Dicko
posted this
23 December 2009
Tom in Pittsburgh wrote: Thanks for your e-mail, Dicko -- must be nice summer weather down there. Snow on the ground here, and only about -9 degrees C. Last work day before the Christmas Holiday.
Good news on two fronts: my bullet casting friend has resurfaced and seems to be getting back into business after his cross-country move from Pennsylvania to Wyoming.
In the meantime, however, I picked up a factory-reconditioned 10# Lyman pot, a thermometer, and a few vintage moulds. I have some soft alloy coming (16:1), and should be trying my hand at bullet casting again after about a 20-year break. My wife will be glad I'm not trying it again using the kitchen stove!
I'm going to start out with some old Ideal/Lyman .30 caliber classics (311290 and 311413) and see what I can do with them in my “new” M1917 Enfield in .30-06.
Not to get into politics or anything, but I just saw the new “Invictus” movie directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Morgan Freeman (as Nelson Mandela) and Matt Damon -- about the 1995 rugby World Cup. We enjoyed the film -- I'm curious how it's being received over in your neck of the woods?
Best,
Tom
http://www.vintage-gunlore.com>http://www.vintage-gunlore.com
P.S. I have a nice old 2-band MK III Snider Volunteer rifle made in England, but which supposedly came out of King Williams Town and was used during the 9th Kaffir War there by a local unit. I bought it from a dealer Down Under -- not sure how it got over there, though...
Yeah, Tom, we are running at 25 - 30 Celsius most days. Can expect 30 plus in Feb running up to 40 occasionally.
You are doing the right thing getting back to casting. Cast rifle bullets really need to be tailored to each rifle especially the old military stuff, and the fact is that you can only do that yourself. The old 311290 mould is a nice one. The modern RCBS silhouette moulds are nice, but I found that the most consistently concentric and dimensionally accurate moulds are Lee. Even then you might have to polish out the bore riding portion.
Ah, the kitchen stove ! I don't use hollow lube sticks, too expensive. I buy the big commercial sticks, melt them in a small pan and pour hot into the lubricator. Used to do it on the kitchen stove until one day I knocked the handle and spilled melted hard wax all over the stove and the floor for a radius of about six feet. It got into nooks and crannies I didn't know were there. Had to scrape it off and dig it out with a knife blade and clean up with thinners. Took all day.
Slug the barrel. I just slugged a P14. Bore dia was 303 as it should be but groove was 313. Bullet should therefore be 314. Can't get a die in this part of the world so I polished out a 311 die. You can then get the problem that if chamber is tight and brass thick you can't chamber the loaded round.
I wouldn't cast with 16:1. Too soft. Forget about tin unless you are going to hunt with them, then the whole alloy spec changes. For range use you want them decently hard. I have recently tested 8% antimonial alloy at 1600FPS with no leading. That's the limit for plain base. At 1800FPS I got a lot of leading.
You can shoot 8% alloy to 2000FPS with gas check, possibly faster, but I recommend 10% antimony for those velocities. It has to do with bullet deformation under pressure. Honesty compels me to say that there is much argument about it and the guys seem to think WW are OK at 2000FPS. I reckon you'll do better with decent hardness. With respect, Americans get their raw materials dirt cheap compared with us, so I reckon a few cents per bullet for antimony is cheap enough.
I'm always happy to talk politics. It's what dictates our lives whether we like it or not. There is wide approval of the film here because it suits the mood of the majority. I didn't bother to see it. I've had a excess of liberation politics for the last fifteen years. The world thinks we have democracy. We don't. We have government that does what it likes with the benefit of a 65% majority. We are suffering from collapse of our systems because of a grotesque incompetence that would see it ejected anywhere else. South Africa is very polarised between black and white. Whites cling to western concepts of democracy and governance. That makes us alien in our own country. Which is why one million of our four million whites have emigrated since 1994. That's as far as I'd better go as this forum is not for politics and I did not intend to disrespect that.
Best of luck with the casting.