-expanded empty into a 310 tool, you probably won’t get it out, because the extractor hook will jump off the rim and the handles don’t have enough mechanical advantage to either force the case in or to pull it out! A shooting buddy from high school days recalled in his reloading for a .44 magnum M29, that to use the 310 without excessive cursing, it was important to load revolver cartridges conservatively.

Five chambers in that M29 kicked out empties which worked fine with the 310 tool, but chamber number 6 was the one which had survived an overload a mutual friend, the previous owner, tried to demonstrate what Elmer’s real .44 magnum load should be! The inability to drag stuck cases out of the muzzle resizer is why it is critical to clean brass well (both inside and out!) to avoid intro-ducing grit which will make cases stick in the muzzle resizer or on the expander plug!

And, don’t eat fried chicken while priming with the 310, because you are handling the primers with your fin-gers! Don’t ask me how I know… It is important to clean primer pockets because the priming chamber engages only half of the case rim at a time, so you must push, then rotate the case and squeeze again to seat the primer so it is fully bottomed, flush and square.

In Frank’s day it was common to “dip measure” powder when using the tong tool. As long as you know that your charge cup and powder combination produces a safe and useable load, this is OK. The Lee dipper set and charge tables are recommended these days. For my nostalgia trip I soldered up some home-brew charge cups from empty cartridge cases and copper wire and weighed some samples. The results are fascinating!

Mouth expanding allows hand-starting cast bullets.

The seating chamber will also apply a nice roll crimp if desired.

An empty .22 LR case makes a dip measure which throws about 3 grains of Bullseye. This is a safe load for a .32-20 revolver, .32 H&R Magnum or .38 Special with standard-weight lead bullet for the caliber. It also works well to improvise “cat’s sneeze” loads with single-0 buck-shot in almost any .30 cal. rifle case.

A measure made from a .32 ACP case throws 6 grains of Bullseye, a full charge load for modern cowboy revolvers and lever-actions chambered in .44-40 and .45 Colt, and a nice plinker in the .44 Magnum.

It also makes a great small game load with 110-120 grain cast bullets in .30 cal. rifles of .30-30 size and up.

A .32 S&W Long case throws 11.5 grains of #2400, a very useful “medium-velocity” load with standard-weight lead bullets in the .357 Magnum. It is also fine for soft, plain-based bullets in the .30-30, .32 Winchester Special, .32-40, .30-40, 7.62x54R, 7.7 Jap, 7.65 Argentine or .303 British

.A 7.62x25 Tokarev case throws 14.5 grs. of #2400, a full charge .357 Magnum load and fine, mild gas checked bullet plinker in any .30 cal. from 7.62x39 to .30-’06.

A .38 Special case throws about 21 grains of #2400, a full charge load for the .44 Magnum revolver, or a use-ful jacketed bullet or gas-checked cast-bullet plinker in the 7.62x54R, 8mm Mauser or .30-’06.A 7.62x39 case throws 29 grains of RL-7, which is a full charge load with 150-grain jacketed bullet in the .30-30. This also makes a good heavy hunting load with gas-checked bullets in any .30 cal. rifle from the .30-40 Krag through the .30-06. It also throws 28 grs. of IMR4064, which is a full-charge, gas-checked load using the #31141 bullet in the .30-30, and a good target load with gas checks in any .30 caliber from the Krag up through the .30-’06.

Far better than the old tong tool, more versatile and highly recommended for modern users, not into fire-side cowboy nostalgia, is the Lee hand Press. See:http://www.cabelas.com/presses-dies-lee-hand-press-reloading-kit-3.shtml http://www.ehow.com/how_7622520_use-lee-hand-press.html You-Tube demo here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6IoNCtFHwU .

The advantage of the Lee hand press is that it uses standard 7/8-14 thread dies and shell holders, so that you can use dies you already have. I recommend car-bide dies in pistol and revolver calibers, whenever pos-sible. The Lee tool has ample leverage to full-length resize pistol cases and smaller rifle cases. The 9mm, .45 ACP, .357 Magnum, 5.56mm or 7.62x39 brass size rela-tively easily. While .30-’06 brass fired from an M1 can be sized on the Lee hand press, doing so takes significant-ly more effort. The Lee hand press is an affordable starter-outfit, well designed for its task.

A complete portable kit with dies, primers, powder, bullets, small loading block, etc., store easily in a .30 cal. ammo can, or in Frank’s WWII GI gas mask bag, thrown over the shoulder or attached with a snap-link onto your wilderness ruck. Frank will forgive your buying the Lee hand press and passing up the buy on that 310 tong tool at the gun show. He felt it a shame Lyman never made .223 Remington or 7.62x39 dies for it... In his later days “Bill Ruger’s Plinker” (Mini-14) and the “Chinese Hurdy Gurdy” (SKS) did strike his fancy.

Another approach for reloading “out of the box” to use Bob Sear’s clever term for it, is to use a small arbor press with hand dies, such as those made by L.E. Wilson. This set-up is popular with bench-rest competi-tors, and is best suited for bolt-action rifles, neck-sizing, match-prepped brass for one rifle only. Setting up for a precision rifle this way is quite practical, but more expen-sive than using the Lee outfit.

Some descriptions and how-to articles of the arbor press equipment are at these links:

http://www.brownells.com/.aspx/pid=37764/Product/Sinc lair-Arbor-Press
http://blog.sinclairintl.com/2011/12/29/sinclairwilson-hand-dies/
http://www.shooters-supply.com/using_wilson_dies.html
http://www.shooters-supply.com/reloading_equipment. html#wilson 

My load development started with the Rapine bullet and two powders, Unique and IMR 4759. Cautious progression in one grain increments showed the following two loads to be safe and in the right velocity range: 14gr. Unique for 1489 f.p.s. and 19gr. 4759 for 1410 f.p.s.

These loads were developed using rifle primers. When I substituted pistol primers unacceptable cratering of the primers ensued with the Unique loads.

Some of the items used in load development.

With a starting point established I selected 5 comparable loads from 358 Winchester data and loaded 5 rounds of each. The day I tested these loads it was below 25 degrees, which may have marginally affected the velocities I obtained. The loads and results are shown to the left:

Green Dot appeared pointless and I decided to save my supply of 4759 for calibers that clearly preferred it. Friends with more PB expertise than me advised me to keep velocities below 1400 fps. With the addition of one slower burning powder which has worked for me in pre-vious projects – Rx7, I proceeded.

By now I had my Lyman 366408 mold in hand. I cast a supply of bullets using a 2/1 ww/lino alloy. I also mixed up a fresh batch of Darr lube. A week later I was back at the range testing these three loads to the right:

Subsequent testing has confirmed that my rifle likes IMR 4198 and the Lyman bullet. It is an accurate and mild load. Actually it performs better than any load I had hoped to find.

The Hunting Load:

The ultimate goal for this rifle has always been to be a cast bullet deer rifle. The tract of land I hunt is a mix of timber and lowland with a few small fields thrown in. Most of my shooting needs will be met with a rifle/cartridge combination that is adequate out to 125 yards. A 275 grain bullet at 1800 fps would duplicate the stout 38-55 loads listed in Wolfs Big Bore Rifles and Cartridges. I felt this should be adequate for my needs.

I wanted a gas check bullet when trying to reach this velocity. Initially I did not expect to be able to obtain a gas check .366 inch mold. While it subsequently turned out that I was quite wrong, I reasoned that the next best thing would be swaging a readily available .375 bullet down to the proper diameter. Lee Precision is willing to provide their push through lube/sizing die in custom dimensions and at a price that is most reasonable. I ordered a .368” die which arrived just short of 4 weeks later.

Sizing a .375” bullet down to .368” is not ideal as we all know but I was committed to the plan. I had three dif-ferent .376” bullets on hand. One was a 315 grain single diameter spire point which sized down beautifully but was much heavier and longer than necessary for the task at hand.

The other two were bore ride designs. The heavier, blunter 300 grain bullet simply could not be swaged down satisfactorily. The second is a 260 grain bullet which roughly resembles an oversized Lyman 31141 or a Lyman 375296 with one fewer lube groove. I am sorry that I don’t know the mold number but I purchased this box of bullets a number of years ago. The exact bullet is not important here other than to say the smaller the bullets diameter, the better. My specimens started at an actual .375 and they sized down to .368 quite well. I found that adding some lube to the top band helped.

Once I had secured a supply of gas check bullets I started carefully testing loads. Initially my primary interest

The other two were bore ride designs. The heavier, blunter 300 grain bullet simply could not be swaged down satisfactorily. The second is a 260 grain bullet which roughly resembles an oversized Lyman 31141 or a Lyman 375296 with one fewer lube groove. I am sorry that I don’t know the mold number but I purchased this box of bullets a number of years ago. The exact bullet is not important here other than to say the smaller the bullets diameter, the better. My specimens started at an actual .375 and they sized down to .368 quite well. I found that adding some lube to the top band helped.

(l-r) 30-30; 308; 30-06; 9.3x57 with Lyman 366408; 9.3x57 with NEI #174; 45-70

Once I had secured a supply of gas check bullets I started carefully testing loads. Initially my primary interest was keeping all of my body parts attached in their proper positions. My starting loads produced velocities in the 1250 f.p.s. range. Eventually I did work up four hunting level loads that are safe in my rifle. They were:

During this phase of my testing, I bought an NEI 25 caliber mold on EBay. The mold was “new in the box”. When it arrived there was an NEI mold list also in the box. NEI shows two .366” gas check molds among their offerings. I called NEI and an incredible four days later I received a brand new .366” mold in the mail. If there is better customer service than this, I have never encoun-tered it. Thanks to the kind folks at NEI.

The mold (#174) was listed at 260 grains. Using the same 2 to 1 ww/lino alloy, my bullets weigh exactly 280 grains including gas check. By the way I am using 35 caliber gas checks (as NEI specified) and seating them with my Lee custom die. I lubed these bullets with Darr lube the same as I had done with the Lyman 366408 PB.

Even though IMR 4198 shot extremely well in my rifle with the PB bullet, I was uncomfortable pushing the charges much farther than 30 grains. I felt that moving up to a heavier 280 grain bullet indicated that the prudent course was to opt for the slower burning powders. Hence I left IMR 4198 out of the final testing.

The weather on the day I tested the remaining three loads for accuracy was far from ideal. It was quite cold and the wind was moderate to strong. I don’t know if this impacted accuracy much but I did get some unexplained fliers, particularly with Varget. All three loads grouped under four inches at 100 yards, including fliers. IMR 4895 produced the most felt recoil and the loosest group. The Varget load put four of six shots into 1-1/2 inches. The remaining two were fliers, one high and one low. If I wanted a hotter load for this rifle, I would work more with Varget. It may be the right powder in some rifles.

The Rx7 load gave the least felt recoil and a nice round 2-1/2 inch group for seven shots. Actually this rifle may not be capable of much better accuracy than this. I am not sure that I am. Recoil becomes quite noticeable at 1750 fps. In any event, I am satisfied that 33 grains of Rx7 is a serviceable hunting load in my rifle. I will probably test a softer alloy next fall as I am not sure that this fairly hard (2/1) alloy will expand.

These are my experiences to date. Now that I have two good molds on hand, I am sure that more rifles of this bore diameter are in my future. If any of the readers have information to share, or observations, I would enjoy hearing from you.

Initial experiments sought a subsonic load with minimum noise, but 100-yard groups with M2 Ball bullets loaded subsonic were not as good as when they were driven a bit faster. Nor did I find any benefit to using pistol primers, case fillers or enlarged flash holes with Bullseye powder in these .30-’06 gallery loads. Once-fired LC military cases were full length resized, primer pockets swaged, trimmed to length and primed with standard Winchester Large Rifle primers.

Label on original box of Guard Cartridges.

Bullets used in the tests: 150 grain Ball, 163 gr. NEI #63, Lyman #311291 and 130 gr. NEI #82

I settled on a charge of 8 grains of Alliant Bullseye as the best compromise with pulled Ball M2 150-grain jacketed bullets. Bullets were crimped using the Lee Factory Crimp die. Velocity from my 22” Mauser sporter with European style, long tapered throat is 1080 f.p.s. and from a Sako A2 silhouette rifle with 24” Douglas Premium barrel with tight-necked target chamber and SAAMI throat 1160 f.p.s. Report and recoil are very mild, like shooting a .32-20.

The average of five consecutive 5-shot groups fired at 50 yards from the Mauser sporter with 4X scope was 1.2 inches. The point of impact at 50 yards was 3.5” below that of normal Ball M2, which enabled using the heavy duplex reticle as a short-range post, using my normal zero for 180-gr. hunting ammunition. The Sako with 10X scope shot very consistent inch groups at 50 yards. So it was time to go to out to 100 yards and stop “fooling around.”

The Mauser sporter struck much, much lower at 100 yards, and would require re-zeroing, but accuracy was fairly good, averaging 2.6” for ten consecutive 5-shot groups at 100 yards. This compares to firing full-up Ball M2 ammunition. The Sako with 10X scope averaged 2” for ten consecutive 5-shot groups, also typical of M2 Ball ammunition in that rifle.

While I was at it, I decided to load and test cast bullets, fired without the GC, to compare their performance against the Ball M2 pulled bullets. The cast bullets were not of match quality, but highly satisfactory as practice, training, small game and utility loads usable in any sound .30-’06 rifle. Cast bullet groups were equal to or better than the M2 pulls, an inch at 50 yards and 2 inches or less at 100 yards. Bullets were cast in gang moulds of wheel weight alloy, sight culled only, tumbled in Lee Liquid Alox or Rooster jacket and loaded as-cast without sizing. Velocities with the lighter cast bullets were around 1400 f.p.s. with 8 grains of Bullseye, so it may be advantageous to reduce the charge by a grain or so if leading impairs accuracy over longer strings of fire.

The M1919 Gallery Practice cartridge used a 140-grain, plain-based, round-nose lead bullet shaped very much like the Ideal #308241. Prior to WWII it was reclassified as the Cartridge, Guard, M1. This lead bullet reduced load was originally intended for indoor and outdoor short-range practice. It was alternately used as a Guard cartridge around defense plants and military installations in non-combat areas which didn’t require the FMJ bullet of the M1906 Guard cartridge for compliance with the 1905 Hague Convention.

Ed’s brother Rick testing Guard loads in a 1903-A3 Springfield

Gallery Practice cartridges were loaded with a charge of Sporting Rifle No. 80 powder to attain about 1100 f.p.s. Guard units commonly reloaded indoor practice ammunition. Ideal Reloading manuals prior to WWII and Phil Sharpe’s Complete Guide to Handloading (1937) featured data for assembling gallery centerfire rifle loads.

Cast loads which approximate the M1919 Gallery Practice cartridge are shown in the table. These light loads do not cycle the action in semi-automatic rifles, but can be fed from clips in the Garand if the action is worked manually. These charges can be used in the 7.62x54R Russian cartridge with similar results. To produce similar loads for the 7.62 NATO, 8mm Mauser, 7.65 Argentine, 7.7 Japanese or .303 British, maximum charges should be reduced by one full grain.

When using reduced charges of dense, fast-burning pistol powder it is absolutely necessary to visually inspect 100% every case for correct powder fill using a pen light to positively prevent missing or double charges or spilled powder. Another solution is to use a bulky pow-der which would obviously overflow the case if inadvertently double-charged. The late Col. Townsend Whelen’s favorite small game load for the Springfield used a charge of 18 grs. of SR-4759 powder, which bulks up nicely in the case.

I wrote an article in the Handloader’s Digest, 10th Edition in which I reported results using a charge of 13 grains of Red Dot in a variety of military rifles. “The Load” with Red Dot gives results almost identical to the Whelen small game load, about 1600 f.p.s. These approximate the energy of the .32-40 Winchester and are more accurate at longer ranges, but are louder than the M1906 Guard and M1919 Gallery Loads.

Roger Billington testing Guard loads in a sporterized Springfield

If low noise and minimum danger space are the goal, carefully load 8 grs. of Bullseye in the .30-’06 or 7.62x54R Russian, or 7 grains of Bullseye in the 7.62 NAT0, 8mm Mauser, 7.65 Argentine, 7.7 Japanese or .303 British with any jacketed bullet or cast bullet of the same weight or lighter than the military service one appropriate for the caliber. Do not reduce charges further with jacketed bullets because much below 1000 f.p.s., you may “stick” a bullet in the bore.

You may substitute lubricated lead cast bullets of a weight similar to or less than the service bullet with good results and reduce the charge in typical military rifles to as little as 4 grains of Bullseye, Clays, 700-X, Red Dot, Unique, W231 or TiteGroup. Lead bullets will exit the barrel reliably down to about 600 f.p.s. and accuracy is reasonable to about 50 yards. Do not reduce charges any further as ignition is erratic. I don't recommend extreme reduced loads with other powders. 􀀁

For a flatter shooting load in the Ruger I bump charges up to 3.5 grs. of SR-7625 for 1035 f.p.s. in the 4-5/8” Ruger and 1087 in the 6” Colt. You can also use up to 3.0 grs. of Bullseye or 3.5 grs. of W231 to approach 900 f.p.s. A charge of 3.5-4.0 grs. of Unique has similar ballistics and shoots well in strong guns, but don’t exceed 2.8 grs. of Unique in pre-war solid frames.

If your chosen .32 trail gun will shoot under 2-inch 25-yard groups with a 100-gr. flatnosed lead bullet at velocities from 800 to 1050 f.p.s., the basics of a crackerjack trail gun are there. If the particular revolver weighs about 2 pounds or so, so much the better. A 4” barrel is enough, if you have good eyesight. The Ruger 4-5/8” barreled .32 Magnum Single Six is just about ideal. The effect of barrel length upon accuracy is insignificant for field use, if you can see the sights.

A nice vintage box of Remington-UMC .32 S&W Long cartridges.

The most noticeable innovation is the very shallow grease groove on the bullet. From studies by Mann and computer models by Andrew Bar­niskis, we know how a bullet expands in the leade. Deep grease grooves have always looked like a potential weakness to me, and the nearer they are to the base of the bullet the greater the potential for problems. Deep grooves near the base may allow an unsupported area to collapse non-uniformly, caus­ing out of square bases and subsequent flyers. It would seem that if you must have deep grooves they should be near the front third of the bullet where they will do the least harm.

A 16 lb .. 357 Herrett Rifle built on a Thompson Contender pistol action

Not everyone agrees with this theory. Bob Sears and other notable experts have told me that a sizable groove near the base is necessary as a gas seal With a bullet that is not a snug fit in the leade that may be true. Early cast bullet designs such as the Lyman 311284 have deep grease grooves; perhaps with the lubes used in 1905 they were neces­sary. Over the years shooters have come to expect deep grooves in cast bullets and that is how the manufacturers make them Deep lube grooves are not necessary. Experiments run by Tom Gray show that most cast bullet shooters are using was too much lube. He has shown that with modem lubes, loads in excess of 2,200 :fps can be shot with as little as 3/10 of a grain of lube. More is not always better. Lets face it, bullet lube is a contaminate and we wouldn't be using it if it wasn't absolutely neces­sary.

I don't believe there is any reason for lube to remain on the bullet past the end of the barrel. While scoring I 00-yard targets I have seen blue lube spattered around bullet holes and have occa­sionally seen the same thing on targets fired at 200 yards. Obviously the lube stayed on the bullet all the way to the target. True, this did not appear to do any great harm, but it is hard to believe that lube on the bullet contributes anything good to its external ballistics. We would not have any grease grooves on our bullets if they were not needed. In my research I encountered a couple of interesting failures of non-­grooved bullets. One, In the NRA Publication Cast Bullets, deals with the development of paper patched bullets and the other with bullet lubes un­der the base of the bullet.

Author and his rifle

The latter experiment failed when bullets without grooves were used. While neither experiment was directly related to what I was trying to do, and no one was even willing to venture a guess as to why they failed, I took this information under advisement and decided to use a lube groove of bore diameter (.350").

I used a rather simple method to produce the mould. A half ­reamer with the bullet nose form and base on it was made in a lathe. A junk, small block Lyman 6mm mould was indicated in a four-jaw chuck and roughed out using common drills. The reamer pro­duced the main form of the mould cavity, and a second band was added using a small boring bar. The half-reamer cuts very well on its side, but doesn't like to bore with its nose. My reamer cut beautifully until it started to make a full cut.

