The loadwork with my 405 WCF!

[405 WCF]

I have a lot of Norma 202 powder at home, so I have in mind to use it for my new RCBS 350 gr .414 bullet for my 405 WCF.
It is rather slow burning for the caliber, but I will try it.

The bullets weigh 364 grs with GC and lube.
Load no 1 was 46 grs Norma 202, and the velocity I got was 1768 fps.
Not so good accuracy, but still a good start.
The group is shot at 55 yards with open factory sights.

http://i114.photobucket.com/albums/n245/405WCF/Liteavvarje156.jpg

[405 WCF]

The accuracy is here!
Loaded 48 grs Norma 202, velocity is 1818 fps, and the group is nice.
Velocit still much to low, but I am on my way out with ammo loaded with 50 grs.
I hope that the accuracy is here to stay.

http://i114.photobucket.com/albums/n245/405WCF/Liteavvarje157.jpg

[405 WCF]

The accuracy was NOT here to stay, or maby I was just lucky with the 48 grain group.
The 50 grs group was not good at all.
Velocity 1945 fps.
What is this????
I give up for today.

http://i114.photobucket.com/albums/n245/405WCF/Liteavvarje158.jpg

[405 WCF]

I have a lot of lead in the barrel :( , so thats were the problem is.
I think that I have to try my ordinary alloy and maby change lube.
The lube I used was LEE Liquid Alox, but I will try Lymans black moly lube.
Maby I allso try with unsized .4165 bullets, with LEE's alox, and the GC put on with the fingers.

[leftiye]

Horizontal stringing? Was it windy? Leading sprays them all over, or vertically more likely than not. Pretty small sample to know though. Get rid of leading for sure, it won't ever shoot well when leading is present. Let us know if that super Moly lube does the trick. And/ or slow down if it isn't violating your desired velocity feelings.

[arkypete]

405
Are these bullets air cooled or water quinched?
Something else to ponder is the bullet engaging the leade of the barrel or does have some jump to the leade.
Jim

[405 WCF]

Not windy, and the bullets are water quenched to 17-18 Brinnell.
I will try to make the O.A.L longer, but than I have to seat it behind the crimp groove.
I have tryed to chamber unsized .4165 bullets, and my rifle chamber them.
I will cast new bullets, of lighter alloy, water quench them, and increase the O.A.L , and make them so long as my rifle will chamber.

[405 WCF]

New bullets, ww + 5% lino + 5% tin, waterquenched, 20.9 Bhrinnell.
OAL increased to maximum, 80,5 mm, ( 3,17 in ).
52 grs Norma 202, Lyman moly lube.
V/0 1990 fps.
All lead from the barrel remowed.

First group:1.8 in.
Second group: 2.5 in.
Third group: over 3 in.
A lot of lead in the barrel again :(

Maby bigger bullet size would help.
My rifle will chamber unsized .4165 - .417 bullets.
What do you cast bullets friends think of this?
I have never tryed .0035-.004 overdim bullets, so I have to ask.
Can I shot so big bullets?
Pressure increase?
How much must I reduce the load?

//Olle

[arkypete]

Olle
Sounds like you maybe a candidate for a Lyman or a RCBS 416 mold.
I'd drop my starting powder charges down to begining level again. You may find the increased resistance gives a more effecient powder burn.
Jim

[arkypete]

Olle
I didn't read the starting post.
What size does your bullet drop from the mold at?
Jim

[405 WCF]

I have a RCBS .416 mold, and it drops .4165-.417 bullets.

[arkypete]

Olle
Might try pan lubing the bullets as they come from the mold.
Your leading may come from powder gas blowing by the bullet or you are having bullet lube failure.
Jim

[arkypete]

Olle
Another thought.
Does your barrel have a build up of copper from previous use of jacketed bullets?
Jim

[405 WCF]

No copper.
I melt the lube in the micro owen, then I dip the bullets in the lube, and after that I run them trough the sizer.
Just got home from work, and now I will lube some bullets with Lee's liquid alox
After that I will put on the GC with my fingers and load the bullets unsized.
I will back my load to 46 grs and see how it turns out.

[Bass Ackward]

Well without all the details, Quickload say that 50 grains is only 24,000 psi class. So it looks to me like you are simply too hard. That is ACWW territory and maybe softer since you have a check.

But you gotta get the lead out now which can be easier said than done. After you clean, you may want to load a few plinkers for about 1000 fps just to ensure you get the lead out. Then you will also be applying some lube at the same time instead of starting clean. Some guns can be a problem which is why you hear the term blackbore thrown around so much.

