This article by CBA member, Tom Acheson, was published in the May/June 1999, #139 issue of the Fouling Shot.

One of my winter time projects has been the reorganization of my reloading room. A big portion of the effort included the building of a set of bookshelves to store the many books and loading manuals that those who share the hobby of handloading know are easy to accumulate. While filling the shelves with the books, I spent some time going through my collection of CBA bi-monthly publications.

In Fouling Shot #72 (March-April 1988), I came across an article I had submitted, dis-cussing the use of cast bullets for deer hunting with the .41 revolver. It’s hard to believe that these past 10 years have gone by so quickly. Since our journal often includes articles on hunting, I thought this would be a good time for an update on my continued use of the .41 revolver for deer hunting.

The total number of deer I’ve taken with the .41 revolver is now 10. Nine of them were mule deer taken in Wyoming, and one was a Minnesota whitetail.

An S&W Model 57 .41 Magnum was used for the first three deer, and a modified Dan Wesson has been used for taking the remaining.

The Dan Wesson was originally chambered in .357 Super Mag., with the long cylinder. The factory barrel was removed and was replaced with a Douglas .41 caliber 1-14” twist, nine inch long barrel. A new case was developed to take advantage of the longer cylinder. Shortening the semi-rimmed .220 Swift case to 1.6” resulted in a wildcat case that met the need. This round is called the .41 Wyoming.

The twist rate of 1-14” was purposely selected so heavy bullets could be used. The larger case let me shoot heavier than normal .41 bullets to velocities appropriate for hunting. The 296-grain bullet can be pushed to 1325 f.p.s. in the .41 Wyoming, while the 325 gr. will do 1100 f.p.s.

Historically, the .41 Magnum was introduced as a law enforcement firearm, to fit between the .357 Mag. and the .44 Mag. In this role it did not experience broad acceptance. The .41 Mag. has been embraced by a number of metallic silhouette shooters, but is not as popular as the .44 Mag. and the .357 Super Mag.

Where the .41 Mag. has had reasonable success is in the deer hunting fields. Using the traditional 220-gr. bullet at 1250 f.p.s., this round is difficult to improve upon. It is an effective game stopper for those of the hand held short barreled hunting fraternity.

One criticism of the .41 Mag. was the lack of bullet designs and weights available to the handloader. For some reason, those people supporting this view seemed to ignore cast bullets. There are moulds of numerous shape and weight configurations available for the .41. And if there aren’t enough choices in mass produced moulds, you can have a Hoch or LBT custom made to your design. I know because I have too many of these moulds myself. It’s easy for an experimenter to get “hooked” in this area.

In the S&W, the SAECO 220 grain round nose/flat point works well on deer. Moving up to NEI or SSK you can get a 275-gr. or 295 gr. mould. My current bullet in the .41 Wyoming is a 325-gr. Hoch. The nose pour Hoch moulds produce high quality bullets.

While some of these moulds cast gas check designs, I employ poly wads in all my loads. Using as-cast wheel weight bullets (not heat treated), I have no leading problems, due in large part to good dimensional bullet fit and the “sealing” properties of the poly wad. Tom Gray’s lube has been used for two years in these loads and it works great.

Using an iron sighted revolver in open Wyoming mule deer country places a premium on being well practiced in the use of a revolver. For some a scope might work but I haven’t had the success I desire under these conditions using optical sights. Maybe a scope would work well from a deer stand, where the deer might be moving slowly, if at all.

This article written by CBA member, Pat Iffland, was published in the July/Aug 2002, #158 issue of the Fouling Shot.

Much has been written in these pages about the unbelievably successful experimentation that’s taken place with cast bullets through the years. The novice or casual bullet caster must stand in awe of the people that write these articles and feel rather diminished by their own supposed ineptitude. The problem as I see it is that for every success story there’s a bushel basket full of fail-ures that never seem to make it to print. What you’re going to get here is the truth, the whole truth, and noth-ing but the truth of what I usually have to go through when I decide to go off on a “Buck The Norm” endeavor. I’ll tell the story of my recent decision to design a 250-gr. bullet for the .30 BR case.