Bullets cast of 12 BHN scrap alloy measure .3585" on the base band, .3570" on the middle band and .3515" on the nose. I meant to make the nose .3505" but, with the soft alloy, engraving another .0015" with thumb pressure is not a problem. The other dimensions are just about perfect for the leade.

I have never used a mould that drops its bullets as easy as this one does; probably because of the shallow grease groove. Usually the bullet drops when I open the handles. Initially I used the original Lyman sprue plate but was plagued with rounded bases and tears in the sprue cut-off. After casting about 100 bullets I made another sprue plate with a .125" pour hole out of W' aluminum stock. This solved the problem, producing sharp base edges and clean cutoffs. I would like to say the modification produced a big increase in accuracy - it did not - but it make me feel better.

I anticipated that, using the small Lyman blocks for a 295 gr .. 35 cal. bullet, the blocks would soon over-heat. This is not the case. In fact, the blocks tend to run cold and have a very small "casting window". You have to cut the sprue about 3 to 31/z seconds after it changes color. If you wait longer the next bullet is sure to have a rounded base. The sprue sets up rather quickly. There is just enough time to inspect the last bullet cast and throw the cut-off sprue into the pot before the next sprue hardens. This precludes casting with two moulds.

left- 295 grain .35 cal. bullet as-cast; right- fired bullet recovered

When shooting this bullet the first thing that became apparent was that bullet hardness had little to do with accuracy. Remember the bullet is seated in the leade, not in the rifling. rm not a single shot shooter but, from what I've read, I ex­pected bullet hardness to be critical. Sure, I tried linotype bullets; I tried pushing them fast and promptly leaded the bore. If I held the velocity un­der 1400 fps, 8 to 22 BHN bullets produced about equal accuracy with a slight adjustment of the pow­der charge. I don't know if this effect is produced by the bullet design, seating the bullet in the leade, or an idiosyncrasy of this particular barrel.

I tried Red Dot powder at first but had erratic flyers. From previous experiments I knew that Blue Dot worked well in this type of application and had immediate success when I tried it. I have not done much experimentation with different powder, there very well might be a better choice.

From the bullet design you might think lube would be a critical factor. For years my standard of comparison has been the NRA beeswax/alox for­mula. Of course it was the first thing I tried simply smearing it over the bullet with my finger tips. I also tried Lee Liquid Alox, Tom Grays experimen­tal #24, and several other commercial lubes I had on hand. All of the lubes left a neat lube star on the muzzle and accuracy was about the same, as was bore condition. Very thin coats of lube were used, in fact you could not see the color ( except for the Lee) on the bullet. There were no appar­ent failures due to in­sufficient lube. There were some accuracy failures generated by applications of two different lubes ( chassis lube on top of Lee Alox) and over lubing the bullet.

As I stated, I was trying to build a 2 MOA off hand rifle. From the very start it was evident the rifle was going to shoot better than that. We have all heard about problems with two-piece stocks. Well, my rifle not only has a two piece stock but also a two-piece action. Its not just twice as bad, its more like a squared function. Cranky? It's crankier than my wife two days before payday.

I had just shot a 10-shot group at 200 yards that was round and measured 21h11 and thought I would try the free-recoiling method. Five shots free recoiling went into more than 12". I then fired five shots using the heavy cheek and shoulder pressure used for the first group; those shots went under 2". Evidently the heavy hold on the rifle forces the ac­tion and barrel into the same alignment every time. Doubt this? Take your favorite TC, clamp the frame in a vise, then move the barrel. Depressing isn't it? The frame of my action is old and worn and has seen many rounds and barrels. Seeing how much movement there was, I gave the frame a judicious squeeze in an aluminum jawed vise and removed about 95% of the play. Still, the rifle has to be held hard to shoot well.

Despite what might be considered rough han­dling, the rifle shows signs of amazing accuracy. Late evening testing at 200 yards has produced many five to seven-shot clusters in the .5 to .75 MOA category. Unfortunately they were part of ten-shot groups that ended up being around 1 to 1 Vi MOA More often than not these extremely small partial groups were successive shots.

Because the rifle is heavy and recoil light, if the light is right you can often watch the bullet in flight for the last 20 yards or so. It is an exhilarating ex­perience to watch the bullet drop into the last hole. You become convinced that if you held your mouth just right they would all go in. Even when you think you are holding the rifle the same way you can sometimes feel a difference in the recoil. You can rest assured that if the recoil felt different, the shot opened up the group.

In a large part my experiment was generated by expedience. The .357", 1-16" Douglas barrel was what I had in the shop. The .357 Herrett reamer was also what was on hand. Given a choice I think the .357 Max would have been better. Nevertheless, I deem the project a success as it caused me to work on bullet design. This is a field that has been sadly neglected until the last few years.

I consider my efforts successful. The rifle is twice as accurate as I had hoped it would be. I have learned that because of bullet design, a plain base and a shallow grease groove, the mould throws the bullets out like popcorn. Also, for whatever reason, it appears the bullet has a high tolerance for both different lubes and varying degrees of hardness. I don't think that I've proved that my design is vastly superior to more conventional bullets, however the design does work, proving that some of the princi­pals held dear for almost a hundred years are not necessarily carved in stone. @

.The powders used with jacketed bullets then worked well with somewhat reduced cast loads. Cast loads outshot factory ammo in most hunting rifles, though the economy of cast loads was the big factor. I think the reason we did so well with them was that the moulds were really much better than we realized, while the quality of jacketed bullets was more variable then than it is today.

The top choice among woods-wise hunters was the .35 Remington, praised in many fireside accounts as a ‘real meat and potatoes gun.” Ammo was scarce and “meat in the pot with one shot” was the goal.

Around the turn of the century, the fine performance of the 9x56 Mannlicher on boar and other tough native species did not go unnoticed by the U.S. gun makers. Remington introduced its Model 1908 semi-automatic rifle for the .35 Remington in that year, and the cartridge remains a strong seller today. It should remain so, since it is probably the best deer and bear cartridge for woods hunting that we have. The old Remingtons still survive and have lots of company in the large numbers of Marlin lever guns, Savage pumps, Remington pumps, and a few bolt actions like the Mohawk 600 and old Winchester Model 70’s.

Among my circle of cast bullet purists, though, we frowned on semi-autos and pumps, but we sure liked that .35 Remington! The .35 had a certain anchoring effect on deer and black bear. There is indeed some-thing about the bigger bullet—perhaps its larger frontal area helps it expand more easily, or its weight helps it penetrate better without being deflected as much on heavy bone—can’t say for sure. Those who have never used the .35’s on game won’t be convinced by this, I know. But, those who’ve used the medium bores for hunting don’t need any convincing. The flat trajectory and higher retained energy of the .30-’06 class cartridge would clearly be superior for longer range hunting, but you have to remember we were looking for a clean one-shot kill and never had any need to shoot past 150 yards, and usually not over 75. Folks in the thick woods of the Appalachians, the Ozarks, Michigan’s Upper Peninsula or Washington’s coastal rainforests, know exactly what I mean.

Not many years ago I lucked onto an old hunting rifle which would have been a true “grocery gettin’ gun” 50 years ago. It’s a Lee Speed (Lee-Metford pattern, originally made as a sporting rifle, though similar to the military rifle). It has express sights, and all the typical British appointments, though as I received it the bore was nearly smooth from long neglect. The immediate cure, of course, was a rebore, which I had done, to the .35/.303. This required opening the chamber neck only, and rerifling. I specified a 16” twist with lands half as wide as the grooves, as I had been witness to the grand success of this form with cast bullets in the .35 Rem. The .350 British, as I call it, holds a wee bit more powder than the .35 Rem., though with today’s powders this gives the advantage of being able to get the same range of velocities at lower pressure. Ed Harris gets equal ballistics with his .35 on the .30-30 case ‘though he admits to be running higher pressures in his Remington 788 bolt action than I’d want to shoot in my Lee Speed.

Thanks to Alox lubricant and the 16” twist, I can get 2000 f.p.s. with good accuracy using the proven#358315 bullet, cast of wheelweights with 2% tin added. This is equal in hardness to our old 95-3-2 alloy which gave excellent mushroom effect at average striking velocities at woods ranges of 40-75 yards, assuming muzzle velocities of 1850-1950 f.p.s. The effect I often witnessed on deer back in the 30’s when that bullet was used by other hunters in their slide-action Remingtons is duplicated exactly in my rejuvenated Lee Speed .350.

Using 36 grains of IMR-3031, the #358315 hits dead on at 100 yards, using the-original standing bar open sight intended for .303 British 215-grain cordite cartridges. It took a bit of experimenting, of course, to find the right load, but that was half the fun! Accuracy wise, the .350 wasn’t fussy at all; nearly any reasonable load shot well.

The 16” twist and soft alloy are favorable for a hunting load, since the faster 12” twist of the .358 Win. often requires a harder alloy for optimum accuracy, which will not expand at moderate velocities. Hotter loads push you into the non-mushrooming, nose fracturing arena.

Another advantage of the .35 caliber is that you have access to a variety of small game and plinking bullets: all the .38 Spl. and .357 Mag. pistol bullets and even 000 buckshot (.36 cal.) for inside-the-barn, rodent busting with 1 gr. of Bullseye. Soft swaged or cast pistol bullets shoot well with 4-5 grains of Unique, or not over about 1000 f.p.s. With harder cast Keith types you can go up to about 1450 f.p.s., using up to 10 grains of Unique, but these will require Alox lube. They are quite accurate even at 100 yards for plinking purposes. A very accurate load is to use the old factory 200-grain blunt nose bullet for the .38 Special, the one they used to call the ‘Super Police.” I don’t know if the bullets can be had any more as loading components, but the Lyman 195-gr. #359430 is almost identical to it. Anyway, I lucked into a whole mess of these a few years back

when a local police department switched to a light bullet+P load. They shot great when smeared with a little Alox and loaded with 10 grains of Unique, for about 1400 f.p.s. These charges are based on cartridges like the .35 Rem. or my .350 Brit., but you wouldn’t get in any trouble using them for a .358 Win., .35 Whelen or .350 Rem. Mag.

Lyman’s #359430, show in its 150 grain variation.

A long time, highly respected “woods wizard” friend of mine from “back up the hollow” is one of the last Eastern mountain man types who has a .35 Rem. Marlin carbine with what he calls “Micro-pope” rifling. He was highly impressed by the couple of shots at game he’d witnessed with my .350 British in heavy brush, using that #358315 at around 2000 f.p.s. He got all fired up to try the same in his Marlin, his enthusiasm further kindled by the rising cost of factory loads. The .35 Remington is not a reload problem, and as Andy Barniskis has shown in the last several issues, Marlin lever actions can be made to shoot cast bullets well if the bore isn’t too rough, nor the chamber too sloppy, and if the twist is suited for the bullet and the velocity level. My friend’s barrel was fairly smooth from long use with jacketed loads, and had a close, reasonably concentric chamber. In reloading the .35 Rem. the chief caution is not to set the shoulder back or to size the neck back excessively as you’ve only got a minimal shoulder to headspace on. Partially size cases in a full-length size die, to assure easy chambering afield, backing the die off a half turn, so as to stay off the shoulder. This works fine, provided you have cases originally fired in the rifle you’re loading for. I use loads that are 5%below those advised for 200-grain jacketed bullets, and seat them to the base of the neck, which is expanded to .001”, under the bullet diameter. The bullet should be .001” over groove diameter. Marlin Micro-Groove barrels usually slug .358” groove in a .35 and .308” in a .30, but the bore runs oversize, typically .303” in .30 and .352” in .35 caliber, because of the shallow grooves. This requires bumping up the bullet nose to fit and is a big factor in getting satisfactory accuracy. At the same time I flatten the noses of the bullets for safety in the tube magazine and also to improve their expansion. This occurs partly because of the flat shape, but also because it works the nose slightly and seems to give it a precondition which aids expansion. Dennis Marshall explains this as recrystallization, caused by the deformation. I don’t go into the big scientific explanations, I just know it works better that way.

Once he was instructed in the basics, my friend was busy making up his own cast bullet loads. He settled on a load of 37 grains of IMR-4064, which gives him perhaps 1900 f.p.s. with the #358315 bullet. The bullets from this load have proved to mushroom well without breaking up using current wheelweights plus 2% tin. He feels no need whatever for those expensive “store bought-en” cartridges again.

The beauty of the .35 caliber for hunting, I feel, is that you are already starting with an adequate diameter in a cast bullet to give good killing power, even with minimal expansion, though the large frontal area and flat nose definitely seem to help expansion at low velocities. The .30 caliber cast bullets never expand to get as big as the .35’s, and their faster twists usually require harder alloys which are less forgiving of low striking velocities for effective game performance, like the larger bullets.

Having successfully made one convert, who had never used a cast bullet on game until recently, and who now has no intention of going back to jacketed loads, even if the cost were the same, I think we have a strong case for the cast game bullet. My mountaineer friend tells me nobody has ever gone hungry in that hollow, even in the stark days of the 1930’s, and he lives a long mule ride from the Safeway or Winn Dixie. The woods are his grocery store and his rifle is a charge card. He needs only two loads; the #358315 for deer and bear and a 148-grain wadcutter with 7 grains of Unique for turkey, squirrel, ’coon, groundhogs, etc. He gets 1000 rounds and lots of good chow from a pound of powder with that load. Now that’s a one-gun man. If I were completely honest with myself I could dispose of a lot of other guns and just use that .350 Brit., though I have to admit it’s fun to have that tack driving .30-’06 Winchester Model 70 lead slinger around when it comes to serious shooting, like getting Sears or Harris to buy Sunday breakfast before our next match. 􀀁

So how do I stop my bullets without damaging them beyond recognition? Many places in the west are surrounded by vast areas of public lands with exten­sive deposits of clay soil. Southeastern Arizona where I currently reside is no exception. The dense clay soil turns to glue when wet and powder when dry, and stops bullets without major damage to them When the clay is dry and loose, a long pointed bullet fired into it, at velocities between 1100 and 1200 fps, tend to turn sideways upon entry, bending the nose, usually coming to rest against one side. 1bis leaves the other side clean and undamaged. Flat nosed bullets fired between 1300 and 1500 fps tend to mush­room, leaving the base and a portion of the body useable for observations.

Fig. 1 SAECO bullet No. 645 fired 'Mth charges of AA 57 44 (left) and H4198 (right) exhibiting powder dented bases.

Fig. 2 Gas cutting around the base band can be seen on the bullet on the right, fired over a charge of AA 5744.

Clay is great, but if you don't have it, bundles of newspapers or damp phone books can be used. I\re read of shooting into snow banks and waiting for the spring thaw to recover bullets; however, there is a bit of a wait involved with this method.

Recently my focus has been primarily on plain-based bullets for the .38-55 and .45-70, and launched by black powder. I am also in­terested in smokeless powder loads for straight cases. I like loads that are economical, accurate, and easy on my shoulder.

Reduced powder charges have been used for years, for modest velocity from straight walled and bottle necked cartridges. I've been using Accurate Arms #9 for target velocity loads in both the .38-55 and .45-70 with good results. Accurate Arms 5744, Hercules 2400 and RL-7, Unique, IMR 4227, 4759, 4198, 4759 and similar Hodgdon powders are all suit­able. They are a bit pricey, however, so when I see a bargain on powder, I take advantage of it and enjoy the challenge of assembling efficient, safe, loads with it.

Powder in stick or kernel form is hard on plain-based bullets. Prim­ers blast the small charges of powder against the bullet base before the powder can ignite. The recovered bullets shown in Fig. 1 exhibit this damage; clear impressions of the powder granules can be seen. Inter­estingly, the powder dents are al­ways at the top portion of the bullet base as it lies in the chamber. Release of gas across the bullet base cannot be equal at the muzzle if the base is heavily or unevenly textured. Use of flake or ball powders minimizes this problem.

Fig. 3 Lyman bullet 375248 protected by a com meal filler and fired over a charge of H4198.

The flame temperature of the burning powder can contribute to poor bullet performance by gas cutting the base band (Fig. 2 ), resulting in uneven gas release around the bullet base as it leaves the muzzle. In addition, vaporized lead is blown past the bullet and up the barrel; this is generally believed to be a cause of lead­ing. Even ball powders with cooler flame temperatures can cause this problem.

BULLET BASE PROTECTION - The next fix, after I've selected the best pow­der, is to protect the bullet base. A gas check you say? Sure, but I want to use plain base bullets. I've tried wads of tablet backing, disks cut from milk cartons, and low density plastics. Paper wads suffer partial shredding from the firing blast and, for some reason, plastic did not work.

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I feel the best protection in smokeless loads is enough com meal between bullet and powder to yield a compressed column of powder and filler. Stick powders do not damage the bullet base with a protecting layer of filler in place; ignition is improved and recovered bullets exhibit a finely textured base with clean sharp edges (Fig. 3). Remember, this is for straight walled cases. You might want to refer to Ken Molohan's write up in TCB-122, for successful filler of use in bottle necked cartridges, and check TCB-125 for his warning on the danger of fillers.

I have also successfully used gas check bullets without the gas check. I simply leave the gas check heel covered with lube after sizing. With the 375449 Lyman bullet and 14 grains of AA #9 in my .38-55, the lube provides just enough protection to prevent gas cutting and yields a serviceable load.

Fig. 4 Lyman bullet 457483 fired without a gas check, using black powder.

ALLOY SUITABILITY - Optimum bullet perform­ance results when bullet hardness is selected to suit rifling depth, width, pitch, and velocity. My alloys are typically soft lead/tin mixes and vary from 40: I to 20: 1. My guns with shallow grooved barrels need a bit harder bullet than those with more substantial lands. Recovered bullets easily show if they are the proper hardness for the velocity. The width of the rifling marks begin to widen at the bullet frontal portion as the alloy strength is exceeded. A harder alloy or less powder is the solution. If pressure data is available for a load, the alloy suitability can be checked using the formula, chamber pressure equals Brinell Hardness multiplied by 1422.

Fig. 5 SAECO bullet no. 645 exhibiting rough textured bases after being fired unprotected over black powder.

BULLET QUALITY - I have been able to improve the quality of my bullets as a re­sult of examining them after recovery. One particular batch of Gould 457122 hollow­point bullets, cast using a bottom pour fur­nace, looked good but did not shoot well Examination of the recovered bullets re­vealed voids near the surface of their bases. The pressure of the powder igniting exerted sufficient force to collapse the thin layer of lead hiding the imperfections. I've gone back to the dipper and air bubbles rarely occur now.

BLACK POWDER LOADS - Selection of black powder is not as complicated as smokeless; for traditional black powder users the choice is between Elephant Brand and GOEX. Black powder is always used by the case full; granulation regulating the burning rate and pressure, needed for the caliber, bullet weight, and intended use. FFF g granulation is most often suggested for calibers under .45. Forty-five and larger calibers use FFg and Fg to advantage. However, it is not uncommon to use FFF g in larger calibers or larger granulations in smaller bores.

The best advice I've read is from Ned Roberts ( The Muzzle Loading Cap lock Rifle) who said " . . . it should not be an extremely rapid burning powder - such as is best for shotguns - as this causes too much upsetting of the lead bullet and results in poor accuracy." Robert's statement tells us that undesirable things can happen if we do not match powder granulation and bullet hardness. And, sure enough, recovered bullets fired with black pow­der do exhibit dramatic changes. Longitudinal com­pression is very evident, with lube grooves compress­ing and undersize nose sections slumping and expanding. A test of the 457483 bullet fired without a gas check resulted in the gas check heel expanding enough to be touched by the rifling (Fig. 4 ). A test of the 64 5 SAECO bullet, cast of pure lead and paper patched, had the lube grooves to­tally compressed, appearing only as lines on the recovered bullet.

Fig. 6 Recovered SAECO bullet 645 fired over black powder with base protected with a milk carton wad.

BASE PROTECTION - Impact of the powder during ignition causes a battered surface across the bullet base (Fig. 5 ). Shooters of the late 19th century commonly used wads of some sort to protect their bullets. A wad of cardboard or soft, porous blotting paper was used over a case full of powder; although, I feel that a blotting paper wad was used primarily by target shooters, who breech-seated their bullets, to keep the powder from dribbling from the case as it was chambered. ­

Many shooters, myself included, use wads to protect the bullet base from powder cratering and gas cutting. A .020 inch-thick wad cut from a milk carton does a good job (Fig. 6). The bullet base is still affected to some degree when using a wad, but it re­mains fairly smooth and clean.

An added advantage of the protected base is that identifiers, written on the base of my bullets with indelible pen, are still readable after recovery. I can identify various alloys used and bullets fired for a particular test.