Then shoot one round at a time and stop. Try to identify where you lead is beginning. That will give you clues of what needs to change.

[405 WCF]

Bass! I will follow your advice, and then we will see how it turns out.
I size the bullets .414, and groove dia is just under .413.

The bullets weigh 360 grs with lube and GC.
The load with 52 grs Norma 202 is 1990 fps out of the 24 in barrel.
That is a perfect velocity for the hunt.
OAL is 80.5 mm.
Can you runt that trough your Quick load?

[Bass Ackward]

Bass! I will follow your advice, and then we will see how it turns out.
I size the bullets .414, and groove dia is just under .413.

The bullets weigh 360 grs with lube and GC.
The load with 52 grs Norma 202 is 1990 fps out of the 24 in barrel.
That is a perfect velocity for the hunt.
OAL is 80.5 mm.
Can you runt that trough your Quick load?


That's in the 28k/29k psi area. You should be fine with WW there. I would still like to see you have at least .002 over bore though.

But if you haven't shot any jacketed bullets in that bore, you may have something internally that is causing you to break seal also. That's why I say look one shot at a time and identify your problem. You may even want to brush for the first three until you are sure lead is out and lube is built up.

I just saw you are in cold weather too. Boy lube can really flub you up if you let it freeze in the bore, so eliminate that right now by fireing reasonably close to gether once you start. Lube will size down bullets in the cold and break seal or ruin groups. Especially at higher velocities you are attempting to run. Just so you know.

[Bullshop]

Olle
If you think lube may be the problem I will offer to send you some speed green. I shoot in cold too and it has proven to work well. I offer the lube free if you will reimberse for the shipping.
BIC/BS

[leftiye]

.406 What is your freebore diameter? - if your chamber has any freebore that is. As ArkyPete said, It may be gas blowing by the boollit at early ignition. If the unsized boolit chambers okay then I wouldn't size them. Actually, you might even want bigger ones, but only if there is a freebore and it's bigger than your boolits are. You'd want to fit fightly in the freebore if possible.

How well fired is your barrel? If it is new and rough, that can also cause leading.

[405 WCF]

Ty for the help!
Bullshop! I will gladely pay for the shipping! :)
Right now, I am thinking that maby I must open up my sizer to .415 before I can get rid of the leading problem.
1990 fps out of the mussle is perfect for my hunting I guess.
I will be shooting moose for my dogs, and most of my shots is within 100 yards, so trajectory will be good enough.
If I only can get my rifle to shot.

[26Charlie]

Olle - I don't have a .405, but with the straight-cased .444 Marlin I am using 50 gr. of a medium fast ball powder (Accurate Arms 2460) in that burning range similar to N202, and a 310 gr. GC Lee bullet. The bullets are toward the softer side - maybe your mix without the lino - and I use a home-made lube of 1/3 beeswax and 2/3 beef tallow. Deer tallow is supposed to be a little harder than beef tallow, and the old books I think recommended it in warmer weather. My rifle shows 2 to 3 1/2" accuracy at 100 yards, for 5 shots. Velocity is around 1750 fps.

Posibly a softer bullet and the 1/3 beeswax 2/3 tallow would help.

[405 WCF]

My 444 is accurate with everyting I load it with.
Bullets from 200 - 350 grs, cast or jacketed, with any powder, low or high pressure.
No lead in that barrel.
And now, the 405 is turning my hair grey ( well the hair that is left on my bald head ).
The days are to short for both work and shooting.
It is dark when I leave my home in the morning, and it is dark when I come home again, so all shooting must wait untill the weekend.:(

My 405 is an old original from the 1920's and the barrel is not absolutly perfect, but I think that it is good enough.
I will try softer bullets with new lube, and load with faster powder and filler.
It is a long time untill the hunt starts.
The brown bear hunt starts the 21 of August, and the moose hunt the first Monday in September, so I have a lot of time to wirk with.
And if I have to go after some traffic wounded moose, I have my trusty old 444. :)

[Leverluver]

Whether your gun likes/needs soft or hard bullets, only it can tell you but if you think it might need the hardness to stop fouling (as evidenced by you water quenching) there might be one more thing to try. When you water quench, it suspends the bullet in a harder state but when you size, it can reduce a thin area at the very surface of the bullet, back to the hardness of the same alloy but not water quenched. Col. E.H Harrison did intensive studies back in the 60s for the NRA to develop the best procedures for cast bullets. In those studies, it was found that a bullet hardened by heat treatment that was sized after that treatment, that the surface that was moved by the sizer, would return to the unheat treated state of hardness. It is the "working" of the lead alloy at the surface of the bullet that does this. If the alloy is moved, it will negate the heat treatment. If you wish the hardness of the surface to be just as hard as the center of the heat treated bullet, you might try first sizing the bullet and then use a oven heat treat. After that, lube the bullet by hand. Done this way, the bullet will be the same hardness all the way through, but most importantly so, at the surface that contacts the barrel.

