Nom de plume: Rivrdog

Bullet Casting

....is something I have the basic equipment for, but haven't done yet. The main reason is that lead bullets ("boolits") have to be speed controlled unless you crimp on a copper Gas Check, or else the hot powder burns lead onto the bore, and this can happen in just a few rounds. This limits lead bullet usefulness to practice and target shooting, for the most part. Generally, you don't want your lead bullets going over 1,000 fps. Most boolit people have some Sooper Secrit lube that they they somehow get to stick to the lead boolit (soaking it on, baking it on, squishing it on under pressure), and various claims are made that (whatever) lube cuts down barrel leading or even prevents it entirely. I am SOOOO skeptical, sorry, and I have the barrel-scrubbing calluses to prove it.

Leading is a factor of lead alloy hardness (Brinell), heat of the powder flame and speed of the bullet after ignition of the primer and powder. Leading occurs by flame-cutting of the base of the lead boolit by the powder burning, or by smearing of the sides of the lead boolit in the bore as it travels from the chamber to the muzzle, or a combo of both types (the usual case). The general solution is to go to bullets with copper skins, either plating or actual copper jackets which the lead cores are swaged (pressed) into. Those are expensive, running 1/2 again as much to 2 1/2 times as much as a cast lead boolit bought outright, or four times as much as one cast at home. Even more expensive is the all-copper bullet.

Along comes a new anti-leading process entirely. Not a lube of any kind. POWDER COATING!

Read this and think on it.

Bears looking into, doesn't it?

Gunny quest - UPDATED!

UPDATED with great comments, to which I have added my editorial musings...

...and the quest is to find a source for reloading data to push 9mm Luger to +P+ pressure for a carbine.

It seems that the lawyers have scared off all the folks who have modified race guns and shoot IDPA Major Power Nine, and they won't publish their data. My carbine is a KelTec Sub Rifle 2000, with aftermarket spring & buffer block. It's fully-supported chamber is fine for +P+. I've been shooting NATO in it, and it loves that ammo, which is +P, sort-of.

To aid in the quest, I've laid in some Ramshot Silhouette powder and some Hodgdon HS-6 powder. I have some Xtreme Bullets 124gr CPRN and some once-fired brass, mostly Federal. All I need now is the data.

I intend to start by duping the NATO load. Father Frog's page shows me that. After that, my development will trend towards max loads of slower powders, since I have a long barrel to accelerate those FMJ pills with. I'm thinking of IMR 4227, but I only have room for 7 grains or so.

I wish I could find out what the Canadian Defense Ministry used for powder in their famous "Canadian Parabellum" loading, a HOT SMG round. They haven't made any since the Fifties when the West went to NATO, then later to STANAG standard. Supposedly, that round would wreck anything except a Sten or a FN Hi-power. It also used a lighter bullet to give more room for powder.

The one daredevil I found data from said that he loads up to 7.2-gr of HS-6 behind a 115 FMJ and barely makes 1350fps in a 4.9" racegun barrel. That gives him his Major Nine Power Factor, just barely. That's 450 #/' ME. That load should make 465 #/' ME. In a carbine, that should give 1750 fps and 782 #/' ME. Hornady's tables say that makes the carbine a useful battle tool* out to 200 yards or so. Pressure is a guess, but likely to be 37KCUP or under. Proof is 42KCUP.

For comparison, the above figures resemble what a normal .357 Remington Magnum 125-gr JHP will do out of a lever rifle.

Interesting quest. Right on the edge. Yes. Herr Luger would be impressed.

@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@

* See table below

9mm Major Power

115 gr.

0.5 B.C.

Range	Muzzle	100	200	300	400	500
Trajectory	-1.8	-1.3	-14.2	-42.9	-90.2	-159.3
Come UP in MOA	0	1.2	6.8	13.6	21.5	30.4
Come UP in Mils	0	0.4	2	4	6.3	8.8

The.Most.Useful.Ballistics.Chart!

Here.