Recovered wads also have a tale to tell. I have found them directly in front of the firing position to as far as fifty meters down range. Most are recovered flat but some show the results of side forces that compress and wrinkle them (Fig. 7). I have not yet ascertained if the wrinkle occurs during firing or after the bullet leaves the barrel, but the wrinkling strikes me as a negative condition. Although many black powder cartridge shooters use wads, there are excep­tions.

Fig. 7, Milk carton wads recovered after firing. Several exhibit the wrinkling problem.

Paul Matthews states in his book, How To's for the Black Powder Cartridge Shooter, that Master Class shooter Adrian Filer does not use wads, prefer­ring to "keep it simple". BULLET QUALITY - Bullets need to be good to take advantage of the burning characteristics of black powder that produce very low standard deviations in velocity. I only perform a visual inspection of my bullets - all dipper cast. If it looks good, it is good! The lack of imperfections observed after recovery confirm the validity of this approach. After I switched to dip­per casting I haven't noticed any imperfections re­vealed by firing.

I can remember being too young to accompany my dad on the yearly deer hunting trip. One year I asked him to bring me back a fired bullet. He shot a Model 94 Winchester in .30-30, so recovering a bullet was a bit of a chore for him He brought me one, but it was not the cylindrical form with rifling on it, that I expected. It was squashed out of shape and exhibited the knife marks it suffered on removal from a dead tree stump. This was my first encounter with a spent bullet.

I admit to still having a fascination for discover­ing what has happened to my fired bullets; I've learned a great deal from them There is one last benefit to recovering fired bullets: recycling. After shooting sev­eral pounds of expensive lead/tin alloy it is nice to return home after a range session with a significant portion to reuse. @

I have taken my deer at distances ranging from eight feet to 125 yards. Needless to say, the eight-foot shot was the most exciting.

I had been glassing the base of a butte about ¼ mile away, and located a small group of deer. By using adjacent draws for cover, lots of patience, as well as working the wind I was able to get within eight feet of the buck in the group. As he began to stand up from where he had been laying,

L to R: H&G 220 gr., Hoch 240 gr., Hoch 280 gr. Hoch 296 gr., Hoch 325 gr.

I hit him at the base of the skull with the .41 Wyoming. The shot might have been impossible with a scope. Participating in silhouette competition with iron sights helps maintain the proficiency necessary to successfully take deer at longer distances, too.

The entry and exit wounds in deer taken with these cast bullet loads are usually the same size. I’ve been fortunate enough to place all my hits (except the eight-footer) in the ribcage area, behind the shoulder. Lack of expansion with these loads reinforces the importance of proper bullet nose shape for hunting.

Until my eyes begin to fail me, I’ll continue my deer hunting using the revolver. It offers an excellent challenge and pushes me to make a conscious effort to practice and prepare for each year’s hunt. This improves the total experience of the hunt, very little of which involves squeezing the trigger. But that’s a whole subject of its own. 􀀃

L- R: RCBS 30-165-SIL, Lyman 311284, Mos/Iffland 30- 250, custom .375 cal.

I reached the safety of my door barely half a stride ahead of the beast and raced upstairs to sit in wonderment before the end result of my newfound sense of genius, forgetting all the bumps and disappointments I had to endure to reach it, which is what this article is all about.

You may be asking yourself, if you’ve not wandered off to do something useful, did he ever get the thing to shoot? I’d have to say yes. After many fits and starts and what amounts to basically stumbling into a load the thing shoots pretty fair. Was it worth it? HELL YES! It was so much fun that as I write this I keep glancing lovingly at my newest toy, an 8”-twist 6.5mm based on the PPC case shooting an inch and a quarter long 169 grain bullet, but we’ll save that story for another time.

When you think about it, it only took $420 in moulds, 10 months in time, a near stay at “Happy Dale”, and a second mortgage on the house to get a set up that’s never won a match but is competitive and would have potential in the right hands. A pretty good experience overall and not one I doubt anyone writing the “success” articles hasn’t enjoyed.

Keep The Faith! 􀀁

With the case problem out of the way I built a bolt action rifle using an old Mauser action and a surplus '03 Springfield barrel. The barrel was shortened and fitted to the action. I used a .30-06 chambering reamer to headspace the cartridge, but it is very possible to headspace the rifle without one, it just takes longer.

All of the time I was working on the rifle and making cases, I was thinking about how I could get a single shot rile that would handle this cartridge.

As you know, single shot rifles are expensive and most do not handle rimless cases very well. One day while looking over some illustrations of Ballard ri­fles, it dawned on me that there was a modem rifle that looked much like the old Ballard single shot and was even the correct caliber. It was the 336 Marlin chambered for .35 Remington.

A Mariln 336 .35 Remington converted to a single shot, off-hand rifle.

I started visiting gun shops in the area and it was a month before I found what I was looking for. It was an older gun that was banged up but showed little internal wear. Guns of this type are available at prices from $100 to $200 depending on condi­tion and sights. It would be easier and cheaper to start with a .30- 30 rifle and use the original barrel. However, due to the shallow, rifling and short light barrel, I think that it is well worth the additional cost to use a Springfield barrel for my .30 X 1-9/16" cartridge, since .30-06 barrels are readily available in excellent condition for less than $50.

Shortened, necked-down
.35 Remington and the Lee 30-170-F

The nice thing about this conversion is that no action work is required, all you have to do is get rid of the magazine tube and replace it with a forearm hanger. The hanger is made to fit tightly in the magazine tube hole and is held in place by using a long 12-28 machine screw through the front screw hole in the trigger plate. There are other ways that you can do this but they all require that you modify the action. On my rifle this screw also holds the palm rest hanger in place. The forearm is supported entirely by the hanger leaving the barrel free floating. The palm rest was made from scrap iron and an old brass door knob.

Although not required, I chose to install a new one-piece firing pin as I felt that it would make ig­nition faster and more positive. I made a one piece firing pin out of 1/4" drill rod. The new firing pin will require heat treatment.

The action was drilled and tapped for iron sights and scope mounts. I wanted to be able to use both, so I shortened the scope base to accommo­date the rear sight. This allowed the scope base to remain in place while using the iron sights. I mounted a Lyman target front sight by modifying the original '03 front sight band. I chose to do this because I had the sight. I would use a front sight that was removable if I were buying one.

You can let your personal taste govern the stock shape. I added a short piece of wood to the butt to lengthen it slightly so that I could use a modified target style prong buttplate. The buttplate is available from Dixie Gun Works for about $10. I patterned the shape of the buttstock, pistol grip and forearm after early Ballard and Stevens rifles. If you are a careful "scrounger" you can have the fun of building one of these rifles for as little as $250.

The target photo shows a typi­cal ten shot, iron sight group, fired from a rest at 100 yards with loads between 16 and 20 grains of RL-7 and Lee 30-170-F bullets cast in li­notype. The level of accuracy is far better than my old eyes and reflexes can hold offhand, which is the in­tended purpose for my new toy.

Ten shots from a "Poor Man's Single-Shot Rifle"

The receiver is marked with the model (M 89), place and year of manufacture (GEVÆRFABRIKEN KJØBEN-HAVN 1891), and serial number. As with all Krags, the Danish version sports a buttery smooth action.

Unlike their American cousins, however, these rifles feature a prominent cocking piece.

When originally manufactured, activating the safety involved lowering the cocking piece to its half-cock notch (see rear arrow in photo). Sometime after 1910 most rifles were altered by the addition of a second safety mechanism on the right rear of the receiver (see second arrow in photo). In some references, these modified arms are referred to as Model 1889-10 rifles.

The Danish Krags were also equipped with magazine cutoffs on the left rear of the receiver. When in the down position, the cartridges are held in the magazine and the rifle operates as a single-shot. When flipped up, the cartridges are allowed to feed from the magazine. After much experimenting, I have settled on a mild target load using WLR (Winchester Large Rifle) primers and 21.5 grains of Accurate Arms XMP-5744 powder under 160-grain gas check bullets cast in a 1:16 (tin-to-lead) alloy from a Lyman 323470 mould, sized to .325” and lubed with an Alox lube. These loads utilize some nice Buffalo Arms 8x58R Danish Krag brass made up from .45-70 cases (Australia’s Bertram Brass also offers cases in this caliber). Bullets were seated just over the second band, without a crimp, for an overall cartridge length of about 2.92”. Although I have not yet chronographed this load, it shoots to point-of-aim at 100 yards using the rifle’s point-blank rear sight setting (rear sight leaf folded down), and these cartridges function fine through the magazine in my rifle.

Not motivated to acquire a proper set of reloading dies for this caliber (which list for upwards of $70), I approached the challenge by assembling an ersatz set of dies from the wide assortment of widows and orphans littering my basement reloading hideaway. I neck size my fired cases and seat my bullets using inexpensive Lee 8MM Lebel dies, and neck expand using a C-H/4D .321” die (nominally too small, but it seems to work just fine). Oh, and a standard .45-70 shell holder works with the Buffalo Arms cases, too.

I was happy to score a 403 out of a possible 500 at a recent 100-yard Antique Military Rifle Match held at the Dormont-Mt. Lebanon Sportsmen’s Club south of Pittsburgh (20 rounds slow fire prone, 10 rounds offhand, 10 rounds rapid fire sitting, 10 rounds rapid fire prone - all fired on SR-1 targets). In ten years, this was only the second time I have been able to break 400 at these semi-annual matches (I know - I should practice more…). I also chose this classic old war horse to shoot in this year’s Antique Military Rifle CBA Postal Match No. 20, and managed one 5-shot group measuring 1-3/16” using the load described above. This rifle looks to be a keeper!

As shown in the photograph, I begin with a 6-gallon plastic bucket, taller than the more common 5-gallon size thus superior for my heavyweight 400-to 600-gr. bullets which I most often cast. I make, then insert inside an angled, three-tier shelf system constructed of 1/8” thick metal wire frameworks laterally covered with medium-weight cotton duck fabric. These tiers pre-vent the just-cast bullets from plummeting straight to the bottom of the bucket to impact others, thus causing accuracy-detrimental deformities.

To maintain static water temperature during the casting process, I run a section of garden hose from a faucet down a side to the bottom of the bucket, keeping a small stream of water running. This constant flow results in the bucket water becoming and remaining temperature-stable, thus helping to ensure a static BHN. For the overflow, I installed a $3.15 short, thru-hull plastic connector (intended for boat use; 5/8” hose diameter) secured roughly 1-1/2” down from the top by J-B WELD® epoxy-type adhesive. If desired, a section of plastic tubing or hose can be run from the connector to direct the overflow wherever preferred.

Assuming water will be from a cold tap, initial bucket water temperature can be increased by those individuals casting slowly, or those producing bullets of small or medium calibers by simply reducing appropriately the amount of flow into the bucket. Or, if it’s desirable for those above folks, or for the purpose of jump-starting when beginning to cast, pour in a 2-quart pan of boiling water to quickly raise overall temperature.

This bucket-type assembly allows the caster to concentrate on achieving and maintaining bullet quality, and precludes most interruptions to rhythm and constant overriding concerns of damaging bullets.

My illustrated bucket assembly has been engineered to my own technique and preferences, but in building your own you shouldn’t be hesitant to alter its overall design and/or features to your own preferences and techniques. As shown, depending upon your own materials sources, excluding your time and gasoline, the cost to produce a comparable unit can run about$15.00-plus. This one cost me $12.00 - extremely cheap for the superb results and sizeable reduction in mental and physical tensions. 􀀁

Being basically lazy, I was looking for a good game bullet right from the mould without having to do anything extra to it. A rough chamber cast and an even rougher picture of what I thought I wanted was sent to Old West Bullet Moulds (P.O. Box 519, Flora Vista, NM 87415) after I found out they made hollow point moulds. They made a few suggestions and I ordered the mould. The hollow pointing pin is short and cone shaped. The bullet weighs 337 grains when cast of wheel weights and is .379” in diameter. It has been a very accurate bullet and great for game. It usually loses about one-third of its weight with the long remaining shank penetrating far enough on deer and bear to reach the vitals even on a quartering flank shot.

I did hit one bear in the chest as it faced me and couldn’t find the bullet or an exit wound. It probably shattered but I didn’t find any bullet fragments to speak of, so maybe I just missed it during the butchering.

Reading Paul Matthews books got me to wondering about dead soft paper patched bullets. I cast some bullets of pure lead from the undersized 330 gr. Hoch mould, and they came out weighing 340 grains. Paper patched, they aren’t as accurate as the Old West hollow point, but they don’t do too badly. They work great on deer and black bear. A few coyotes have also been taken with them. That dead soft bullet is pretty tough on a coyote pelt.

L to R: The paper-patched bullet is the 330 Hoch that weighs 340 grs. cast of pure lead. The expanded bullet below it weighs 336.2 grains and was recovered from a bear. The bullet hit the left flank and ended up under the hide in front of the right shoulder.The second bullet is a 355-gr. Hoch. The recovered bullet below it is one that had been soft pointed and now weighs 228 grs. The deer was hit in the neck and the bullet was found under the hide between the back legs.The third bullet is the 337-gr. Old West hollow point. The recovered bullet weighs 205 grains and was taken from a buffalo. The bullet hit the crease where the neck joins the shoulder and ended up under the hide on the far side flank.The fourth bullet is a 330 Hoch cast of WWs and air-cooled. The recovered bullet was taken from a deer. Retained weight is 180 grains.

The paper-patched bullet and the Old West hollow point seem about identical for penetration, but the wound channels are quite different. The hollow point makes a big entrance hole, then the shank penetrates deep after the nose has broken off. They act like a Nosler Partition bullet in that respect. The dead soft paper patched bullet opens immediately on contact, and due to the nature of the soft lead it hangs together and has a large frontal area to push through the animal. Meat taken with the paper-patched bullet is nicer to eat.

Sometimes fragments from the hollow point end up in unexpected places.

I never have had a wide flat point mould for the .375 but I’m sure one would work just fine, if heavy enough. Getting right down to it, when you put a soft point on a cast bullet it acts about like a wadcutter. The soft lead probably wipes away almost immediately leaving a wadcutter type shank.

My son got his deer this year with a 440-grain wide flat point bullet cast of half pure lead and half wheel weights, and air cooled. He was using his .45-70 Ruger No. 1. Both the entrance and exit holes were about three inches across. Needless to say, the deer didn’t get very far after that. I’ll bet a Ruger No. 1 in .50 Alaskan would be a great cast bullet rifle for brush hunting. If I really thought I was going to hunt another 50 years, I would probably talk myself in to getting one. 􀀁

Loring Hall has shot these bullets offhand very effectively in the Winter League matches at the Old Colony Sportsman’s Association in Pembroke MA for many years, in one of his 30/06 Hammerli Team Rifles.

I’ve borrowed a mold for this bullet several times from Pete Ziko, a member at Old Colony, and cast a thou-sand or so bullets each time. Pete absolutely refused to part with the mold. These bullets, at lower velocities, have shot accurately in a number of 30 caliber rifles that I’ve owned.

Recently I’ve borrowed molds from Mark Miller and John Greene, to cast some additional bullets. John made the mold I borrowed from him, a very nice piece of work. He has the cherry and can supply molds.

The trick to this mold is that the base band is tapered smaller at the rear-larger at the front; and the dimensions are made so that the bullet slips into a fired 30 caliber case and wedges itself to a stop about half way up the base band. To reload: deprime and reprime, throw a charge of powder and seat the bullet with your fingers.

308403, .30-30 case, and loaded round

No sizing of the cartridge case or bullet is required. I find that chamfering the inside of the case mouth helps in seating the bullet.

Shown are some typical 100 yard groups, Winchester 30/30, 30XSTS, 6.8/Unique, Dacron wad, WLP primer. 􀀃

The key to cast load accuracy is the fit of the bullet in the chamber throat. Correct bullet diameter is found easily by pushing a pure lead ball or slug into the throat, ahead of a case for a snug fit. After measuring this dimension, you should be sure your bullet is sized .0005” under this to eliminate forcing cone interference. For match loads, some shooters make the bullet the same size as the throat, but this works only if your bullet, case, chamber, etc., are all perfectly concentric with one another. Forget the groove diameter of your barrel.

For light loads with fast-burning powders, a positive gas seal in the throat is more important, and with-soft alloys and light loads a somewhat oversized bullet does not hurt, and is often a plus. A bullet even .001” smaller than the throat, if cast of wheel-weight metal or softer alloy, will give a positive gas seal with correct charges, using either a gascheck or a plain base.

For best results, cases which have been fired in a particular rifle should be neck-sized only. The Ideal tong tool or Lee Loader are entirely adequate for this. For these low-pressure loads, full-length sizing is almost never required. The sized-case neck diameter is critical, however, to provide a correct fit of the bullet. For field use and magazine utility, adequate neck tension is required. The I.D. of the sized neck should be .001” less than the bullet, or somewhat tighter if the bullet can be seated in a chamfered case without shaving lead and damaging it. Most hand dies size necks to fit jacketed bullets, but can be polished out to size to give a correct fit with lead loads, without shaving the bullet when seating it in a lightly-chamfered case. With conventional loading tools, it may be necessary to use a stepped expander plug to permit seating cast bullets. An expedient is simply to change to a somewhat larger expander button in your sizer die. In my Lyman tong tool, a .303 British expander gives a .309” I.D. in the neck, which is a correct fit for a .310” bullet.

Once you have a bullet which fits the throat with .0005” to .0010” clearance, mated to a case neck giving proper fit, you have a condition which creates good alignment of the loaded round, since the bullet does the guiding, and creates a positive gas seal. This is the optimum condition for cast bullet accuracy in common chambers.

Cast bullets which have given consistent performance in a variety of .30 cal. cartridges are best to start with. If choosing only one mold, I’d recommend a gas-check design, since they can be used successfully with-out the gascheck for light loads, and with gascheck for heavier loads. Best .30 cal. gascheck designs to start with are the 140-gr. #311440, the 170-gr. #311291, the 173-gr. #31141, the 202-gr. #311299, or the 214-gr. #311284. Bullets of similar designs by other makers such as the Lee C309170F or RCBS 30-180 FN are also good. The most important consideration is that the bullet must have an effective bearing length at least twice its diameter. This means that if the rear band portion of the bullet is short, its nose must be of adequate diameter to engage the rifling to provide some guidance. If you can insert the nose of the bullet into your barrel up to the first driving band without noticeable resistance, it’s no good, unless you have two calibers of bearing length otherwise.

Powders used for the “adequate load” vary, depending on the case capacity and velocity, to give good accuracy with plain based bullets up to 1400 f.p.s. or with gas-checked bullets up to about 1800 f.p.s. Disregard any load with a listed velocity over 1800 f.p.s. Higher velocities are beyond the scope of this article and get into the realm of cast bullet skullduggery and witchcraft.

Some basic load data is in order, and a review of successful loads shows the same basic powder charges and bullets are often used repeatedly by different shooters with good results. In these suggested “standard” loads, powder charges are correct for the heaviest bullet normally used in that caliber: 220 gr. in .30-’06, 200 grains in .308 Win., 180 grains in .30-30, etc. Lighter bullets can be satisfactorily substituted.

The best reduced load powders for use with cast bullets are DuPont SR-4759 and Hercules RL-7. Also good are Du Pont IMR 4198, 4227 and Hodgdon equivalents. For light, small game and plinking loads with plain based bullets, Hercules Unique has been a standby for many years and still gives good service. A relatively new powder which gives good results with light cast bullet loads is W-W 630. It appears to be the best of the Ball powders for use with reduced loads, and is the only one Olin suggests for the purpose.

In any case of .30-’06 size or larger, SR-4759 is the powder of choice, since it bulks up well and is ignited easily. In the .30-’06, I’d suggest 21 grains as a starting load, giving about 1600 f.p.s. with 220-grain bullets like the #311284, and not more than 25 grains for about 1800 f.p.s. as a hunting load. RL-7 makes a fair substitute, correct charges being 24-28 grains to give about the same range of velocities. In the .308 Winchester, 20-21 grains of RL-7 is the standard load for target shooters with 160-180-gr. bullets, giving about 1600 f.p.s. For hunting loads, you can use up to 24 grains with bullets as heavy as 200 grains for about 1800 f.p.s. in 22”-24” barrels. Approximate .308 Win. charges of SR-4759 for 1600-1800 f.p.s. with 180-200-grain cast bullets are 16-22 grains. In the .30-30 Winchester, excellent results can be had with light loads approximating the .32-40 with 160-170-grain bullets, using 12-13 grains of W-W 630 or 13-1/2 to 14-1/2 grains of SR-4759, IMR-4227 or H4227. Nearly identical results can be had with 15-18 grains of RL-7, IMR-4198 or H4198. For heavier 1800 f.p.s. hunting loads in .30-30 rifles, you can use up to 21 grs. of RL-7 or 4198 with bullets up to 190 grains.