The seed of heavy bullet technology (?) was planted by Ed Doonan on our trip home from the ‘99 nationals. I’d shot my usual and was bemoaning the effect of wind on our puny projectiles when Ed started pushing his heavy bullet/high ballistic coefficient theory. He must have figured he’d finally found a patsy, I mean student, who was ripe to give it a try. Naturally I played Devil’s Advocate looking for holes in his reasoning but he sup-ported his ideas with good firm logic and reeled me in like a 1-lb. catfish.

Bidding Ed a fond farewell the wheels started spinning. As stated earlier the chambering was a foregone conclusion, .30 BR. The throating took about 15 minutes to decide upon, I always used a .310x30 minute throat with the shorter bullets so this one would be .310x22-1/2 minutes to accommodate the extra bullet length I’d be dealing with. Greenhill would decide the rifling twist after I had my bullet design drawn up. The biggest hurdle I faced was how to actually go about designing a bullet that weighed my stated goal of 250 grains. With pencil in hand and the confidence of someone who doesn’t know any better, I went to work.

When finished, I had a drawing for a bullet 1.205 inches long, .311 diameter, two .050 grease grooves, tapered from before the front grease groove to the ogive from .311 to .301. A true work of art! Print and check were sent off to Dave Mos and the story begins.

When the mould arrived in what can only be described as record time I strode to the garage to put ladle to sprue plate, boasting to anyone within ear shot just how lucky they were to be living in the same neighborhood as someone who was about to become a CBA living legend, Numero Uno, King Of The Hill, in other words The Champ!

After casting up a handful back to the house I went stopping only to retrieve the bottle of 1954 Don Perion I had chilling just for this occasion. Slipping a gas check ever so gently on my new jewel I placed in on the Pact scale, picked up my bottle of celebratory libation, and awaited the results.

With ever increasing thumb pressure on the cork I counted down the blinking screen, 3-2-1 and there it was, staring at me with all the intensity of a numerical Mike Tyson. A grand total of 218.8 grains!After picking my chin up off the floor, placing the mumble juice back on ice, and checking the financial status of my checkbook it was back to the drawing board. I really liked the design of #1 and figured by adding a .050 long straight section in front of the forward grease groove and keeping all else the same I’d make my magic 250 grains with no problem, hence #2 saw the light of day.

When #2 arrived I performed the same drill as before, firm in the belief that this was it, the Holy Grail, 250 grains of rompin’ stompin’ fanny kickin’ lead that’d cause grown men to quake in their boots and put me in the drivers seat of any match I ever decided to attend!

When I got through casting up my usual handful back to the house I went, stopping to grab hold of my happy sauce for the big celebration. Up the stairs I galloped wearing a grin that you only get when you know you’re at the top of your game and the gods of cast bullet shooting are in your corner. After once again slapping a gas check on the bullet I gave it a hook shot from across the room that landed base down in the pan and started working on what load I was going to use.

Now you might not believe my next statement, and the folks at Pact told me such a thing couldn’t possibly happen, but when the numbers 228.6 popped up on the little screen I swear to you all I heard a laugh! Not a big rip roaring gut wrenching laugh but a small diabolical“Gotcha” laugh. There I stood with tears streaming down my face and the one eyed blue devil was laughing at me!While smashing my still corked bottle of stumble bum down on the demon I was already planning #3 and deciding from where to order my new scale.

A right thinking man might deduce that if adding a .050” long straight section onto #1 added 10 grains of weight then naturally adding .150” would add 30 grains, and since I started at 218 grains with #1 the 30 would make it a perfect 250 grain bullet, right? You’re absolutely correct, it would. I on the other hand added a .200” long straight section and ended up with, you guessed it,a 260 grain bullet (word must have leaked out about how I deal with laughing scales because this one didn’t make a peep).