I found this while searching for blackpowder ballistics. The chart not only has blackpowder ballistics, it has smokeless ballistics, for both common factory loads AND reloads. It also has some musket and rifle ballistics in both smokepole and smokeless categories.

The author seems to be an all-around gun guru. He teaches all manner of firearms-related skill sets, and maybe even some edged-weapon stuff.

Too bad he is out in PA or I would drop by and chat him up.

Loading Down

The usual drill for home-brew ammo makers is to load ammo which either duplicates or exceeds factory ammo. If you shoot a lot, this practice can pay for itself very quickly. I don't shoot as much as I should, but I like to explore in the depths of the ammo-making hobby. Recently, I got the idea to explore the notion of making low-power ammo, mostly because it is not available on the market, you HAVE to make it if you want to shoot it.

#0#0#0#0 

Everything old is new again, sometime.

What if we reloaders turned this issue upside-down? What if we loaded LESS-powerful ammo than is usually sold from factory suppliers? Is there any advantage to that?

Not only is the answer yes, it is HELL YESS!

In 30-caliber rifles (30 US Carbine, 30-06, 308 Winchester, 300 Savage, 300 Blackout for you AR folks, not to mention the "fat-30's", starting with the old 32-20 Winchester, the 32 Winchester Special, the AK round 7.62x39 and even the beefier 7.62x54R and 7.92s (aka 8X56, 8x57), we have, usually, an inherently good rifle with good sights that we can't shoot except in the wide-open spaces, and even then we have to realize that these bullets can carry 8 miles!

So, when we go afield and we're NOT hunting big game, the 30-cal blunderbusses get left behind or stay locked up in the shooting brake (Brit humor, that!). What if we had ammo with us for that blunderbuss of an old battle-rifle that pretty much ran out of effectiveness after 50 to 100 yards? Then, if we kick up a bunny or a varmint requires dispatch, we load the "down" round and pop the target. Pop goes the low-power round, and roll over goes the bunny, while remaining in one piece and if there is an exit wound, you can probably even find the bullet nearby!

I did a fair amount of research for this post, and my computerized wanderings took me to CastBoolit.com where there is considerable discussion of this topic. Of course, that site exists for those who cast their own bullets, or "boolits" as they call them, but powder loading is also discussed, as is the choice of the best 30-cal rifles to "load down".

I have basic bullet-casting gear, but haven't played with this sub-sport in the reloading game yet, so I buy my cast boolits ready made. Last night, I ginned up some low-power rounds for a test:

These Oregon Trail LaserCast TruShot 170s are huge boolits, but it's what I had. Better would have been something in the 100-125 grain size. The beauty of these boolits is that they are hard (sintered with silver!) alloy, and gas-checked, so despite that my 25-grains of W748 will only move them at about 1500 fps, I could load them up to as high as 2300 fps, pretty much as fast as 180 JSP factory. If I go to just a few grains of Bullseye, with Dacron over-powder wadding, I could load them down further into the 800-900 fps range.

This week, I and the Savage 99f will go to the range and I will do mixed-load comparisons with these and some factory, both factory 150s and 180s.

Gun Geek bleg: the 40 S&W

I own a fine urban-warfare pair of firearms in the 40 S&W caliber: a Glock G22 and a Kel-Tec Sub-Rifle 2000 set up for G22 magazines. I can shoot the 40 S&W effectively to 75 meters with the carbine, and push it to 125 with some effectiveness.

The problem is the round itself, which can't be hotrodded much, or so most gunnies believe. The hottest versions of this round are plenty steamy, and the carbine would handle them just fine, but they are made with very fast-burning powders. This tells me that a 16.25" carbine barrel might actually slow them down from the speed from a pistol barrel.

I want to load up some 40 S&W with a slower powder which will gain me max results from the carbine barrel. I will be using 180-gr Hornady "Hornady Action Pistol" JHPs, of which I have a goodly supply. I propose using something like 2400 powder, but am open to suggestion. I will ONLY be shooting these rounds in the heavy-chamber carbine, and NOT in the unsupported-chambered Glock.

Any ideas?

New Straight Case post

Here.

In this one, I talk about 44 caliber.