If you are like many shooters, you’ll find these modest, simple loads entirely adequate for most of your shooting, just as we did 30 and more years ago. Some of the grand old powders like Sharpshooter, No. 80 and Lightning are gone forever, but they make some newer and better ones which serve the same purposes. The concept of the light, adequate load with soft alloy is as sound now as it ever was. There’s no better way to get more satisfying, fun shooting for less trouble or money.

I selected a handful of these and proceeded to cre-ate “DHP” (Dished Hollow Point) bullets. I used a Forster hollow-point tool in a case trimmer to create a perfectly centered pilot hole in each bullet, then used just the point of a larger twist drill (turned by hand) to create the wide & shallow cavity, leaving just enough of the flat nose as a rim to support the bullet in the rifle’s magazine.

The cavities turned out to be .25” wide and about .05” deep-as near as the stem of my dial caliper could determine the depth. As an afterthought (a fortunate one, as it turned out), I also cast and prepared some bullets using the standard 20:1 (lead:tin) alloy, BHN 8.5; these bullets weighed an average of 406 grains each.

Load information is as follows: Starline cases, WLR primers, 50 grains H4895, bullets as described and sized to .459”, lubed with LBT Blue Lube; OAL is 2.50”. Muzzle velocity with the 417 grain bullets is 1725 f.p.s. The load is quite accurate, giving me 3” groups at 100 yards using either aperture sights or a Burris Fast Fire II red dot sight. Note that this load is appropriate for strong modern actions only.

Since I did not have a truckload of ballistic gelatin to use as a test medium, I opted for simplicity and used what I had: water-filled plastic gallon jugs lined up on a 2x10. (I make no assumption that this test medium is exactly like the body of a game animal; some parts of an animal are softer, such as the lungs; some are tougher, such as bones and sinew. But the water jugs did provide consistency and some indication of the behavior of the bullets in a medium somewhat akin to flesh. Remember that water is both incompressible and heavy.) The shooting was conducted at a distance of ten feet in order to improve the chance of accurate bullet impact and alignment with the jugs.

The test results that follow were initially a disappointment for someone who was hoping for good performance from painstaking hollow-pointing efforts. But the disappointment faded once I realized that the results were actually better than I had hoped for.

Test #1: DHP bullet, WW+ alloy. The bullet penetrat-ed more than 60” of water jugs. It showed very little mushrooming (to .520”) and lost 81 grains of its weight (19%). Evidently, the shallowness of the HP cavity had not prevented the nose of the bullet from breaking away. The bullets probably mushroomed to a larger diameter in passing through the jugs, but because of the velocity and the alloy, the mushroomed metal broke off.

Test #2: DHP bullet, 20:1 alloy. The bullet penetrated 30” of water jugs and showed radical mushrooming (1.030 ” extreme, .910” average) and lost 14 grains of its weight (3%). Almost none of the nose had broken off, though the mushroom skirt showed a tear on one side. that probably indicated that some breakage was immi-nent. This is very good mushrooming performance.

Test #3: Flat nose bullet, WW+ alloy. The bullet pen-etrated 55” of water jugs and showed moderate but even mushrooming (.770” extreme, .710” average) and lost 19 grains of its weight (5%). Apparently very little of the nose had broken off; this bullet may provide a good balance of penetration and expansion-depending on the intended target.

Test #4: Flat nose bullet, 20:1 alloy. The bullet pene-trated slightly less than 30” of water jugs and showed radical and even mushrooming (.910” extreme, .900” average) and lost none of its original 406 gr. weight. For lighter or thin-skinned game that does not require deep penetration, this may be the best outcome of all.

Conclusions: unless a shooter wants bullet nose fragmentation, even a very shallow hollow point cavity may not produce desirable results; a wide flat nose does better, since it is somewhat less likely to break away on impact. And in order to achieve the greatest bullet expan-sion, or in order to balance bullet expansion with pene-tration, it is best to combine that flat nose with a proper bullet alloy. Bullets cast of softer alloys seem less likely to fragment on impact. But although a Brinell hardness number may be one indication of a bullet’s ability to expand without breakage, I do not doubt that there are other factors that enable the metal to deform without fracturing. Perhaps a CBA member with expertise in met-allurgy could help us here.

Certainly more data are needed in order to verify or modify the conclusions arrived at here. I would be inter-ested in hearing from other shooters and experimenters who have conducted their own experiments in cast bullet expansion; contact me at . And if you decide to use some element of the informal meth-ods described here, be sure to place the jugs in a per-fectly straight row (handle sides alternating), line up your shot carefully, and have a towel handy. You’re going to need it. 􀀁

The two starter ends and 4” duct section cost about $15 at Home Depot. The unneeded exhaust louvers on the front of the hood were blocked off with duct tape.

The other end of the duct (Fig 2) was connected to a starter end installed in a 1/4” plywood piece from my scrap woodpile. This plywood piece was cut to fit snugly into the track of the sliding window. It can be easily removed for storage between casting sessions.

Fig. 1

Fig. 2

I selected a salvaged electrical cord from my electrical drawer, hooked up the vent wiring, checked the fan rotation, & checked to see that the light worked.

Next I cut legs for the vent from scrap pieces of wood & bolted them to the corners of the hood to provide about 20” of workroom under the lower edge of the hood (Fig 3). Cardboard was stapled between the legs at the two ends & the back of the unit in order to direct fumes away from my face & into the duct. I am now looking for some scrap light-gage aluminum or galvanized sheets to use for this purpose instead of the cardboard in order to make the unit more fire resistant.

I am now looking for some scrap light-gage aluminum or galvanized sheets to use for this purpose instead of the cardboard in order to make the unit more fire resistant.

I cut a piece of 1/4” plywood to use as a floor inside the unit to protect my table from the inevitable burns from lead splatters & hot tools.

I turned on the vent fan at high speed & fired up the lead pot. Any smoke was quickly drawn up the duct to the outdoors. No casting smell was noticed in my workroom (verified by the little woman in the family room above!).

I recommend you check that the fan capacity & duct length on your unit provide sufficient venting. Since the lead pot was already heated up, I cast a boxful of .357 slugs while I listened to news on the TV in the pleasant coolness of my basement. 

Fig. 3

Now you would think I was finished but no! I had run across an antique gun dealer in California that had another Marlin 1895, but this one was in 33 WCF and made about 1912-1914. I dug a little deeper in my pockets and got this one as well. Actually, it and the 38-56 arrived about the same time, as did the brass and dies. For the 33 WCF I also used Quality Cartridge brass.

The hold up however was a mould! I had tried on EBay a couple times to win a Lyman 338320 or the older GC version of the RCBS 33-200 mould, but each time I had no luck! A couple weeks later a guy on leverguns told me about a dealer in California that had a “like new” dual cavity 338320. His price was a little high, but it was only about $20 more than the single cavity moulds had been selling for on EBay. I went ahead and bought the mould. I already had gas checks on hand, as every time I would see a partial box at a gun show I would pick them up. Seems I have a few thousand now. I also got a lube size die at the same time I got the loading dies.

With the 33 WCF I decided to start at 20 grains of XMP5744 and work up. I loaded six rounds with 20 grains, six rounds with 21 grains, six rounds with 22 grains and six more with 23 grains. All of these were shot at 50 yards in three-shot groups. The 20 grain load was not so great, the 21 grain load was not bad and the 22 grain load looked good. The 23 grain load opened up a bit from the 22 grain load.

I went home quickly and loaded about a dozen with 22 grains and six with 23 grains. I came back and shot the 23 grain load first so as to give it a better chance, but I saw no difference.

Then I tried to sight in as best I could. My 22 grain load at 50 yards shot about five inches high. Oh well, I just need to remember to hold a tad low at the shot.

So at this point I have all three rifles ready for deer season, and only a couple weeks before I can try them. Since the 40-65 started this whole ordeal I decided it was only fitting for that one to get first go.

I had a 16-foot ladder stand set-up about 30 yards back in the woods off a pasture. The deer were known to travel from the field into the woods in the general area I had the stand. The first morning I got up in the tree with the 40-65 long before first light.

It finally got light enough to see to shoot at about 6:45. About 20 minutes later I heard a deer coming through the brush almost straight at me. When she was about 35 yards away I put the bead behind her shoulder and pulled the trigger. At the crack of the gun she turned tail and went back the way she came but in about three seconds I heard a crash. I waited about 20 minutes and then got down and went to find her. The doe was dead and the old Lyman plain base bullet had done a pass thru on her.

The next week I decided to take out the 38-56 and give it a try. The second morning I took it out I was in the same stand early in the morning. Again, a doe comes toward me like the one the week before. I am not sure if I moved too quickly and she saw me or what but anyway before I could get the gun up she was gone.

For some unexplained reason I decided to get down and walk over where she was when she turned and ran. After looking around there some, I looked up and saw the neighbor’s horses standing at the fence watching me. Then they turned their heads and looked back down in the field. I looked where they were looking and noticed a trio of does coming in my direction. I sat down on the ground with my back against a tree and waited, with the rifle up resting on my knee and the butt against my shoul-der.

The three deer came up to the fence and milled about some. Then the largest one went under the fence and came up on my side about 25 yards away. Her chest cavity was behind a tree with her head poking out, look-ing around. I decided to put the bead on her temple and pulled the trigger. Needless to say at the crack of the rifle she hit the ground. I got up and walked over to her; of course she was dead. I was amazed that my mild load had gone in and out of her head.

The following week I took the 33 WCF out a couple times and got a shot at a nice little spike at about 65 yards. I am sorry to say I did not connect with that one. Still even after missing the little spike I had a good year!I didn’t take out the 33 WCF in 2008 as I had some other things I wanted to try, but I am sure not too far down the road the old 33 WCF will get another shot! 􀀁

The tunnel itself has required no maintenance. It has neither settled or frost heaved and the clean gravel bed it sets on eliminates any potential drainage problems.

The only other periodically required maintenance is at the other end of the tunnel. The small nine-volt battery in the Chrony has to be changed and new baffles must be installed periodically because the high velocity gas and unburned powder grains eventually erode them. Also, the low pressure cast bullet loads leave some unburned powder grains which accumulate in the first few feet ahead of the muzzle.

I noticed these on the Chrony the first time I pulled it out of the tunnel to replace the battery. It didn’t take too much high level reasoning to understand that a muzzle flash might ignite this unburned powder and turn my tunnel into a very long gun barrel with interesting but unpredictable and probably undesirable side effects. To avoid this unwanted phenomenon, I routinely got out the shop vacuum and all my extension tubes and vacuumed out the first eight feet or so of the tunnel when I changed batteries or light bulbs in the Chrony. I don’t like to clean rifle bores and avoid it as much as possible. Cleaning out this larger bore was even more irksome and involved reaching into the sooty tunnel as far as possible with the vacuum cleaner extensions, a dirty job I didn’t enjoy. Maybe as a result of my distaste for this chore it didn’t get done very often.

I found out that the frequency of my maintenance schedule was inadequate one day after fifteen years of uneventful shooting. As I touched off a shot there was a loud whoof and everything in sight turned a brilliant orange. It was quite dramatic and took half a second to realize what was happening. In a second it was all over, my plastic foam bulkhead had been blown out of the end of the tunnel and the brilliant orange had turned to smoke. My sloppy maintenance had finally caught up with me. The fire had been just a flash and had done no damage to the Chrony or the tunnel surface.

Oak chunk being lowered into place.

Although this nifty combustion method of removing the unburned power was much quicker and easier than vacuuming, it didn’t seem prudent to depend on it and I vowed to reform my slipshod maintenance practice.

Other than the regular chores of replacing the back-stops, batteries, and light bulbs and vacuuming out the unburned powder, the tunnel has been maintenance free for 19 years. If you happen to have the right situation and enough land, you may want to consider building a shooting tunnel as a luxury addition to your basement.

I am looking forward to again enjoying the conve-nience of shooting from my basement this winter. I hope the efficiency of experimenting with cast bullet loads within twenty feet of my reloading bench will help me develop the ultimate 22 cast bullet for the coming com-petitive season. I will then be able to torment all my friends who insist on shooting the wrong caliber. 

I cast a Lee 125 grain round flat. I had to give them a try. Loaded up a good quantity of both the 100 wadcut-ters and the 125’s using the same charge of clays and headed for the range.

I decided to do all my shooting from a sitting position at 15 yards figuring that is a good practical range for any small revolver. The standard load for the 38 S+W is a 146-148 grain bullet so I expected these lighter loads to shoot low so I wasn’t surprised when they did.

The 125’s shot better than the 100 wadcutters. As I shot I got used to the gun and the groups got better. The included target is the last group I fired from the gun. Six 100 gr. and six 125s. Notice the 125’s are in the bull and all in all a pretty good group.

I wish I could say that my project was a total success but no such luck. I knew the gun had “issues” and they kind of got worse as the shooting progressed. Like the cylinder would fall open about the fifth shot of a double action string and sometimes I’d have to jiggle things to get the cylinder to rotate. Minor inconveniences! Also the hammer hinge pin that is supposed to be tight in the frame tries to come out. I also noticed when I went to reload the brass that the rim was rough and needed to be coaxed into the shell holder.

What does all this prove? Well, one can have fun with junk, and even the most worn out old Colt can still shoot ok. I also decided I like those little Colts enough I think I’ll go find a good one and put my clunker back on the shelf where it belongs! After I render it inoperable of course.

After I wrote the above I learned a young man I know was going to welding school. I asked him how small of a part could be welded with a tig welder. I showed him the well worn cylinder bolt and asked him if he could build it up a little. He said no problem. To make a long story short it disintegrated as soon as the arc was struck. Well the old Colt is now inoperable and for my safety it will stay that way! 

Now don’t get the idea that I had the idea this old dog 38-55 was going to take all the blue ribbons and blow that Turkey Shoot out of business. The whole idea rather was just do about like I’d been doing without them blaming that on my “Fancy Dan fusils owned only by rich kids.”

Another thing this shoot had then was sight checking free from 9 ‘til 10 A.M. Then to count, from 10 A.M. ‘til dark, pot and bird. This sighting in had added a couple more winners.

They then also held the pot money and decided disputes, but took 10%. That opening day Turkey Shoot season was as warm and as calm as in the coops when I had shot five tens from a cool barrel and I had not sight checked from 9 A.M. to 10 A.M. but had been looking at a Mod. ‘94 nice new shot gun style butt stock a guy had said “would dress up my beat up old 38-55 a lot and I could have dirt cheap.” I says, “If you’re around after a while I might take it if I got any money.”

By noontime I had 44 bucks more than I had at 10 A.M. and two big birds and my conscience was really bothering me being so rich from “Lucky ole Lucy” which is what I called the relic when the guy who gave it to me got through telling me, “You’re just the naturalist born lucky shooter I ever saw and with that ole 38-55 I’m hop-ing you’re done doing us today.”

I took the shotgun steel butt plate buttstock but roughed it up a bit to match the natural antique exterior decor of the 38-55 old dog M94. It took some bumps to make it all look equal but by no means did I intend to renew this fire barrel unusual attraction which, without a doubt, was proof positive that dumb luck was still the main thing at a one shot to win or lose over a log shoot out. I was certain the tight fitting shotgun butt, which was also a little longer and straighter, improved my luck even more that queer year and other charitable buy, sell or traders were always at hand to let me have “like new” this or that “to gussy that gooney up a bit.”

One nice catch was a brand new 26” octagon barrel complete with original sights that would have fit right on to the half magazine and forearm. I of course, except for the butt stock, never changed such a lucky combo. Winner load and gun made sure not to luck more than a couple of pots and birds any one day and I even let bor-rowers of “lucky guns” shoot it with my lucky loads, but almost always ‘that light trigger let go” before they were ready for “bad luck.” I’d console the bum “cheap shots.” “Cheap shots” were borrowers of win guns.

Along about October, prior to the Harvest Hunt Week at Gramp’s camp, I wanted to try my 9.5X57 Mannlicher Schoenauer for a few shots and the fire barrel crowd acted glad to see that “Fancy Dan fusil” back instead of the 38-55. The fact of that day’s shoot was that I’d been spoiled a bit by that mild 38-55 load and the one out of nine shoots I won that day really was plain lucky.

Finally, the fellow who had “let me have it” comes over and says, “Duke, I kinda feel like I stuck you a little on that 38-55 scrap parts job before I knew what a real regular guy you are, so to show yah how we enjoy your coming out to entertain us, I can let you make double on that old gun and also allow you another five to leave that new stock on.” I says, acting overcome by such a friend-ly gesture, “Geez, that’s really hard to turn down consid-ering this crowbar shoots so wild and all, but the thing here is I needed an old rough out gun to throw in the old Ford that if it got wet or stolen or anything I wouldn’t feel too bad about this clunker and I thought the number seven bucks it cost me might be lucky.” By then he’s looking over at his cronies as if signaling sadly, “He ain’t getting off this lucky s.o.b. gun and he’s shoving it to me to boot too.” I then added as an after shocker, “You know I lend this thing to any one wants to get lucky and I’ll even show yah how to load my load if yah wanna get some tools ‘cause you know it shoots high with them loads you tried.

He came over to the Bar and Griddle while I’m doing a steak dinner with their pot money and says, “Duke, we’re gonna do it, so just give us a list of lead load tools and a Lyman book and we’ll do the rest if you really will let us shoot that lucky lunker.” I says, “shake on it!” They learned fast with cast so then the Turkey Shoot sponsors decided, “We just can’t have a few guys shoot-ing one lucky gun winning all the marbles.” The new rule was “One gun can win only two pots and birds per day.”

The crowd came back to that shoot and my luck was right back to the usual two week’s pay for one day’s play which was still about like my “Fancy Fusil’s” sire. The fellows who learned a little about lead loads stayed with it in their usual 30-30, 32 Special, 38-55, and other sport rifles including sporterized surplus militaries of that era, to keep the winners well spread out with some very good shots as regulars and gun buff traders too. Some pretty “Fancy Dan fusils” also got in on that “big action” shoot and I got to believing that maverick 38-55 scrap rene-gade was in fact maybe lucky, when deep down all knew that most of the time it was, on a close shot, that 38 cal. wider hole that put the pot in pocket and the bird in some one’s oven for a fair price. This raised the value of sec-ond hand 38-55’s considerable.

The fact of the matter was really that I was fascinated to be able to stand around the smoke and sparks bar-rel with that hysterical odd ball on my arm of such unconventional form and decrepit looking to boot. But under neath its exterior shock, I, at lest, was sure it was a shooter somewhat above the common herd with a cus-tom cut cast load and “consistently lucky.” As ever, Frank Marshall Jr.

I next decided to try to interrupt, or at least confuse, the sound waves and perhaps change their tone by adding a couple of baffles. There was nothing scientific about this. I simply made a bracket that held two three-inch thick Styrofoam pieces that loosely fitted the pipe with a hole in the centers to fire through. One baffle was positioned perpendicular to the axis of the tunnel and the other one was held at a 45-degree angle. Eureka!

The report was reduced and the tank tone was gone. Hearing protection was still needed but the noise in other areas of the basement was tolerable and the first floor and the padding and carpet above apparently dampened the noise that reached the rooms above enough to prevent Janet, my usually tolerant wife, from objecting.

Basement end of tunnel with bench, rests and Styrofoam bulkhead in place.

Another concern that others have mentioned is whether the results from shooting at fifty yards would be a true indicator of what a rifle and load would do at longer distances. Because my principle motive for building the tunnel was to be able to test rifles and cast bullet loads this was a critical question but one I was confident that I already had a partial answer for.

Styrofoam baffles that solved the objectionable tin pipe sound and reduced the report.

At my shooting range at our previous house I had both a fifty and hundred yard backstop. When it was very windy or troublesome mirage was present I often shot at fifty yards. I repeatedly compared the group sizes at 50 with those fired, in good conditions, at 100 yards and satisfied myself that, on average, groups at 100 were no more than twice as big as those at 50. If any-thing, they seemed to average a bit less than twice as big at 100. I suspect this proportional relationship does-n’t hold true at longer ranges for all loads, but 50 yards seemed to be every bit as good at determining what a load would do at 100 yards as actually shooting at 100 yards – maybe better for a marginally effective wind shooter like myself.