[arkypete]

No copper.
I melt the lube in the micro owen, then I dip the bullets in the lube, and after that I run them trough the sizer.
Just got home from work, and now I will lube some bullets with Lee's liquid alox
After that I will put on the GC with my fingers and load the bullets unsized.
I will back my load to 46 grs and see how it turns out.

Olle
Do you allow the lube to cool? Do you need to cut the boolet out of the hardened lube? How full are your lube grooves?
Jim

[405 WCF]

Out in the woods with my 405 today.
Didn't clean the barrel, but shot some jacketed loads trough it, just to shot some lead out :oops: :oops:
Loaded some 20.9 bhrinnell bullets with LEE liquid alox infront of 40 grs Vihtavuori N130.
I left the chrono at home, ( I think that the weather is to cold ) so I dont know what velocity they run.
OAL: 80.5 mm

http://i114.photobucket.com/albums/n245/405WCF/Liteavvarje165.jpg

[26Charlie]

Olle - that alternation of bullet strike high & low can be an indication that your barrel vibration at the muzzle is not on a node, but is halfway in between. Barrels vibrate like a music string, and if the node is not at the muzzle it will be pointed a little up or down for the shot.

Some potential cures -

Make sure nothing is loose - sights, mounts, scope innards, stock, forend.

Hold the gun the same each time - I like to have the stock firmly in my shoulder, hand holding the forend normally, back of wrist (only) resting on a carpet-padded block on the bench, a position I call "wrist rest", which does not induce any non-hunting kinds of support or vibration from sandbags, not holding on to the gun with two hands, etc.

Run your powder charge up or down two grains at a time until vertical stringing is reduced.

Shim the barrel & fore-end with cardboard or folded paper at different places & different pressures to change the pattern of vibration.

[Bass Ackward]

I just went back and re-read all of this. We are guessing here and it's not productive. So back to basics. Slug the throat. This is why we always say this. It can seem like an unnecessary step .... until you get to instances JUST LIKE this.

Interchanging copper and lead without cleaning is not a good idea. Make it a standard practice to have some really light loads on hand to fire before and after your range sccession. I am talking 800 - 1000 fps stuff here. This will be your fouling shots and at the end remove a lot of leading before you need to clean. This will become unnecessary once you stop the leading.

At this point in time, if this were me, I would slug my throat and end the guessing on diameter. I would slow way down to about 1400 fps or less and stay there until I learned what this gun prefers in the way of lube and hardness. Pick a lube and stick with it.

Once you work out the details correctly, and finally get your bore down to bare steel, then HV should be fairly easy and be strictly load development from that point on. But if you are leading or leaded, HV will NEVER work.

[arkypete]

Bass

But what I'm wondering, considering the leading, is he not filling the lube grooves with lube, using a tumble lube. It's been my experience that leading is the result of the bullet not filling the bore, first, then the lube failing.
It might be worth the effort to run a soft slug down the barrel to see if there's any wide spots, allowing gas blow by.
Jim

[rockrat]

You might try lubing your bullets with the moly lube, sizing as you do, and then applying a coat of the Lee lube. If your lube is not totaly up to the task, maybe the additonal Lee lube will give you the bit extra. I have done this with one other gun I have, that I had problems with ,and it worked. Also, its easy to try.

[Bass Ackward]

Bass

But what I'm wondering, considering the leading, is he not filling the lube grooves with lube, using a tumble lube. It's been my experience that leading is the result of the bullet not filling the bore, first, then the lube failing.
It might be worth the effort to run a soft slug down the barrel to see if there's any wide spots, allowing gas blow by.
Jim



Jim,

Sure. I assummed that a "just under .413 bore" meant that he had already done that.

That's the easy slug most people will do if they force themselves to do any slugging at all. Fear of screwing up the bore or sticking is a big factor. Usually you have to rig something up for the throat slug, and human nature being what it is, most people try to avoid that step by shooting first.