Reloading bleg - 9mm

I have decent amounts of Speer, Remington, Winchester, & WCC (military). Lesser amounts of Federal. Can anyone rank these according to longevity and case strength? I'll be loading some up at/near max (+P). This stuff is all range-floor brass, but all once fired. This will be my first time reloading this caliber.

I'm sorry

I've been blogging too sporadically, and as a result, the country's gone to hell in a handbasket. I'm guessing we will need a new country now.

On a related note, this is National Ammo Day, and we are supposed to show our support for the 2A by either buying or manufacturing some ammo.

Get out your wallet and hie thee to your gun store, or hie thee to your reloading bench and crank some out.

That is all.

Lawyers in your cartridge box?

I've mused on this subject before, and had commenters say that, no, changing loads published for reloading is not because of lawyers, but I'm not convinced.

I recently acquired a fine Savage 99f, in 300 Savage caliber. Since it's inception in 1920, right after the conclusion of World War One, which convinced everyone that blackpowder cartridges, pressures and ballistics were gone forever, the 300 Savage has remained a popular chambering for North American big game.

As the owner of this fine, pre-war Model 99f, I got interested in the history of the loading of the cartridge, so I got down my own reference materials to look it up. First I looked at Hodgdon's 2012 tables, which, in IMR 4895 (the closest thing I have in powder to the factory loading) shows the "do not exceed" load to be 38.5 grains, which pushes the 180-gr bullet at 2,390, showing a CUP of 45,700, for a Muzzle Energy of 2,283. That seemed a bit low and slow, so I dug deeper.

In my Speer #8 manual, printed in 1970, the DNE load for IMR 4895 is listed at 44.0 grains, and there is no load shown below 40.0 grains! 5.5 grains difference in the DNE loads is a HUGE amount, and that load chronys out at 2,618 fps, a good 228 fps higher than Hodgdon for the same 180-gr bullet. The muzzle energy jumps 456 #/ft, or 19%. Compare this to a near-max load for the .308 Winchester (developed from the 300 Savage) with the 180-gr. Loading W748 powder at 46.5 grains, the .308 Win muzzle velocity achieved is 2,610 at 48,500 CUP. The Speer 300 Savage DNE load beats the .308 Winchester by a few fps, so these loadings were nearly identical 43 years ago.

Going back to 1967, and the Lyman #44 manual, they listed less powder in the max loading, only 40.0 grains of IMR 4895, for a speed of 2427, only 37 fps faster that the modern Hodgdon loading.

My research convinces me that the 300 Savage will do anything the .308 Winchester will do. BTW, I have a Savage 99e in .308, so I am set for a range test. I don't have any factory 180-grain ammo for the .308, always hunted with 150-gr Power Point, but there should be some around if I look hard enough.

There might just be a fine, historical, range comparison of the two cartridges, in the same rifle platform, coming to a blog near you soon!

Scarce blogging notice (withdrawn)

You may move along this weekend, not much new to see here. Your blogger will be putting on a big reloading push during the hours I usually blog.

Y'all have fun. I will be!

If the results come out like I'm hoping, I'd qualify to be an "arse-anal" in Kalifornika, heheheheheheh. Free pun that, help yourself. 

UPDATE: 08182013 1352 PDT: .223 loading evolution completed. 430 rounds loaded. 107 were IMR 3031, 22.0 gr, 55 gr spire point boat-tail. 323 were IMR 4198, 20.0 gr, same bullet, except the last 30 were Speer 55 gr Spitzer. Ran myself out of 3031 and almost out of 4198. Have full jugs of 4895, 4350, W748 and 2400 left for rifle loading, Unique and W231 for pistol. I guess I'm getting low on powder, need to order some. Did score a brick of Small Rifle primers, though, so am 570 primers UP in inventory. Next loading evolution will be 300 Savage 180 gr, then some .410 ga pumpkin ball in .444 Marlin rifle cases. I have a pair of Silly Savages to zero in, a Model 99f and a Model 24 O/U .22/410. They are both long guns from better, bygone days.