The next thing on my wish list was a chronograph set up in the tunnel so I could collect velocities with min-imum fuss. I looked at the chronographs on the market and decided that a Beta Model Shooting Chrony with the remote control panel and a lighting fixture would fit in the tunnel and work, as well as keep the cost down to about$100. Of course the chronograph screens and lighting fixtures needed to be ten to fifteen feet into the tunnel and I didn’t want to have to crawl into the tunnel every time I needed to replace batteries or light bulbs.

To solve this problem I mounted the screens and light fixture on a eight foot 1 x 8 that can be pushed into the tunnel and then pushed further ahead by the bracket for the baffles. Pulling on the power cord allows me to fetch the board with the screens and lights back out for battery and light bulb replacement.

Chronograph screens and lights mounted on board for inserting into tunnel.

Completed shooting shed and long handled target holder.

Changing targets requires a trip to the shooting shed. To minimize the time and effort spent changing targets I use a target with from ten to twenty aiming points. When shooting five shot groups I can fire as many as 100 shots between target changes. To make target changing easier I attached a long handle to the piece of plywood bracket that holds the targets. This allows me to remove and replace targets without climbing down into the shooting shed.

This set up worked and has served me well for almost twenty years with thousands of cast bullets mak-ing the trip to the target. Details of the maintenance of the tunnel will be discussed in part three. 

To get a reamer made, Joe was kind enough to send me some fired cases and bullets he uses as well as some cases with the bullets seated. In the meantime I looked in the NEI catalog and found some bullets that looked like they would work along with the ones I had. I ordered #266 and #267A without gas checks, both cut in one double cavity mould. Delivery was to be about 4 weeks.

I also ordered some 8X50R cases and a set of 41 Swiss dies from Lee. I wanted to wait to order the reamer until I had the barrel to get bore sizes from it so in the meantime the cases and dies arrived and so I set about forming cases. Joe had suggested using a case length of 1.560” as it will hold the bullets better. I found that by using a .427” expander I made in my lathe I could expand the case neck and then cut them to around 1.700”.

NEI 267A and 266

I then ran them through the Lee sizing die and trimmed them to length without any case loss. I ended up making my cases 1.558” length and they will hold 55.8 grains of water. Fifty cases were formed in this manner. I was still waiting for the barrel when the mould came and so I was off to the Lead Shed in the back yard to cast some bullets.

Along with the NEI mould I had a PC mold #44265CP and a Lee #430-310 .The NEI #266 bullet cast of 23-1 alloy came out at 310 grains and the 267A at 335 grains of the same alloy. The PC mould weighed 275 grains. The Lee cast 300 grains from #2 alloy. Sizing of the bullet would wait until I had the barrel to slug for size.

In the meantime I read all I could on chambering a barrel and talked to a gunsmith friend. He told me to do it by hand and use lots of oil and it would be easy.

I was still waiting for the barrel so we took a three week trip out west. I was hoping the barrels would get there before I got back but no luck. A call to H&R confirmed that they were waiting for some material for one of the barrels I had ordered so it would be 2 or 3 weeks more. By now it had been about 5 months. The barrels did arrive and the 44 Mag. barrel was slugged and found to have .4305” groove diameter and with precision gages the bore was found to be .423”. The twist as best I can determine is 1 in 38”. The length is 22,” it has open sights, the chamber end is 1.112” diameter and muzzle end is .789”. It’s a nice heavy barrel.

Now I had all the information to order a reamer. I sent samples and letter to a reamer manufacture and was turned down so I called Dave Manson at Dave Manson Precision Reamers, 8200 Embury Rd., Grand Blanc, MI 48439, 810-953-0732, email dave@mansonreamers. com and asked him about my project. He said to send the samples and he would quote the reamer. In about 3 weeks an email arrived with a drawing and cost. A call to Dave with Credit Card info and approval of the drawing got the ball rolling.

I now had to wait for the reamer to arrive. Delivery was to be about 8 weeks.So far not so fast a project, but it was fairly easy on my part, so far.

The reamer came by the Big Brown truck, it was in a nice wooden box and the reamer is a work of art.

Being that I had by now determined to chamber it myself I went to the shop, made wood blocks to clamp it in the vise and got the oil can out. The reamer did its job for a few turns and then just kind of spun without cutting. Being I had never done this before I could not figure out why. I called my gunsmith and talked to him a bit and determined to take it to him and see what was wrong. He looked it over and tried to ream it himself with the same results I had. After some time I left the barrel and reamer with him and he said he would put it in his lathe after finding the cause of the problem. The project was becoming not so easy at this point.

About an hour later he called me and said he had found the problem. The extractors are hardened! By now the reamer had a burr from trying to cut the hardened extractor, but with a diamond file he was able to fix the reamer as good a new. What a testament to Dave’s material and craftsmanship.

At this point what he was going to do to help now turned into $100 to anneal the extractor and finish the chambering job. I told him to go ahead.A couple to days later I picked up the barrel. I decided to do a chamber cast to get further dimensions of case length and leade length. The casting showed the case length may be able to be as long as 1.587” and the lead was .436” diamete

I took one of the cases I made up and drilled and tapped it so I could measure bullet seating length with my overall length gauge.The NEI #266 would seat out to 2.279” to touch rifling, the 267A touched at 2.508”, the Lee 430-310AF seated to 2.105”.

Clearly some of these lengths will not work as the bullet is not even in the case mouth but that leaves lots of room to play with.Now after about a year and a half I can load some rounds and do some load development and shooting.|

Load development was a guess as to where to start as factory loads are not available. I decided to start with a published load as a start and used one that is in the Cartridges of the World. The load was 10 grains of Unique at a stated velocity of 1050 f.p.s. with 320 grain bullet. I also decided to keep as many things as possible the same so CCI 200 LR primers were used with all loads. Cases were trimmed to 1.255” to 1.256” and all bullets sized to .430” and lubed with SPG. Bullets were cast of 23-1 alloy. Twenty-five rounds were loaded with the 267A at 2.103” and 25 rounds with bullet #266 at 2.003 OAL. I wish I could say the test shooting was small groups but that was not the case. I started shooting at 25 yards. The 330 grain bullets printed three shots into 5”, and all keyholed. The 310 grain bullets printed 3 shots in 4” and didn’t keyhole. The cases showed no sign of over pres-sure. This was not what I had hoped for but it was a beginning. Much more load development will be needed to get something called a small group.

I learned a lot with this project. It was not cheap or fast or even easy.

I would like to thank Joe Weist for his help and input to this project.

Next, maybe I’ll rechamber a 223 H&R barrel to 225 Win. or maybe a 45-70 barrel to 577-450 M-H? Or make my own lugs and make my own barrels for the Handi Rifle. Or….􀀃

The shed is four feet by four feet square and of conventional wooden construction with 2 by 4 studs, and half-inch plywood, all pressure treated. After the shed was in place at the end of the pipe with the bottom four feet below the ground surface, the outside was covered with a thick polyethylene sheet as a moisture barrier before backfilling. This is the same approach used for wooden house foundations in some areas, including northern Maine, so I was confident that it would last longer than I would. There was no floor. The roof was hinged to provide access to the target. A cable from the house to the shed was buried in the trench outside of the pipe to provide power to light the target and run a fan to exhaust powder fumes from the tunnel and shack.

A shooting bench was built in the basement at the opening for the tunnel. The slope of the lot prevented constructing the tunnel perpendicular to the wall so the bench is for left-handed shooters only. Fortunately, I shoot left handed.

Tunnel under construction. House in background and target shed in lower left.

Completed shooting shed. Note louvered opening for exhaust fan.

The shed end of the tunnel needed a target frame and something to stop the bullets and prevent them from shredding the back of the shed. The target frame was easily constructed. To catch the bullets I planned to use several layers of the abundant 1.5-inch thick wood scraps left over from the house construction. I thought I could simply replace them as they were shot up. As a backup to prevent bullets from getting to the back wall of the shed as the 2 by 10 scraps were used up, I installed a one quarter inch thick steel plate against the back wall.

I installed a cheap eight-inch diameter ducted fan high in the back wall of the shed to exhaust fumes through a louvered opening to the outside. A low cost adjustable light with a reflector provide light directly on the target.

Cost of the materials, labor, and machine time to construct the tunnel, shed and bench was less than$1,000 in 1992 or about the cost of two new rifles at the time. Even $1,000 would have looked like an extrava-gant luxury to a depression baby such as myself if it hadn’t been done in conjunction with building the house. When looked at as a feature of the house that added less than one percent any guilty feelings were successfully rationalized away. In parts two and three I will discuss the operation and maintenance of the tunnel. 􀀃

Opening in basement wall and shooting bench attached to wall.

Photographs may be one way of describing defects I recently had the opportunity to try this method when I cast a batch of 75 grain 22 bullets. The bullets were of scrap lead of uncertain composition with a BHN of about 15. Out of the 119 bullets about 30 had one or more ran-dom wrinkles that looked bad enough through my trifocals to make me reluctant to shoot them in an upcoming postal match. I called them my culls.

I picked out six bullets that were typical of the culls, rubbed black ink in the wrinkles to make them show up better, and took the accompanying picture. I then loaded the bullets in the picture along with 24 additional similar-ly wrinkled bullets. As a control, I also loaded thirty visu-ally perfect bullets, from the same batch. The load was five grains of 700X ignited by a Remington small pistol primer. The bullets were lubricated with LBT blue. The average velocity ten feet from the muzzle was 1,430 fps.

I shot the 12-5 shot groups in my 223 Tikka Lite on the same day in a tunnel. The six five shot groups with the culled bullets were shot alternating with six five shot groups with “good” bullets to avoid systematic differ-ences caused by bore condition, fatigue, or other vari-ables. The six groups with the wrinkled bullets averaged 0.78 minutes of angle and the six groups of “good” bullets averaged 0.82 minutes of angle.

I was not surprised to find that the wrinkled bullets appeared to shoot as well as the good bullets because in past tests bullets with similar wrinkles had averaged better accuracy about half the time. Note that the accuracy difference was NOT statistically significant. I am not in any way proposing a new theory, similar to the one justifying the dimples on golf balls, that wrinkled bullets are more accurate. I don’t believe they are. But it appar-ently will take a test with a rifle/load combination more accurate than the one in this test to show that they are less accurate.

One thing is clear. If your rifle is shooting two inch or larger groups it is unlikely that results can be improved by discarding bullets with wrinkles similar to, or smaller than, the ones in this test. Changing other factors such as bullet fit, alloy hardness, or powder type or charge are more promising tactics than more critical sorting of bullets.

This was a limited test with a specific caliber, bullet, load, and rifle and may not apply for all situations. However, because the 22 caliber is alleged to be sensitive to bullet defects, wrinkled bullets may have even less effect on larger calibers.

It is also worth noting that the rifle had a one in eight inch twist, instead of the one in fourteen inch twist of most 22 centerfires. According to prevailing theory, the quick twist should have accentuated the effects of the undoubtedly unbalanced bullets.

I hope this test and the accompanying picture will be of interest to readers and provide food for thought. I also hope others will be encouraged to run similar tests with other types and levels of defects and report their findings. I suspect we usually spend too much of our time and attention sorting bullets when we should be looking elsewhere to cure our troubles.

I know that many casters take pride in how their bul-lets look, as well as how they shoot, and will not be interested in shooting wrinkled bullets even if they shoot well. They should keep right on discarding those ugly bullets. After all cast bullet shooting is a hobby, not a way to save civilization, and we should do it the way we enjoy doing it. However, for those like myself who are a bit lazy and would rather shoot than remelt and recast bullets this article may offer bit of guidance about how some easily visible wrinkles can be ignored with no loss of accuracy. 

Enter ‘The Cast Bullet Kid’
Derek had once told me of the project and his trials and tribulations with the ‘stout’ barrel dimensions. Some years later (present time) we were talking at the range and he told me he was having a clear out with his rifles and giving some away to his family. I asked if he still had the Pygmy, if he wanted to part with it, and the rest is history.

The rifle: Action
The Pygmy is the quintessential Kiwi cobbled together “bitsa” (bits a this, bits a that) creation. Not surprisingly the rifle is based on a Lee Enfield action; MLE/Long Tom to be exact. Given the availability of these actions in NZ and the benefits of not having to make alterations to the bolt head, etc. this was a logical choice. The magazine well has been blinded off top and bottom rendering the lit-tle rifle a single shot and considering its intended use was on the range this too is a nice logical and easy option. What is rather dinky is the spring loaded feed ramp installed at the front of the action in order to facilitate ease in chambering a round. As the bolt closes the loaded round rides onto the feed ramp and is guided into the chamber. The feed ramp then depresses as the bolt passes over it and allows the bolt to fully close and lock. Nice work there boys.

Barrel
The action wears a No. 4 Lee Enfield barrel in 2-groove configuration and this barrel proved to be the Achilles Heel for Derek in his attempts to get the rifle to produce target quality grouping. Two-groove 303 barrels are famous for rather generous internal dimensions and this one is no exception. While the bore is spot on at .303”-.304”, the groove runs a very large .317” which is a full six thousandths of an inch over specification. The enormously oversized groove diameter did not allow for accuracy better than approximately 100mm (4 inches) at 50m/55 yards. It does not take a great deal of imagina-tion to understand why when launching traditional 303 bullets of .311”-.312” diameter down a .317” groove. The bullet effectively rattles down the barrel. As such the Pygmy project, after a fair amount of experimenting, was shelved and remained that way for many years.

The spring-loaded feed ramp

Bullets
I was not fazed by the oversized groove diameter and was confident with a correct fitting bullet the rifle had the same potential as any other. While the main-stream bullet mould manufacturers do not cater for .317”-.318” diameter bullets, I knew that Jim Allison of Cast Bullet Engineering (CBE) in Australia had a huge range of designs and would be able to help. As it happened my CBE 313 220GC (220gr) mould produced bullets in wheel weight alloy that measured .3165” so I figured this bullet would be a good starting point.

Shortly after acquiring the rifle Jim released his new 316 175GC (175 gr.) bullet so I ordered this also as the 175 grain bullet would be a better match to the case capacity of the Pygmy. Both bullets are bore riding designs where the bore diameter nose section is the greater part of the bullet and the remaining rear section is groove diameter. This design of bullet excels in 2-groove Lee Enfield barrels as the ratio of lands/grooves is 5/8 bore, 3/8 groove meaning that the greater part of the bearing surfaces are bore diameter and provide a huge amount of support for the bullet nose aiding in keeping the projectile perfectly aligned.

In addition to the extra support the wide lands give the bullets the 2-groove barrels are also more accommodating of undersize bullets. This is because the bullet has so little groove to upset into and so much support from the bore that misalignment that might occur in other types of barrels from too small a projectile does not man-ifest itself. This is rather handy in view because of many of my bullets being a shade ‘light’ on girth.

Jim also then released his new 316 240GC (240gr) bullet, another bore rider and this too is very well suited to the Pygmy barrel. Also tested at the very beginning of experimentation was the Lyman 311466 Loverin style bullet in both the round and flat nose configuration (I have a mould that has been altered). Neither bullet performed at all well and trials with these projectiles were ceased.

Dies
The Pygmy came with the original reamers (since used to cut a clone in Australia by a fellow cast bullet shooter), 70 cases and a pair of dies; seater and decapper. What I really needed was a sizing die. Enter the good folk at Lee Precision in the USA. I am a huge fan of the Lee collet neck sizing system and Lee offers a custom die service. For the meager sum of $55.00 US they will knock you out a collet and seating die to your specs. This is very good value for money in my opinion. All Lee Precision requires is two fired cases and two of the bullets intended to be used in the rifle and they make the dies to suit.

I sent them both and requested that they produce the sizing mandrel in the die that case necks reformed to an inside diameter of .3155 after the opera-tion. This gives me 0.001” inch neck tension with bullets of .3165” diameter. A real bonus was that when I loaned the Pygmy reamers to a fellow member of the Cast Boolit internet forum in Australia to make his own 303 runt rifle, he cut me a case forming die and sent it over when he returned the reamers to me. I was all set now for cartridge load-ing and case forming. Not bad for someone who swore he would never own a wildcat.

Woodwork
Being a project rifle the original woodwork was not flattering and was a standby until the rig proved itself. The original fore end was very short and the butt stock had a transplanted piece of wood for a check piece. All in all, not very pretty. I sourced a new and suitably longer fore end with a Schnabel tip and checking that suited my stock crawling tendencies much better. Via the purchase of a ‘dunger’ sporterized No1 MkIII rifle I scored a beautiful butt stock with a pistol grip and rollover Monte Carlo check-piece that really sets the rifle off. Added to the butt stock was a rubber recoil pad to bring the ‘pull’ of the stock out to the correct length for my gorilla arms.

Sights
The rifle came furnished with a set of home made scope mounts. A lot of work had gone into making them however I was not sure they were up to the job. Instead I fitted a ramp mounted bead foresight at the muzzle end and attached a spare PH5A aperture sight on the back. This set up works splendidly and is 100% reliable.

Load development
There is no published data for this cartridge — go figure. The only data I had was a page of notes from the diary that Derek kept from his early testing. As I have no access to pressure testing equipment, “conservative” has been the word of the year for all loads to date. A fellow member of the Cast Boolit forum was good enough to run some powders, projectiles and the case specifications through his “Load from a Disc” PC program. He came back with ‘nominal’ data for AR2205 (H4227), Bench Mark 2 (BM2) and W748 – all powders I keep on hand and use in other cartridges. From the outset the AR2205 was always going to be rather limiting as it is a very fast rifle powder and I stopped load development with it early on as accuracy was poor and velocities very limited. The remaining two powders have proved very well suited indeed. Based on the case capacity and projectile weights I firmly believe that AR2219 (H322) would be the all round best powder for the Pygmy round and this has been reported by the Pygmy shooter in Australia. His rifle likes the powder under a 174 grain projectile. This is not a powder I keep so I have developed loads based on BM2 for the CBE 316 175GC bullet and W748 for both the CBE 313 220GC and 316 240GC projectiles. Load data is shown in the accompanying table.

Projectile Diameter SD Heat Treat Brinell Weight in WW Alloy Powder Charge Velocity OAL
CBE 316 175 gr. GC .03165" .249" Yes 24 177 gr. BM2 25.0 1850 fps. 2.14"
CBE 313 220 gr. GC .03165" .315" No 9.8 221 gr. W748 23.0 1500 fps. 2.36"
CBE 316 240 gr. GC .03165" .338" No 9.8 237 gr. W748 24.0 1500 fps. 2.31"

These loads are those that have been settled on in terms of the best accuracy for the given projectile. All the usual indicators of pressure show moderate loads at best. Note that for the heavier projectiles the velocity is a rather modest 1500 f.p.s. only. While this may not look very impressive it should be remembered that the 9.8 BHN alloy is very soft and even at lower velocities will readily expand on game. Further, these ballistics more than duplicate those of the 32-40, a cartridge long considered more than adequate for deer size animals at reasonable ranges and the penetration of bullets with sectional densities this high is very good. All loads produce very workable field trajectories when sighted at 100m. Given the results above I decided the 175 grain bullet would be used in my field load for small/light game due to the flatter trajectory, and the two heavier bullets would be reserved for larger game and target duties based on how well the bullets would hold up over longer ranges and their sectional density for game.

Accuracy
Before I even considered taking the Pygmy to the rifle range I gave it my usual Lee Enfield accuracy work over. I have four LE action rifles and every single one of them has a distinct preference for a pressure pointed barrel. The Pygmy was no exception and in addition to this I bedded the action from the Knox form at the front to the very rearward section of the receiver. The barrel pres-sure point was created by placing bedding compound in the barrel channel at the tip of the fore end using a card-board spacer between the barrel and woodwork to generate some upward pressure. Once the bedding com-pound had cured the cardboard was removed. Through a process of trial and error and lots of trips to the rifle range the above loads were developed all of which will group into 25mm (1 inch) at 50m. Some do much better than this and the initial testing with the new CBE 316 240GC bullet produced a three shot group at 50m consisting of only two holes cutting each other. True testimony to 1) how accommodating 2-groove barrels can be, 2) how the bullet must fit the barrel and 3) why Derek’s experiments with traditional .311”-.312” bullets showed very aver-age results.