It actually takes a minimum of three slugs to do it right. One in the throat and back out, one at the muzzle and back out, and one all the way through to feel what the bullet "feels" and to get the smallest diameter. Especially, on guns that need to be cleaned from the muzzle.

My biggest problem with guys around here is getting them to really be clean (lead free). They think they are, but more often than not, turns out not. And some of these guys have shot all their lives so cleaning failures are not topics you discuss unless it is involves someone else. :grin:

My cousin formed the opinion that leading was just an everyday part of shooting lead in a handgun. It never built up on the flats only on the rifling. Turned out he WAS always leaded and that was why he was failing. Not on the surface areas that was easy to see, but on the edges of the rifling.

The actual problem was that he had copper on the drive side of the rifling. While he cleaned for hours, he always pushed the patch from the muzzle back in one stroke to avoid enlarging the muzzle. His patch wouldn't rub the drive side unless he would pull back which he did not. So he always had a problem that began right in the throat and everything failed from that point on out. Thought it was bullet stripping and yada, yada. Now he has to start all over with his experiments. Took 6 months, but now he finally understands. After all this, I can actually see why some people will refuse to shoot jacketed in a cast gun.

The faster you want to go, the worse the effect.

[405 WCF]

Bass! What is the best thing to use if you want to make your barrel shine like "dog-...." in the moonlight?
I am now sitting here, with my 405, and a brush, and some star bore, and so on.
I have no lead or copper remover cemicals, and the nearest gun dealer is 150 km, ( that is 93 of your mile)
A long time ago I was on a shooting contest, and there it was a man that said that he used to poor boiling water through the barrel to clean it.
In my mind I thought that he was a moran, but sometimes I use to think about that.
He was a very good marksman, and his rifle was in good condition, so now I wounder: Have any of you shooters heard someting like that, and is it someting that you can do?

[Bullshop]

I think the boiling water was something used to clean up from corrosive primers and or black powder. Just dont think it will do much to remove lead or copper fouling. But hay I thought I was wrong once but it turn's out I was incorrect.
BIC/BS

[Bass Ackward]

Bass! What is the best thing to use if you want to make your barrel shine like "dog-...." in the moonlight?

Olle,

I .... don't .... think the hot water is going to do it. :grin:

If you are still leaded, try the low velocity load trick. Shoot 50 rounds if you have to. This should remove quite a bit of the leading. You can use something "bronze" like dish washing pads wrapped around a brush to get the rest. Put in a good penetrating oil and soak it over night before you try to brush anything. Or some kerosene if you have that. But go slow because the age of the gun you describe means that it is likely to have softer steel that could scratch if you are not careful. Maybe some of the other guys can chime in with ideas.

This will remove lead, but you are going to need chemicals to remove copper tracing if this is what is causing your problem. Strong ammonia will etch copper. Bad news is that it will etch steel too if you leave it in to long.

What are you using to clean now?

[arkypete]

405
Lets run the list of usable lead removing systems.
1 Bass mentioned the copper pot cleaning pads at the grocery store.
Just wrap this around an old bore brush and have at it.

2 You could see if the hardware store has copper or brass screening material, like what is used to keep out bugs in warm weather.
This you can push down the barrel with a tight fitting jag.

3 The nylon screening will work but you'll use a lot of it.
The same as #2

4 Do they still sell tooth powder, it's calcium carbonate a very soft abrasive.
Put oil or bore cleaner on your patch and put some tooth powder on the patch.

A penetraiting oil left over night encouraged with your wife's hair drier to warm the barrel.
Hopefull the oil will get under the lead.

Make your own copper remover using ammonia from the pharmacy, mixed with penetraiting oil, using a nylon bore brush to apply. Allow the stuff to set a while, half hour, then throughly wipe it out with dry patches, the wipe down barrel with antirust oil. Run a few patches down the barrel prior to shooting to remove excess.
Jim

[arkypete]

Bass my Win 95, 405 outside of factory testing has never had a jacketed bullet, same with the 45-70 1886, the Rossi 92 45 Colt. I got a Winchester 95 in 30-06 that took a bit of cleaning to remove the previous owners shooting, and has never had a jacketed bullet down the bore since.
A number of years ago I had a 375 Whelen made on a Mauser action, to be a cast bullet gun only.
There's only three active rifles that are shooting jacketed bullets in my gunsafe a 25-06 and 2- 308s.
Jim

[405 WCF]

Ty all for the help!
I will clean my rifle proper before shoting any more.

[The Virginian]

How did this turn out? I am going to get a Winchester 1895 in 405 and would like to see if this worked out?