Why I didn’t stop here is beyond me but I can only conclude that at the time this had become a fight to the poorhouse between me and the elusive 250 grain bullet and I wasn’t about to give up even if my better (and saner) half had to work 70 hours a week to make it hap-pen!

Picking up my chartreuse colored crayon (after the laughing scale incident the little woman decided that any sharp instruments, including pencils, were off limits) I started on #4, incorporating a few design changes.

Once again going through my, which by now had become second nature, routine of waiting for the mould, casting the handful, mounting the stairs, and installing the check I slipped the bullet onto the scale with much trepidation and prepared myself for yet another disappointment.

When the number 249.9 appeared in front of my eyes the Rebel Yell that exploded from my lungs deafened every four-legged critter within 1/4 mile! Following my verbal explosion I immediately proceeded to race outside and started doing a very poor imitation of Michael Jackson’s “Moon Walk” up and down my street emitting shrieks of excitement at precise 15 second intervals.

All this unbridled exuberance ended when Mrs. Cuttlehut, the 85 year old widow woman who lives up the street, set her deafened but still vicious 95 pound Rottweiller “Butterfly” on me as I glided backwards past her living room window on my third go round and let loose with a yelp that must have raised the hair on the back of her neck, which with what she’d managed to cultivate on her chin and under her nose amounted to quite a crop! I can’t say I really blame the old girl, the sight of me repeatedly gliding backwards past her house letting out blood curdling screams was probably more than the poor dear could take.

Written by Malcom MacPherson, this article was published in Fouling Shot #112, Nov/Dec 1994.

I have been tinkering with guns for nearly fifty years. Upon retiring from teaching shop in our high school I had time to cast bullets on a regular basis. All the cartridges I was using had far too much capacity for the small charges used for cast bullet loads. I spent hours thinking about ways to get a practical small capacity cartridge without needing to buy expensive ream­ers and loading dies.

To make a long story short, I discovered that a . 35 Remington case could easily be made to fit into the front half of a .30-06 chamber. The .35 Remington has a base diameter of .457", as compared to the .470" base diameter of the .30-06. Case forming was accom­plished by lubricating the case and running it into a shortened .30-06 sizing die in one pass. The case was cut off and trimmed to an overall length of 1-9/16", and fire­formed and neck reamed to make the prettiest little case you ever saw.

CBA member, Tom Davis, wrote this article which appeared in the Jan/Feb 2005, #185 issue of the Fouling Shot.

In 1889, Denmark became the first country to officially adopt the Krag design, followed by the United States in 1892 and Norway in 1894. My particular Model 1889 Danish Krag long rifle is a much-used early example with an excellent bore, made at the Danish government’s Copenhagen arms works in 1891 and bearing a four-digit serial number. Early rifles, such as this one, had bores with six-groove polygonal “Rasmussen” rifling. The Danish Krag was one of only three officially-accepted military rifles which substituted thin steel jackets for wooden handguards (the other two being the German GEW 88 “Commission” rifle and the M1889 Belgian Mauser). A steel nosecap incorporates a bayonet lug on the bottom and front sight base on the top; there is no provision for a cleaning rod.

Like the later U. S. Krag, the Danes chambered theirs for a rimmed case - commonly designated the “8x58R Danish Krag,” and originally designed to propel a 237-grain, round-nosed bullet at a muzzle velocity of about 1965 fps. The loading gate on the right-hand side of the receiver helps to quickly identify this rifle as a Krag. Unlike the U. S. Krags, however, the loading gates on the Danish rifles are hinged to the front, requiring that the rifle be turned onto its left side in order to add cartridges to the five-round magazine. (The spring-loaded magazine cover has been propped open with a thin wooden dowel in the photo, so that the magazine follower can be seen.)