And now for something furry
My very good friend Glenn was due in the country from Alaska and I had offered to take him hunting for a wallaby. This seemed the perfect opportunity to ‘blood’ the 303 Pygmy so I loaded it up with the CBE 316 175GC bullet. Glenn chose his .54cal muzzleloader and we set out south for Waimate. The following morning we crossed the stream and began climbing the steep terrain looking to get some alti-tude under our belts and into the tussocks where the wal-labies would be sunning themselves.

50m group with the 175 gr. CBE bullet

Jeff shows off his first ‘roo with the 303 Pygmy

About half way up the ridge we were working I paused and told Glenn I thought we should be into some game soon and that we should take one side of the ridge each and split up. As I was in guiding mode I gave him the sunny side and away we went. Within literally minutes a resounding BOOOOOM echoed around the hills and three wallabies rocketed over the ridge in my direction fleeing the mighty 54 round ball gun. Glenn had downed his first ‘Southern High Country Mouse’ and I carefully crested the ridge to locate him and help recover his trophy.

I waved and caught his attention and immediately a wallaby bounded into the view and stopped for a look at me approximately 100m away. The Pygmy swung up and the bead, surrounded by the ghost ring (target aper-ture removed for hunting), settled on the ‘roo just as the little rifle barked. At the report the animal faltered and disappeared over the ridge.

After 5 or 10 minutes of searching the blood soaked tussocks the well proportioned buck was located and car-ried up to the top of the ridge again for display to the Alaskan visitor and mandatory photos.

On we went and another target presented itself to the Pygmy; this time a shade closer at 80m and allowed for a sitting shot. After a couple of wayward shots at a very obliging wallaby with a lovely big white spot on its chest for an aiming point, the third round connected and the ‘roo flew over backwards into the tussocks and stopped dead. Love that rifle.

Moving on into the next basin a small wallaby bolted around the head of the gully and stopped immediately opposite me for yet another shot at an honest 100m again. Poor old Glenn was missing out as he was look-ing elsewhere. I settled the bead on the base of the head of the wallaby and as the shot echoed around the hills it dropped on the spot. When I recovered the animal I found the bullet had entered the head just behind the right eye and exited the left.

The rifle accounted for two more ‘roos that morning and barked at many more as I tried some running shots (none of which were successful, I might add). Glenn downed a dozen with his .54 caliber muzzleloader. He is hooked on ‘roo shootin’.

How far the wee rifle has come from the dark days of the early 70’s when it was ‘born’. A mild recoiling, soft speaking, hard hitting, accurate little rig has really come into its own. One day I would love to get it feeding from a magazine but in the meanwhile the single shot config-uration suits me just fine.

Huh, mum was right. Good things do come in small packages. 􀀁

I did a batch of the 38-72 round nose bullets since in the M.S. spool magazine I didn’t have to go with a flat nose as in the tube magazine. To run through a spool magazine, this round nose bullet worked perfect with a felt wad or a heavy card wad stuck to the base with old Lyman black magic lube. Seated to the base of the neck and with the front band tapered, half of which blended with the nose ogive, I was ready to bet on 1400 m.v., hoping the long range leaf would suit this load at 50 yards.

I was ready at the coops with tools and components in hand to work it out right now with the turkey shoot that same afternoon my goal as the final proof. (Editor’s note: The “coops” was an old chicken coop that Frank’s Uncle Will had turned into a private indoor range.) To show how a round nose shoots a heluva lot flatter than a flat nose, it came out that the 125 yard sight hit too high and the 50 yard sight was almost right and just a little more velocity, or near 1400 m.v. allowed my favored center hold good on game or bulls eyes. The vibrations seemed more favorable since the groups then seemed slightly rounder for five.

So here I was, unexpectedly now, with a load right about on at 50 that the faster flat nose standard load also matched for on at 50, even though quite a bit more powerful. The barrel node and vibration factor seemed to be quite significant also but this condition remained quite uniformly favorable from that stiff pipe full stock Mannlicher Schoenauer.

By the time I got over to the shoot, wolfed down a couple grilled dogs and a cold cider, the third round of 20 shooters was about over and looking at the targets that cool October day. I knew some hot shots were present and every one was in the pot and on the big bird both. Right away I was wondering whyunhel I hadn’t brought the “Match Rifle” sweet Swede with such nice pots being won. The old rolled Indian blanket over a log, on which you laid the back of your hand, in which you held the rifle, was the way I’d sighted in, so no alibi there. By the time I was out six bucks the sun was sliding fast behind the hill behind us with the target now in deep shade, and the last round had 26 “last hope” shooters.

I drew ticket #26, with two shooters shooting at a time on two targets. Most were shooting in a hurry, so I waited for my pair-up man to shoot first. The guy with the spot scope says, “Wow!” very loudly. The shooter says, “Where is it?” The spot scope guy says, “A fat ten, and might go an X.” The Shooter says, “We eat turkey tomor-row, by gorra!” The spot guy says, “Yah, and you can pay me back that 10-spot you owe me.”

About then my careful squeeze as the bead sight pic-ture looked perfect broke, and I says to myself, “If this shot goes where it should, I’m in business.” Although I knew that if the other guy was in for an X, I’d have to be lucky as hell as usual.

The spot scope guy was very quiet, but when I got up he says, “What un-Goshen is that kind of gun? And you’re the last shooter. Well, I’ll be.” Both of us were sat-isfied it was a tie nipper X, but it was by then too dark to shoot it off, so we took 13 bucks apiece and since the shoot sponsors had done so good that day they gave us each a nice dressed bird. They ate turkey, by gorra, the spot scope guy got his 10 bucks back and the little Mannlicher Schoenauer made money and meat the first match. The others said, “What dumb luck, shooting in the dark. That mill town Duke kid is spooky.”

For the rest of the dressed turkey season, (the only kind up north at that time) the little M.S. with the medium load, just a little more powerful than a standard 38-55 original load, held its own, about matching the high Swedish 9.5x57 previous years score to put me well ahead using the 38-72 round nose bullet, tapered to fit the throat. This load was actually just about equal to the old 38-72 which never was given the H.V. boost for the original black powder M95 Winchester, although they did put out a smokeless load with a jacketed 275 grain bullet.

When that load didn’t draw flies in that depressed period, nor had the 38-72 been very popular from the first day, I managed to pick up a stash of the very nice .377” jacketed 275 grain round soft nose bullets in case I got into a “frequent lazy spell” or caught at a “time to go huntin’” and nothing yet cast and had to load up in a hurry.

Among the fellow’s stuff that came with the M.S. I found the original open rear sight with two leaves marked 100 and 200 meters and so I got hot to try a full fireworks factory duplicate load, or close using the 275 grain jack-eted bullet.

The 9.5x57, 20” barrel Austrian alpine classic was touted primarily as a medium bore Africa/India (or European boar) handy piece and was respected to the degree that all the European ammo plants made the one standard load of a 270 grain soft nose and a solid at a muzzle velocity of 2150 f.p.s. for quite a load from such a relatively light carbine, as rifles went at that time. (This cartridge and rifle was held as 80% of a 375 H&H Mag. at 30% of the price, 50% handier, and you had to get 20% closer.) The Brits called it the 375 x 2-1/4” Nitro. The metric was called the 9.5x56 and/or 9.5x57, all one and the same unique cartridge.

Brought out in 1910, the case body is one of the least tapered of any bottleneck case with only .005” on a side or from .470” diameter at the base to .460” at the shoulder, which was a fairly steep angle to the neck diameter of .400”. This was the Steyr solution to use the Mauser case head size for a fair diameter bullet with adequate headspace bearing on the shoulder angle. Although quite a radical case design, it fed flawlessly from the slick spool magazine, also a feature of the precision made Mannlicher Schoenauer rifles. Boxer 30-06 cases are easily sized back and necked up to fire-form to 9.5x57.

The case volume at easy pressure is very favorable to a first rate heavy bullet woods load. Over the years I have used loads in this case ranging from a round ball indoor plinker or outdoors for rodents or small game, up to the 375 H&H 300 grain jacketed slug at 2000 m.v. using post WWII components. This case apparently is quite efficient. The advantage of using 30-06 brass is that the shoulder can be located to exactly suit the head-space in your individual rifle for easy openers.

The 275 grain old 38-72 jacketed soft round nose is designed for woods use at 1300 impact velocity. At 2000 m.v. it was a woods bomb. The original 275 grain swaged lead round nose bullet at 1425 m.v. from a 26” M95 Winchester barrel with black powder reflects that the “Big Red W” (Winchester) was not what you’d call“up with the progress” in the world’s small arms race. Be that as it was, Uncle Will had also come by a pile of boththe swaged lead nice round nose bullets and also the jacketed 275 grain soft nose bullets. (I had also acquireda stash of the 38-72 jacketed bullets.) The 38-72 Winchester M95 tuned to black powder was one spin in22”. In the 12” twist of the 9.5x57 with normal .006” deep grooves we got near 1500 m.v. using fast bump-up #80,or good old “lots of loads to a can” Unique with these .378” swaged soft bullets for better accuracy than revealed by the M95, 26” barrel. (We tapered the front bands of this factory lead bullet to suit our taper throats.) Using the jacketed .377” bullet in the 12” twist revealed much better accuracy than from a M95 shot at original 1425 m.v. with its 22” twist. The 38-72 jackets were thin compared to the 375 H&H 270 grain jacketed bullet of .375” diameter.

This Mannlicher Schoenauer with a .378” groove diameter was more accurate with the .378” 38-72 jacket-ed bullet than with the .375” 270 grain bullet and the .378” 38-72 jacketed bullets came free, which didn’t encourage me to cast when the shop shelves then were sagging under the weight of those pretty 38-72 precision jacketed jolters.

With the original open sights back in place and my bench work reload tools on location to do it up quick withthe 38-72 jacketed loads, I soon had a 2000 m.v. load that liked the 275 grain bullet and was on at 100 with that leaf and a real impressive whumper in the tough oak log butts. At the 50 yard turkey shoot range I had to see a little black over the front bead to center the group on the 100 yard bull using the low 100 meter rear sight. Using the 200 meter sight at 100 yards, the impact was five inches high which is a very flat trajectory for a short range rifle when you consider it from a practical utility viewpoint. This trajectory would indicate close to 2000m.v. using iron sights. Impact velocity at 200 yards would be about 1500 f.p.s., or about equal to the 38-55H.V. jacketed load’s muzzle velocity, and this with a 20 grain heavier 38-72 jacketed bullet. While probably notan ideal brown bear load, or even for polar bear out at 200 yards, up close such a load would not be the worstto be caught short with and in the North-East area of my concern, you wouldn’t have to back away from anything known.

Using 270 grain 375 H&H bullets which were not as blunt nosed as the 275 grain 38-72 round nose bullets, with the same charge put the group higher at all ranges. British factory 270 grain loads that came with the rifle, shot against my handloads, were about on at 100 yards with the 100 meter sight but not as accurate. I was convinced that I had a very good 38-72 275 grain jacketed bullet woods load. (Often I would use jacketed bullets if invited to a camp that scorned cast.)

Having satisfied myself that I had a heluva jolting choice of “jacked” loads for this little rifle from the 300 grain Holland & Holland solid on down to the 255 grain 38-55 jacketed bullets, all hard to get in those days, when the factories, buy a long shot, didn’t encourage reloading, I got back to that cozy, comfortable 275 grain nice round nose form 38-72 plain base bullet at 1400 m.v. in a moderate alloy. Tapered on the two front bands with the rear end a full .380” diameter I had a match grade taper neck and throat fit both, not to mention an exact bore ride nose favor. When orient indexing all steps from mould to loading into chamber and using all dies involved free floating for self centering, I actually enjoyed the full accuracy potential of this pure sporting form of fusil, tested indoors. Some top coops opiners were quick to point out, “Who the hell would ever believe such a gun could do that?”

I then used that same load in the classic “Sweet Swede” 9.5x57 and got the same results and reaction from the coops counselors. Needless to say, I stayed lucky with that little M.S. 9.5x57.

As ever, Frank Marshall Jr.

and then Parker Processed. The easiest check is the finish of the bolt way in the action. Actions were blued or Parkerized prior to the final reaming to size of the bolt way. If the bolt way is bright, it has not been refinished. The exceptions are the 1903 Modified, 1903 A3 and 1903 A4 models that were finished as components then assembled.

The nickel steel actions are much easier to machine, square and true than the case-hardened actions. Unless you are planning to shoot matches requiring a rapid fire stage, the slightly lower cycling smoothness of the nickel steel action is not a disadvantage. Also, the stretching of the action and deformation of the bolt locks of the nickel steel actions add a safety margin for those reloaders who create ammunition over the sane 48,000 CUP limit. The newest double heat treated Springfield action was made over 70 years ago, and the last “war emergency” nickel steel action was made in 1945.

Barrels are very controversial concerning their accuracy potential. The favored barrel for collectors is the “star gauged” model from the 1920’s and 1930’s. The bores and grooves were checked for finish and consistency for use on National Match and Sporter rifles. These barrels were not specially manufactured but rather normal service barrels that had been compared to a stan-dard and found to meet certain criteria. Today’s medium priced target barrel is made of better material and held to more rigid tolerances than the star gauged barrel of the pre-World War Two years. The choice of a modern production barrel, with a 1 in 12 inch twist, will allow you to use 180 grain boattails at normal speeds and maintain stabilization at 1000 yards. Groove diameters of .3085 and .309 are not “bad”. It has been reported since the early 1950’s that a smoothly finished barrel of .309 inch-es with a 1 in 12 inch twist gave excellent performance at the 1000 yard range even though it may not make the smallest groups at 100 yards from a bench rest. Cast bullet shooters have had very good performance with ‘03A3 two groove barrels due to the smooth bore finish and .309 or .310 diameter grooves that require less bullet sizing. The wide lands displace enough bullet metal for low gas cutting and support the nose of the bullet. Interior finish and consistency of land and groove dimension for the length of the barrel are of greater importance than an average groove dimension of exactly .308 inches.

Here in the Pacific Northwest, it is relatively com-mon to find new replacement Springfield barrels for the 03A3’s at gun shows and parts dealers. They are mostly two groove Remington, but I have also seen two and four groove Springfield Armory and a few six groove Smith Coronas (manufactured by Hi Standard). Most appear to be replacement barrels coming into the country from Asia, still in the preservative and waxed paper.

The criteria for workmanship in rebarreling have changed somewhat. Gunsmiths have more than 90 years of experience to draw upon with the Springfield. There are two issues that must be dealt with. One is that replacement barrels are NOT headspaced. They were made to have a final headspacing done once they are screwed into the action. Springfield barrels are held into the receiver by compression of the rear barrel flat being compressed onto the front of the receiver. This stretch-es the rear of the barrel uniquely to that barrel and action combination. Therefore, final headspacing is required. Secondly, if you are redoing a 1903 you have to address the rear sight sleeve.

Ric’s “NRA” match rifle, built from a modified Remington ‘03. Buttplate is a checkered steel 1930 Winchester “marksman.” Sling swivel is close to the toe of the stock so the sling does not have to be readjusted from parade posi-tion for use in the sitting or prone positions.

The easiest is to center the barrel in a lathe and turn it down using the old barrel as a pattern. Now you can reinstall the sight sleeve after making the cut for the locking pin.

Head spacing to minimum dimensions does not lead to greater accuracy. Some of these reports may be due to the increased velocity and wind bucking ability that these dimensions allow. This increased velocity is created by increased pressure upon firing. This head spacing question was investigated by the Springfield Armory in the 1920’s. What does have the greatest effect is the care and workmanship of the chambering operation. The careful workman who makes a chamber of consistent diameter and taper that is concentric with the bore and places the leade of the chamber in the proper relationship for the bullet will always shoot tighter groups. The short head spaced chamber only helps by forcing the case to self-center in an excessively large chamber or out of round chamber. In combination with a tight throat, the cartridge is supported by the neck of the case and the base of the case against the bolt face. This does not make for consistency and accuracy in a rifle.

If you are making a production class rifle, such as within The Cast Bullet Association rules, you need an arsenal barrel, action and sights. Unless you have very, very good and young eyes, I recommend the 03A3 action and rear sights. Most 1903’s have the #6 sight aperture and some as small as #4. The aperture is a long way from your eye and that makes the front sight very fuzzy even in bright light. I can not see the bull on most targets through that little hole. General Julian Hatcher has some interesting comments in his note-book on aperture sizes. The large 03A3’s sight is not as much of a disadvantage as some people seem to think.

There are two areas that keep the Springfield from being a “modern” rifle; trigger and lock speed. The trigger is two staged and I know of no safe way to make it a single stage. The original trigger can be tuned for a two pound first stage and an additional one and one half pound second stage. This is light enough and can be made crisp enough for everything but the most ardent benchrest shooter with familiarization. I have used three brands of aftermarket triggers that are of the falling sear construction. They work well and are the “de-rigor” item for those who don’t want to learn the military trigger. The “speed lock” stronger firing pin springs will speed up lock time, but it is still slow. It greatly increases bolt lift force from about 22 pounds to over 30 pounds. The biggest draw back to the two stage trigger is in the offhand position. It forces you to use good trigger control and follow through.

The questions of how and where to bed the metal to the wood has been solved. The quality of wood and lack of skilled stock makers has ended the idea of carving out perfect bedding. The two-part epoxy resin with a strengthening material gives a better fit and a stronger stock. You can even take the rifle apart to clean the action and not have your sight settings change.

There are several points to address in preparation for the use of bedding compounds. The wood must be dry and free of linseed oil and tung oil. While these are good finishes, they are not promoters of tight adher-ing of epoxy to wood. The bedding compound may pull away from the wood during firing or removal of the barreled action from the stock. Other finishes need to be of rough texture and if you are unsure, remove all finishes to the bare wood. Stock bolts and other metal fittings should be bedded permanently into the wood. You can not create the best bedding in one pour. All bedding compounds shrink with curing. Light sanding between pours creates a snug fit and stability.

The best method is to bed the areas around the front action screw, the recoil abutments, and the action areas ahead of the magazine well first to provide stability. Then snugly bed the rear, or tang, screw. Original armory stocks are semi-pillar bedded with a metal piece surrounding the rear screw to prevent strong armed privates from crushing the stock. Seat the recoil lug screw firmly and draw the tang screw up just snug. The idea is to allow the recoil lug to square the action. The tang screw should just stop the action from being bent downward upon screw tightening. There are several areas that require clearance after the bedding. The front action screw needs at least 0.010 clearance all the way around. This means you will have to go back and under cut around the threaded shank on the recoil lug. At the rear, I like to put the metal spacer in permanently and let the screw float inside. Also the bottom of the recoil lug must have clearance to prevent binding.

Up pressure pads at the tip are, or at least seem to be, a matter of individual rifle preference. Most full stocked rifles appear to group better with the tip having four to seven pounds of upwards pressure on the barrel. This pressure pad should fit the bottom contour of the barrel and be an arc of between 90 and 120 degrees centered on the vertical axis. One inch length of pad is enough. Due to barrel contour, any longer pad increases pressure as the barrel lengthens with heating. NRA-type sporter stocks and aftermarket stocks appear to shoot as well with or without pads. Original NRA Sporters are tightly clamped into the forend with the sling swivel band. The contour of the Springfield barrel is much heavier at the midpoint than modern styles and this may have an affect on tip pressure requirements.

The action should be fully supported. The magazine box is also used for recoil absorption and must be carefully bedded if the rifle is to be a repeater. Small pads poured under the trigger guard assembly screw holes will prevent the trigger guard from sinking into the stock. The top of the magazine box should have a slight clearance from the bottom of the action. This provides some compressibility between action and trigger guard. Stability is greatly increased if you create a single shot without a magazine cut out and the lower surface of the action is fully bedded into the stock. Single shots require a feed ramp for the case head to slip under the extractor hook as the bolt is closed.

1930s National Match Springfield with type “C” stock

Stock styles and sizes seem to be the most individualistic of all components. There are several elements that should be considered. The shooter that competes in rapid fire stages should have as short of pull as possible without having to move the head to operate the bolt. The firing pin hitting the nose or cheek slows the bolt manipulation operation and the tearing eyes make the front sight blur. The average shooter of the 1920’s was 5 feet 8 inches tall and shot a rifle with a 13 1/4 to 13 1/2 inch pull. But that includes a stock with more drop than is normally used today.

A rifle used for prone slow fire needs to be straighter than a rapid fire rifle and length of pull is not as important. Prone, the key is consistent eye placement, consistent firing hand placement and keeping the vertical plane of the line of bore and line of sight perpendicular to the earth.

The choice between the classic straight comb and the Monte Carlo comb is relatively complex. I feel that it has a lot to do with the relationship between eye, cheek and shoulder pocket, with their various distances, angles and relationships. The Monte Carlo allows the shooter to have more drop at the heel with higher cheek support. This could be helpful in matches with off hand, sitting and kneeling stages. The key is to insure that the face support, the top line of the comb, is exactly parallel to the bore line. A forward sloping comb makes it impos-sible to have consistent eye to sight alignment. The fore end shape also had an effect upon rifle handling. A broad flat fore end with a front to rear taper, or semi-beavertail shape, assists in maintaining vertical align-ment so important in 600 and 1000 yard shots. A pear or double elliptical shape fore end allows a slight leverage advantage to cant the rifle to the right for added speed in sitting and kneeling rapid fire. This tactic also assists in the reloading phase with a reasonably tight sling.

The basic shape of the 1927 National Match stock, or the Type "C", is excellent for the all around rifle that must work for every position. From Springfield Armory, they were made very full in the pistol grip and cheek contact areas. Individual adjustments can make the basic design very usable for almost any shooter. The Winchester Model 70 Match Rifle's "marksman" stock of the early 1950’s is an excellent example of the refine-ments possible to the Type “C” stock.

Placement of the front sling swivel also varies with the use of the rifle. If the sling is to carry the piece, i.e. hunting, it must be placed forward enough to reduce the height of the barrel when walking. Flexible shooters who can assume a very low prone or sitting position, require the sling to be farther forward than older shooters. The sling swivel can be used as a hand stop if you use a heavy shooting glove. The current “inline” prone position used by self-loading rifle shooters is not practical for bolt manipulation. The elbow hits the knee and the shooter must shift their weight and center of gravity to the supporting hand side to keep from hitting the ground with their nose. Therefore, assume a natural (at least to us older folks) and comfortable prone position and then mark and install the front sling swivel to use as a hand stop.

There are three choices for butt plates. The mil-itary plate works well for most people, but is not very secure unless you can find a National Match coarsely checkered plate, or a finely checkered 1903 plate and sharpen the checkering. If you are building a new stock, consider the NRA Sporter butt plate that is still available from The Gun Parts Corporation. It works well but dictates the shape and size of the stock. Lastly, you can use a rubber butt plate and reshape to your heart’s content.

Springfield rifles are a wonderful piece of Americana. They can make excellent target, hunting and plinking guns. While they may not be on the front line at Camp Perry or the national benchrest matches, they can be very competitive at the local level. It appears that no one is willing to spend the thousands of dollars needed to make a really competitive rifle because it is “just a Springfield.” 􀀁

Leading increases with velocity. When smokeless powders made the scene near the turn of 1900 they dramatically boosted bullet velocities beyond the capabilities of black powder. They also exceeded the ability of bullet lubricants to keep up. The Lisle Wire-Patched Bullet approached the problem from a “more velocity needs more lubricant” perspective. The wire winding on Mr. Lisle’s bullet held lubricant along nearly the entire length of the bullet’s bearing surface, not just in a few narrow grooves. This additional lubricant was apparently at least partially successful in reducing leading at some higher velocities, prompting the inventor to claim the design con-tributed to greater accuracy and longer barrel life.

The design, at least theoretically, also resulted in less recoil than an all-lead bullet of the same caliber and length because the lighter wire windings replaced some of the bullet’s lead. As a function of physics, the lighter the projectile the lighter the recoil, all other factors being equal. And a lighter bullet requires less powder (equating to less recoil) to achieve the same velocity as the heavier bullet. A reduction in perceived recoil with Lisle’s bullet, however, would be entirely a matter of the shooter’s opin-ion.Physics also applies to the inventor’s claims of flatter trajectory: less lead makes for a lighter bullet, which results in less drop at a given distance than an all-lead bullet of the same length and caliber. Shooters can easi-ly determine a flatter trajectory on paper targets, leaving less to subjective argument.Clearly then, not all of Lisle’s claims for his bullet’s performance can be dismissed as merely snake oil promises.

WINDING UP

Early Lisle bullets had a winding of very strong cotton or similar fabric, but the inventor found it lacked sufficient strength. After some trial and error, National Projectile Works settled on manufacturing the bullets by first casting the lead in bullet moulds, then rolling them in a machine to ensure roundness and to open the shanks to accept the wire winding. “Patching machines” next wound the bullets with coils of cotton-covered copper or soft iron wire and swaged them to size. Lubricating the bullets and then loading them into cartridges finished the operation, except for final packaging. In addition to the winding, at least some of Lisle’s bullets also featured an extended copper gas check on the heel that formed a high base.

“The .22 cal. wire wound bullets were a revelation because they cleaned the bore after every shot and firing could be maintained indefinitely,” Elmer said, “but the bullets were too expensive to produce and were discon-tinued.”

For a time Hensley & Gibbs manufactured their own version of the bullet, winding coils of copper wire, inserting them into bullet molds, and then introducing the molten lead. According to Elmer, his father’s experiments proved the wire must be wound onto the bullet after casting in order to achieve best accuracy. Besides, pouring molten lead onto the coils burned away the wire’s cotton covering, “which defeated the main purpose of the wire patch,” he said.

WINDING DOWN

Elmer began casting bullets at National Projectile Works in 1901 and worked there until 1904; his father left the company in 1906. Owner D.H. Armstrong moved the company to Napa California, where he continued to manufacture the wire-patched bullet at least as late as 1911.

“The wire-patched bullets were made in all calibers popular at that time and were in great demand by shoo-ers,” Elmer wrote in 1942. “I am a strong believer in the efficiency of the wire-patched bullet and am sure if they were manufactured again they would quickly be adopted by most shooters due to their great reduction in recoil, flatter trajectory, longer life of barrel and better killing properties.”

Whether the wire patched bullet failed to live up to Lisle’s claims or it succumbed to the advent of metal jacketed bullets that require no lubricant at all is historically moot. While many shooters today enjoy casting their own bullets, mixing their own lubes, and even paper-patching their own bullets, the wire-patched bullet is forgotten. It certainly seems too complicated for the casual hobbyist to manufacture at home, at least by Lisle’s method. However, perhaps a CBA member with too much money and time on his hands might find a new challenge in duplicating Lisle’s odd bullet.

One has to wonder, though, with the current resurgent interest in shooting the older cartridges, where those old “patching machines” might be…

The primary component in top levels of consistentaccuracy in both cast bullet and jacketed bullet shootingis excellence in barrel quality. In addition, be it either19th Century single-shot and repeating firearms, or 21stCentury precision benchrest/target and autoloaders, slugthat bore, be it either factory-produced or handloadedammunition that’s involved. You must know the exactgroove diameter and you must know the exact riflingtwist rate. This latter most certainly for the Importantdecision(s) of helping to select your useable if not idealbullet weight(s). As most serious shooters and hunters know, as realizedthroughout the centuries,the heavier-weight projectilesalmost alwaysproduce best results forhunting performance(optimum trajectories totopmost and quite consistentterminal ballistics)to competition matchaccuracy especially asconcerns trajectory aswell as remaining powerat extreme range distancework. Another benefit exists in the tendency for the

With straight-grip butt stock and .45-70 chambered 22” round micro-grooved barrel,this is Marlin’s ‘recreation’ of their original Model 1895 that was discontinued in1915. This model has the round breech bolt and no asinine hammer-block ‘safety’which poses a definite danger for dangerous game hunters using such a rifle. Thismodel was produced from 1972 to 1979.

From left to right, (1) .416 (Frank C.) Barnes wildcat -the .45-70 U.S, Govt. case bottlenecked from .457” to.416” caliber. A very nice optional chambering forhunters using cast bullets and/or jacketed handloads.(2) .40-82-260 W.C.F. (circa 1885) - REM-UMC manufacture,This 260-gr. FNSP I consider too light for thecaliber (.406” bullet dia.), a 300 gr. is light enough(3) .40-72-300 W.C.F. (introduced 1895) - W.R.A.Co.manufacture. Optional factory loading was .40-72-330 with a blunt RNSP bullet. This cartridge is aclose relative to the subsequent .405 W.C.F (1904)using a 300 gr. RNSP bullet. HUNTINGTON, ofOroville, GA, lists in their catalog .40-72 W.C.F. barrelgroove diameters running from .403" to .412" SingleShot Rifle Journal staffer, Connor Duncan, states thiscartridge's bores as running from .403" to .408".

heavier-weight projectiles almost always produce best results for hunting performance (optimum trajectories to topmost and quite consistent terminal ballistics) to competition match accuracy especially as concerns trajectory as well as remaining power at extreme range distance work. Another benefit exists in the tendency for their longer shanks to be slightly more forgiving of minorbore imperfections, thus (slightly) enhancing levels ofconsistent accuracy over the lighter, stubbier bullets.As has always been the case throughout firearmsmanufacture, tooling constantly wears on an ongoingbasis and thus tolerances vary. Couple this with occasional,but, in present-day times more common, haphazardcraftsmanship and on-purpose barrel quality compromises(usually to reduce production cost) and you havean ideal recipe for disastrous levels of inaccuracy. The old statement (paraphrased), likely first grumbled in print many decades ago by some unqualified and/or biased gun writer, that “Micro-groove rifling will not shoot cast bullets accurately” is as patently ridiculous as the statements, “two-piece-stocked rifles are inaccurate,” and, “the only accurate rifles are turn bolts” (this rifle type this writer considers superbly ugly, an ergonomic monstrosity, and a type which over 95% of their owners cannot ideally stock for proper fit due to length of rearward bolt travel).

Not very long ago I built a unique Mid-Range “Creedmoor type” rifle based upon an early-production Ruger No. 1 action I finely tuned, fitted special stocks of my designs, and installed a top-of-the-line Match Grade chrome-moly Shilen “micro-groove” (8 lands, 8 grooves) barrel chambered in a one-of-a-kind wildcatted somewhat obscure vintage black powder cartridge not known for superb accuracy or high power. Case necks I expanded from .406” to .4l6” caliber which is today’s world standard .40 caliber dimension - .416”x.40-72 W.C.F. With shortened and fire-formed strong, modern cases (9.3x74R, RWS and Norma manufacture), and muzzle velocities running from about 1300 fps to about 2100 fps with 355-grain to 400-grain, custom bullets of different styles - all gas checked, painstakingly tailored handloads produce one-hole 100-yd. groups (5- to 10-round clusters) under ideal range conditions from my specially made quarter-ton bench. So…

1. Slug that bore
2. Be specific with your bullet(s) design(s) and weight(s)
3. Be exacting with your bullet alloys as to purpose(s)and velocity(ies), and exacting as to your bullet lubechoice(s) - which is also governed by your purpose(s)
4. Barrel bore dimensions must be consistent... hand-lapor fire-lap to achieve it. Mass-produced factory barrelsdefinitely tend to vary in internal dimensions
5. If your rifle is of production-grade, for top accuracydefinitely have it well tuned by a knowledgeable gunsmith familiar with its type and inherent idiosyncrasies.

The above five points constitute only the beginningapproach to fine cast bullet accuracy pursuits. •

OK children, today's cast bullet trivia question is …Who was J.V.K. Wagar? No, he was not a writer of children’s fiction depicting Norse mythology. If you Google Mr. Wagar you’ll find that he was a Colorado forester who was active in the Wildlife Society of Colorado A&M University and various professional organizations into the mid 1950s. Of note for CBA members is that he wrote an article which appeared in the August, 1931 issue of The American Rifleman on pgs. 14-15, entitled “Almost, the Best Small Pistol.” If you own a .32 automatic you really must read it. If you don’t own a .32 ACP, I urge you to read the article anyway. If you do, you may just find yourself buying a .32 pocket pistol years later, in fondly recalling the article. That’s exactly why I did.

J.V.K. Wagar and a cottontail potted with his .32 ACP

Mauser HSc performs very well with cast bullet handloads.

When I asked why Harry was packing a .32 and not something more effective, I was informed politely that it was really none of my business, but that“when in Rome, you do as the Romans do.” Ken explained to me that if Harry took a .45 or a .357 it would be obvious that he was “not a local.” Since“the bad guys” where he was going normally used .32 automatics, while military and police carried various 9mms, the Colt would be discreet and also“blend in.” While an FN or Beretta would have been better, we didn’t have one. Walthers are “hand biters,” and not an option, so ending the conversation.Loading manuals were of little help, so I researched the NRA archives and stumbled upon Wagar’s article.

It was an entertaining treasure trove of practical information on the Colt pocket model and loading cast bullets for the .32 ACP. Wagar said that, “it has proved so useful for much of the outdoor shooting in our part of the country that … I frequently leave my heavier pistols and revolvers at home…

“This is not a deep wilderness side arm…, but as a light pistol to accompany the big rifle it has many advantages… one is never hampered by its weight and bulk and it need not be left behind because the way is hard and steep or the trail long…“The .32 Colt Automatic… is the biggest pistol that fits comfortably into ones pockets… and its owner isn’t often asked by some romance filled tourist if you are a real live cow-boy, so the hills are full of these pistols.”

“Practical accuracy is not of the spectacular kind… I can obtain quite good accuracy holding the pistol in both hands and resting them upon my knees I can hit a 50-cent piece practically with every shot at 20 yards. … is almost ideal for strictly small game shooting, we have shot many cottontails, grouse, squirrels…over 200 pieces of game in all—- and have found it unexcelled. It is just enough larger than a .22 Long Rifle to make it a more certain killer, yet destroys little more flesh and makes little more noise in the woods…cast bullets will give more killing power than the jacketed fac-tory bullets. They do not expand upon flesh, but rough-en when they strike bone and tear flesh rather than parting it.”

“If one has access to an Ideal No. 4 tool and mould for the .32 S&W he is well equipped… The .32 S&W bullet weighs 88 grains and its diameter of .313 inch is well adapted... I have loaded many hundreds of .32 A.C. cartridges with .32 S&W tools…If one shoots a high-powered .30 caliber rifle Marbles adapters using the .32 A.C. cartridge can be used for small game shooting or one can use the .32 A.C. cartridge in the Winchester adapters made for firing .32 S&W cartridges in the .30-30, .30-40 and .30-‘06 rifles.

The custom barrel machined for this 1935 Beretta made a night-and-day difference in accuracy.

“In closing, permit me to summarize: This is not a target arm, nor is it powerful enough for defenses purposes against great beasts or armed men of great virility; but considering its short length, light weight, light report and recoil, and cheapness of ammunition, one will have difficulty in finding a more accurate, more reliable and more powerful pistol just to take along.

”Moving our clock back to present era, Sandy Garrett at Northern VA Gun Works doesn’t get excited by very much. But recently he was. He told me that he never thought a .32 ACP could be accurate. He now knows better after test firing my Beretta 1935 pistol for which he made a new barrel to replace its original “salt & pepper” WWII-era one. It’s machined from a piece of .30 caliber Hart stain-less 14” twist, and chambered with a custom reamer I designed to headspace on the case mouth. It shoots very well for a pocket gun, 2-1/2” at 25 yards for an 8-round magazine of 1970s vintage German Geco 73-gr. hardball, hand-held from sandbags, striking precisely to point of aim with the issue sights. He also did a trigger job so that it breaks at 5 pounds with a slight “roll” at let-off like a good .45 hardball gun, instead of the gritty 16 pounds that it originally did.

It is true that .32 ACP pocket guns don’t have a great reputation for accuracy. Speer’s loading handbook states that 3-4” at 25 yards is about the best you can hope for. This is in keeping with WWII German military and postwar German police acceptance accuracy standards which allowed 5 mils or 75mm of dispersion (about 3”) at 15 meters (approximately 49 ft.). Any pocket pistol which groups better than 4 mils, or 60mm (2.36”) at 15 meters is said by Europeans to be quite good. My experience with a number of pocket guns over the years suggests that any combination which reliably shoots 2” or less at 50 feet was a “keeper.” Almost any decent kit gun sized revolver, should shoot an inch at 50 feet, but pocket auto pistols which do this are rare birds.

The .38 Super Auto, despite its whiz-bang ballistics, was lackluster in the accuracy department until custom gunsmiths modernized the chamber design so that the cartridge head spaced on the case mouth, instead of the semi-rim. Modern IDPA and IPSC competition guns with custom barrels chambered this way shoot very well indeed.

So, strictly for academic curiosity, I wanted to see how well we could get a .32 ACP to shoot. JGS made my reamers and gages. This chamber has the minimum SAAMI chamber body, with a throat and origin of rifling based upon the form of the U.S. Cal. .30 M1 carbine chamber, but enlarging the forcing cone diameter to fit the larger .32 ACP cast bullets. Sandy machined my chunk of Hart barrel to fit my wartime M1935 Beretta. If you have to ask what this all cost, you cannot afford it. To me it’s worth every penny. My Beretta .32 now shoots as well as my Mauser HSc, accurate enough to assassi-nate WV bunny wabbits with head shots.

I sent John Taylor at Taylor Machine the reamer to make an 18” long .32 ACP rifle barrel to fit my 4.5 pound, take-down pre-war H&R single-shot .410, which doubles as an American-Style Rook Rifle. I don’t know anyone who has ever fooled with the .32 ACP in a rifle. You will need to stay tuned for that one. 􀀁

Now, the reloading and shooting began. Although the .32 LC is a rimmed case, the rim diameter is only a few thousands of an inch from being the same as the head of the rimless .223 Remington case. Any shellholder for the .223 Remington will work for the .32 LC case.And, any sizing die with a diameter larger than the .32 LC case and an expander plug less than the inside diameter of the .32 LC case mouth can be used to remove the primer.

I chose the.223 Remington sizing die because the shell holder was included with the die set and it met the other two requirements.Priming was done with a Lee Auto-Prime using a #4 shellholder. Winchester 6-1/2 -116 and CCI 500 primers were used.All the data for the Winchester bullets used Winchester primers; the N.E.I. bullets (more on these bullets later) used CCI primers. The rifle was made sometime at the very beginning of the 20th century. Exact years to correlate to Marlin serial numbers are difficult to find. Regardless, it has 6 grooves, a bore diameter of 0.303 inch and a groove diameter of 0.308 inch. The twist appears to be 1 in 22 or 24 inches.

.The bullets were from a Winchester mold and a mold (#78B) made by N.E.I. The Winchester bullets had a length of 0.558”, a diameter of 0.3129”, a heel diame-ter of 0.3014”, and a seating depth of 0.141”. They weighed an average of 89.5 grains with a SAECO hardness of approximately 5.5 or a BHN of 8 to 9. The N.E.I. mold I ordered knowing that my Winchester bullet supply would soon end and I would need to be able to produce my own bullets. Fourteen weeks after it was ordered, it arrived.

Loads shown in both trimmed and untrimmed cases.

It cast bullets of the correct diameter but the heel diameter was a bit small. So back to N.E.I. the mold went and within a week it was returned. The heel portion of the mold had been slightly enlarged and the bullets dropped from the mold with a length also of 0.558”, a diameter of 0.3120”, a heel diameter of 0.3005”, and a seating depth of 0.265”. They weighed an average of 97.6 grains. This was when they were cast from a 20 to 1 (lead to tin) alloy. These bullets have a SAECO hardness of 6.5 or a BHN of approximately 10.

When I first began reloading this little cartridge, I assembled several of the rounds with the recommended starting load and the Winchester bullets. I then tried them in the chamber and in the tubular magazine of the Model 92. The chamber fit was good, but they would not cycle from the magazine to the chamber, the length of the cartridge was too long. I remember reading an article and they indicated the cases need trimmed with some bullets to allow them to feed from the magazine to the chamber. Several of the cases were trimmed to 0.815” and this allowed for them to cycle properly. A few words of caution are in order at this point: If one uses the trimmed cases, only the starting charge of powder is recommended. And that may have only proved true in my particular rifle and not one that someone else might be using. I discovered this with the Unique powder and the N.E.I. bullets. A load of 2.5 grains seemed safe in this particular rifle but 3.0 grains began to show pressure signs on the cases and the 5-shot group also showed problems…keyholes were very obvious. A combination of the trimmed cases and the longer seating depth (heel) of the N.E.I. bullet is probably what leads to the excessive pressure. The case rims actually became somewhat out-of-round, the primers had deep indents, and a couple of the primers had a pin-sized hole in the center with black carbon deposits also noted. I later discovered that the N.E.I. bullets could be loaded into the untrimmed cases and they would cycle from the magazine to the chamber. Three grains of Unique in the untrimmed cases showed no signs of pres-sure problems.

All data and groups listed on the chart were fired with untrimmed cases that are 0.910” in length. The overall cartridge length with the Winchester bullet was 1.314” and with the N.E.I. bullet it was 1.192” The bullets were lubed with Lee Liquid Alox. I drilled 21/64” holes through a piece of 1/8” aluminum. The loaded rounds could then be place into these holes (the rim keeps them from falling through) and be dipped into a container of Alox that was the correct depth to only cover the bullets. The bullets were left to drip for a few minutes and then they were touched on a piece of paper towel. This removed the excess from the tip. Leading has not been a problem with these bullets and this rifle.

Firing 3.0 grs. of Unique in trimmed cases was too much!

A summary of events follows:

Untrimmed cases were used to shoot all groups at 20 yards, with the exception of the group that showed excessive pressure to the cases and the “keyholing” noted on the target. Case life appears to be very good as some of the cases have been reloaded and fired at least 10 times.

If trimmed cases are to be used, extreme caution should be used with powder charges. Even the starting loads listed may cause pressure problems in some firearms. They all appeared safe in my particular rifle.

Before the bullet was seated into the case, the case mouth was “very slightly” egg-shaped by pressing it against the reloading bench. This allowed the bullet/case to make a distinct “snapping” noise when the bullet was pushed into the case. Bullets were held in place fairly tight using this method.

Groups with the N.E.I. bullets were only tested with the powders that produced the best groups with the Winchester bullets.Velocities were chronographed at a distance of 5 feet from the muzzle.

All velocities listed are with Winchester bullets. Not shown in the chart is the velocity of the 3.0 grains of Unique and the N.E.I. bullet. This combination produced an aver-age velocity of 1130 fps. Yes, I checked and rechecked this velocity and it is what it is! Unique, CCI 500 primers, and the N.E.I. bullets are my choice for this rifle.The barrel of this rifle was cleaned using Sweet’s 7.62 and a bronze bore brush after every 10 rounds of ammo were fired.

It was an interesting and challenging project and an old firearm gets put back into use again. 􀀁

.With barrel, rifle, brass and a number of good heavy bullet moulds in hand, all I needed was a reamer. Not wanting to buy a custom reamer for such a simple conversion, I chanced upon a reamer specification sheet for the 458x2 inch from JGS Precision Tool in Oregon. According to the spec sheet, the first 1.575 inches of this reamer were in fact my .45-70 x1.575. Even the throat was pretty close to what I wanted. A quick call proved it was in stock and at a reasonable price.

One 200-yard (left) and two 100-yard targets shot in registered competition with the .45-70 Short 1.575”

The reamer worked perfectly with the exception of the rim cut which I made separately. (Before I get to the loading and shooting, a caution is in order. I don’t know if anybody else’s 458-2 inch reamer would work. I don’t even know if another one from JGS would work so well. Mine did. Of course, my project had a fallback. If the reamer didn’t work, I would build a .458x2 inch and keep my mouth shut.)

With the chamber complete, I turned to loading dies, to see what problems there would be. The answer to this question is none. My RCBS dies work perfectly. Remington brass works best as it is thicker and the sizing die snugs them down just the right amount. The expander, when adjusted all the way down is right on the money, and so is the seating die. This is a plus, not needing any special dies. Brass is a one step affair; cut it off. One added benefit is saving damaged or cracked neck cases. Now when a .45-70 case gets damaged, just cut off the crumpled or cracked neck and you’re back in business.

In the area of components, most of my regular .45-70 bullets, powder, primers, and brass worked fine. One set however, is shining above the rest, so that is the one I will discuss.

I use mostly Remington brass; it works best in my gun. The bullet which has come out on top is the heavy Saeco 540-grain bore-rider. I think it was designed for the .458 Winchester and seems to fit my gun’s throat very well. The powder for this heavy bullet is AA 2015 BR. It’s the hands down winner. Proper charge seems to be 28.6 grains behind a .060” cork wad with just a little compression. The only primers I use are Winchester Large Rifle magnum. Others may be good, but these work for me.

There is one fly in the ointment however; in going through a batch of cases, I will occasionally find a thin case or worse yet, one that is thin on one side. These must be removed or you will have fliers. My highly technical method for finding them, is just load them. If a bullet seats too easy, I set it aside. A careful inspection after firing will usually show a thin or out of round case.

I size all my bullets to .459” for this rifle and use SPG lube exclusively. I live in the desert; with high temperatures and low humidity, and SPG is the only lube I’ve found that will let me shoot all day in the summer without leading (in the big bores).

As mentioned before, I cast my bullets of No. 2 metal; making them any harder does not improve accuracy for .45 caliber the way it usually does in smaller bores.

Well, that’s about all there is to making up a rifle and ammunition. The proof is in the shooting and I’m well pleased with this combination so far. The M77 has a pretty well designed stock. The trigger is not bad and I cut the barrel fat enough to hold the recoil down. The rifle weighs in at a little over 12 pounds, so the heavy bullet load is easy to shoot. The velocity is estimated at about 1200 f.p.s. with the 28.6-grain AA 2015 BR load. If conditions are good and you do your part, sub minute of angle groups happen on a regular basis.

To prove to myself this set up could be used in a cast bullet match. I went over to Modesto California (Modesto Rifle Club) for a two-day match in May 2004. Let me say they are one of the greatest shooting groups I’ve ever met. I had two wonderful days of shooting. Competing against Modesto’s Schuetzen plain base, heavy bench rest and production shooters was a humbling experience. I did manage to struggle a few rungs up the ladder. My best 100-yard group was .654 inches. At 200 yards, I turned in a best group of 1.439 inches. I’m very happy with my project and the accuracy seems reasonable for the M77 shooting a 540-grain bullet. 􀀁

While the waiting was going on I had to decide on a stock. I expected the recoil to be substantial, so I wanted a composite stock. I spent a lot of time looking and finally decided on a Lone Wolf stock. Bob Culbertson has a nice little shop at his home and does most of the building himself. I looked at the samples he had on a dozen or so rifles and picked the one I wanted. It was a straight stock design with cheek piece, recoil pad and sling studs. After discussing the rifle with him he recommended I have the balance point at the front receiver ring and make the stock out of carbon fiber and Kevlar in epoxy resin.

.300 WSM, .416 x .300 WSM, .458 x .300 WSM

I started out by saying I wanted the finished rifle to be not less than nine nor more than 10 pounds. Again he suggested I not do that and instead let the finished weight be determined by the material needed to result in the balance point as previously stated. So we had an agreement.

He said he would need the rifle before he started building the stock. After I received the rifle from the gunsmith I took it over to Bob in Montana. A week later he called and said I could come and get the rifle.

My completed gun has a 20” barrel, 13-1/4” length of pull, and weighs exactly eight pounds. When I saw the weight my first thought was “oh my, what have I done...” Actually it wasn’t phrased exactly like that but the words printed will do to convey the idea. At eight pounds, 20” barrel, and balance between my hands the gun is easy to carry and mounts quickly and easily with the sights on line as I put my cheek to the comb.

It was time to get to working on load data. I am unaware of any other rifle that has been built as I designed this one to be done. Certainly no commercial rounds are available so there is no load data, either. I own a copy of QuickLoad. It is helpful for a general idea of what to expect. But I have found that it starts ringing alarm bells and putting up red flags when I enter data for a load I use in the .358 Winchester that is straight out of the latest Nosler manual and in the middle range. So I think QL is extremely conservative. Therefore I feel I am on fairly safe ground if I carefully use good loading tech-nique and pay attention to pressure signs.

To find a starting load I borrowed from Ken Waters’ Pet Loads compilation. Ken designed and built a .416 rifle using the .350 Remington Mag case, and subsequently published the load data for his .416 Express in the compilation. Ken also developed load data for the .416 Taylor. It just happens he used three of the same IMR powders for each cartridge. I checked the capacity of the Waters Express and the Taylor cases in QuickLoad and found that the Express was 15% less than my case and the Taylor was 7% more than my case. So after a bit of extrapolation I came up with equivalent loads for a 350 grain bullet with the three common powders. I then averaged the two starting loads for each powder and concluded I was erring on the safe side since my results would be skewed towards the Express cartridge.

It was time to do some loading. The smith who built my gun ordered a set of loading dies from Hornady. He took a Mauser action he has, chambered a stub barrel in his shop, and fire formed 100 rounds of new brass for me. So I had the proper set of dies to start with. But this is to be a cast bullet rifle. And the Hornady dies are a two die set. I obtained a die body from RCBS and sent it to friend Lloyd deVore who performs magic with a lathe. He turned out a perfect neck expanding die for cast bullets. Out to the shop and crank a loading press handle. With 20 rounds of loaded ammo I head for the range and set up my target. The moment of truth. Hmm, what is this uncontrollable shaking, am I developing a serious viral infection?

The first shot can only be described as a tremendous shock. None of my other rifles come even close to half the recoil of this one. An eight pound rifle with a 350 grain bullet propelled out the muzzle at approximately 2150 f.p.s. can only be “exciting” the first time it is shot. But then you begin to get accustomed to it and find it isn’t too bad. And it really isn’t too bad. Indeed, I have moved my velocity up to about 2300 since that first shot. And it isn’t at all painful, just a very stout shove. And it doesn’t even slam my thumb knuckle into my nose or cheekbone like so many heavy rifles do. So when I carry this rifle in the very steep mountains of north Idaho I will be glad I agreed to what the stockmaker suggested I do.

.There is still much work to do. My sight set has a too high front sight so I must change that to bring the point of aim up at 100 yards. My goal is to have +2” at 100 so I can reasonably expect the gun to shoot plus or minus two inches out to approximately 180 yards. I still have some problems to work out with proper seating depth so I have a good gas seal in the throat and the gun feeds well. The wide meplat makes that a bit of a challenge.

.358 Winchester (225 gr.), .416 x 300 (350 gr.)

I intend to do a lot more load development. I presently use 61 grains IMR 3031 for my load. I’m not at all sure 3031 will be the best powder for this cartridge until I have tried a lot of others. But all the things yet to be done are fun for those of us who enjoy experimenting with their guns.

I suppose it is fair to expect some to ask what I might want with a .416 rifle? The best answer I can give is I didn’t have one and always wanted one. Beyond that does anyone need a reason for having more than three rifles? And it gave me an excuse to build a rifle that doesn’t otherwise exist unless someone else had the same idea after looking at the .300 WSM case.

And how does it shoot? I just had the chance to put it on a bench last week. At 50 yards I got one three shot group that was tight enough it was difficult to discern three holes. They measured approximately .416 x .550. But 50 yards is not a good measure of how a rifle shoots. At 100 yards the bullets were dispersing because they weren’t seated out far enough to give me a good gas seal and the barrel had leaded a bit. Until I have done much more work on loads and getting a proper seal I won’t know how well the gun shoots. That can be another story at a different time.

And did it all go smoothly? No, it definitely did not!I found I had to backtrack several times and still have some loose ends to tie up and clean up. But I suppose that is the price one pays when he doesn’t have the skills or the tools to do all the work himself.

For now I am pleased to have realized a long desire to do something really different with a rifle that might not have been done by anyone else. And it seems to work in spite of me. So if that chance to hunt Alaska ever comes up I know I will have a rifle suitable to the hunt.

First let’s talk about my oldest revolver. It is an early1905 Model S&W Hand Ejector with a 6 1/2 inch barreland round butt, made in 1906. The bore and chamberthroats are what gun traders call dark but serviceable,other wise known as pitted. But the action is very crispand lock up is tight. It also has a plain steel cylinder,unhardened and soft. It would probably be classed as ablack powder gun and nothing you would want to hot rod.

1906 6 1/2 inch and
1941 6 inch S&Ws in 32-20

I did not have high hopes for it as a shooter, but itcertainly surprised me with the loads it likes. It uses mystandard resized cases and Federal Small Rifle (#200)primers. Small rifle primers are only used for their thickercup. The hole in the standing breech that the firing pingoes through is very large and pistol primers flow backaround the firing pin. It is probably a case of void spaceand excessive headspace, but the SR primer solves thatissue.

Cases must be trimmed to a consistent length for thisgun and its loads; short is OK, but they must be thesame. It likes two bullets; the RCBS 98 grain SWC andthe Lyman #313492 full wadcutter that are cast fromWW’s and a touch of added tin. Both are sized 0.314,the same as the throat, and lubed with any soft greasylube. The Lyman is crimped very lightly in its crimpgroove and the RCBS is lightly crimped just over the frontof the first band to fit the length of the cylinder. This brassis thin, and if you feel the crimp shoulder in the dies, it istoo much. Use a micrometer, as 0.003 is just the rightamount of crimp.

The powder charge is critical: 3.1 grains of newAlliant Bullseye in Remington or Winchester cases, or 3.0grains in Starline cases. No other powder even comesclose to hitting at point of aim or making as small of groups. These loads are both 765 feet per second andgood for 2 groups at 25 yards all day long.

L-R, Lyman 313492, RCBS 98 grain SWC, Lyman311316 (modified to remove gascheck), Lyman311576, Lyman 311440

My other favorite revolver is also an S&W, with a sixinch barrel and square grips. It was made in 1940 or1941 and is less than 200 from the last one made. It hasa heat-treated cylinder, the change having been made onSeptember 2, 1919 at serial number 81,287. The chambersand bore are in beautiful condition and best of allthey are the same dimensions as the earlier one. But thesights are the later square topped front and square notchrear groove.

It doesn’t shoot the older gun’s loads to the same point of impact. The first bullet that worked well was the Ideal #311316, a 112 grain gas checked design. This was one of the first bullets ever made for gas checks and especially for the 32/20. The gas checks worked at high speeds, less than perfect bores and soft alloys. The bullet also has a crimp groove for smokeless powder and tube magazine rifles.

My old mould was made with a sharply tapered heel for use with press on type gas checks that were hard to find. Crimp on gas checks never seated flat on the base and many were cocked at an angle. A trip to the lathe solved that problem with a bullet that is now plain based and sizes smoothly at 0.314 cast from WW’s plus tin and weighing 116 grains. The lube groove is small and without the space above the gas check, a good quality lube is required. NRA formula beeswax and Alox or better commercial lubes works well.

Now that I had a bullet that works, I went through the powders normally used; Bullseye, 700X, SR7625, Unique and SR4756. Two loads, 4.5 grains of Unique and 4.5 grains of SR7625, would shoot good groups if the powders were positioned in the case. Chronograph data shows that wide velocity differences (750 to 840 feet per second) show up on the target as high and low hits. Neither small pistol magnum nor small rifle primers would reduce extreme spread to less than 90 feet per second at random powder positions. Also, all of these loads shot three to four inches high and two inches left at 25 yards.

Ken Water’s Pet Loads, from Wolfe Publications, hasa good write up on 32/20 pistols. Mr. Water’s pet load is6.0 grains of SR4756. My concern was that it was wellabove anyone else’s listed load for that powder.Cautiously, I worked up to his loading. At 5.8 grains Ifound my pet load with standard small pistol primers. Itshoots to point of aim for elevation and is at the left edgeof the front sight at 25 yards. Cases fall out of the cylinderif you tip the gun up. Bench rested groups are twoinches at 50 yards and velocity is very close to 945 feet per second regardless of powder position.

My favorite rifle is one of only two American boltactions ever made for the 32/20, the other being theWinchester Model 43. They must have made a hundredSavage Model 23C’s for every Winchester. My Model23C was made about 1930 so was probably never firedwith corrosive primers or black powder. The bore is likenew and locking lug and bolt handle tight and solid. Theoutside shows some wear and use, but all in all it’s a verynice rifle.

The Bullseye load is 1035 f.p.s. and the SR4756 loadis 1315 f.p.s. from its 25 inch barrel. The Bullseye load isexceptionally quiet and ear muffs probably aren’trequired. It is perfect for shooting around livestock or builtup areas. The SR4756 load recreates the black powderload performance and is good at least up to 100 yards.But bullet drop rears it head, as drop with a 50 yard zerois about 4-1/2 inches at 100 yards.

Savage 23C

Two new loads were created for this rifle. A duplicate of the old 32 WCF High Velocity load was pretty easy to make. A Lyman #311316 bullet, with gas check, was cast from WWs and 2% tin sized 0.312 and lubed with NRA formula lube. This very late Lyman mould has a gas check shank that works well with Hornady crimp on gas checks. Another good thing about this mould is that itcasts bullets at .312 inches, the best size for the Savagerifle. The load is 14.0 grains of Norma 200, with Federal200 primers. While I tried IMR 4198, H4227 and AA1680powders, they never gave me as good of accuracy asNorma 200.

The nice part about this load is that it maximizes thepotential of the 115 grain bullet at 1650 f.p.s. Zeroed 1-1/4 high at 50 yards; it is 1 low at 100 yards and 3 lowat 125 yards.

Paco Kelly’s #311440 heavy bullet load always fascinatedme for some reason, but I hesitated loading thelittle round that hot. My heavy bullet load also usesLyman’s #311440 bullet. This stubby bullet is made like asoda can with rings and is short enough to stabilize in the1 in 20 twist of the Savage rifle. It is made from 1/3 WWand tin alloy mixed with 2/3 scrap lead and weighs 154grains from the mould. I have a lot of IMR SR4759 powdersaved up for benchrest match loads and used this forthe heavy bullet. A load of 9.0 grains of SR4759 will pusha 154 grain bullet 1495 f.p.s. with 2 MOA accuracy.Sighted in 1 inch high at 50 yards it is 1 inch low at 100yards. Hmmm. That sounds like original 357 Magnumrevolver performance to me!

The last is probably the most versatile 32/20, a TCContender with 10 inch bull barrel and a Leopold 2Xscope. It has the tightest chamber and is the one used forsetting up the sizing die for all the brass for all the guns.This barrel is 0.308 groove diameter with a one turn inten inches twist. The worst this pistol has ever shot wasR-P factory jacketed loads, a five shot 50 yard group of4-1/4 in freezing temperatures and a 20 MPH crosswind.Other than that one group, it has shot all the other guns’loads well, very well! Even the heavy bullet load goes1200 f.p.s., with an extreme spread of 15 f.p.s., and willmake 1-1/2 50 yard groups if I can hold it.

I wish a really good Contender shot would shoot itsfavorite load to see what it could really do. That load usesLyman #311576, a 120 grain gas checked round nosewith two wide deep grease groves. The bullet is seatedlong into the throat and you have to push the case in withyour thumb. Powder charge is 6.0 grains of SR4756 andsmall rifle primers are used. It will shoot 50 yard groupsthat are covered by the intersecting crosshairs of thescope. I just wish I could shoot as well as that pistol canshoot!

Am I done? Am I tired of playing with this little cartridgeafter 30 years? Nope! Waiting for the spring thawis an original Marlin 1889 Safety with a new Marlin32/20 CL barrel I installed last summer. Except for matchshooting and big game hunting, it still seems to be agreat little cartridge to me. But perhaps Henry M.Stebbins said it best in his 1947 book Small Game &Varmint Rifles: Were it not for the fact that this nearlyobsolete cartridge continues to give satisfaction to agreat many shooters, it need not have been mentioned atall. �20

I pay a little more for my moulds because I use iron. NEI makes a good mould in iron. This mould, besides casting an excellent shooting bullet, does the one thing I like a bullet mould to do: When you open the han­dles the bullet falls out. I guess it's so big, it can't do anything else.

When the bullet is seated there is slight com­pression, about 1/16 inches. I use Winchester LR magnum primers. Pressures seem low and the powder bums clean. The velocity, although I can't check it. seems to be around 1300, maybe 1350 f.p.s., cer­tainly enough to do in most any buffalo, steel or real.

This load shoots. I don't have other loads or bul­lets for this gun. Life is simple.

The gun places the first shot from a clean barrel high and left several inches. After that it just pounds them into point of aim. For a big bore it shoots pretty good groups. One hundred yard five-shot groups run around one inch. I've even had a 3/4 inch 5-shot group at 100 yards. It will also shoot long strings without much change. More than I can say for myself. Fifteen-shot groups under two inches at 100 yards is normal when I do my part. In fact, other than the fouling shot, no group has exceeded 2-1/2 inches at 100 yards. I've fired about 150 shots to date.

Needless to say, I'm very happy with my winter project for 2003. It worked for me. I don't know if it would for anybody else. Try it at your own nsk.

P.S. It will shoot with the best of them, but like the original .50-90 which it duplicates, it will also kick with the best of them!