Sabot for a Cast boolit

[madman]

I know thinking is a bad thing for me but here goes any way. I have been shooting jwords in a plastic cup, Has any one tried them with cast say in 45-70, or any of the old 50 cal loadings? I am going to take a look at this further and do some testing with Pyrodex and Black Horn 209.

I can get different cups made through a machinest for different boolit sized of inside diameter for different boolits. Remembet the old 30 cal sabots. You cound push them over 4000fps. Load data is out ther of loads over 4100 fps.

Any thoughts?:popcorn:

[I'll Make Mine]

No reason it shouldn't work -- the sabot protects the bullet from the rifling (and the barrel from leading). My main question is why would you? Most times (barring very long range), a heavy, slow boolit will perform at least as well as a lighter, faster one, and you're paying for every sabot you throw away (paying a bunch, if you're having a machinist make them -- the commercial ones are injection molded, and still expensive). The ones I've seen for .30 caliber cost about thirteen cents a piece, even if you buy 1000 at a time -- that's five times what a cast boolit for .30 caliber costs to make (more, if you get your casting alloy cheap and can avoid paying for gas checks), and then you add whatever you load into the cup. As a way of making my WWII era Mosin Nagant pretend it's a varmint rifle, they might be of some value, but for regular shooting, I'd rather have bullets between 140 and 200 grains anyway.

[gunseller]

I have shot cast boolits in plastic cups in 45/70 and 45 Colts. I shot 158 grain .357 boolits with starting charges of powder for 300 grain in 45/70 and 250 grain in 45 Colt. They shot as well as the full dia. boolits did in the same firearm. Have not done anything with muzzle loaders as I shot round balls.
Steve

[madman]

I get lead for 30 cents a pound and the sabots cost me nothing, I love to tinker. I just think that driving them fast with out the lube and no rifiling to crazy speeds and making a 1 caliber rifle shoot anything I want to out of it just sounds like great fun. It is kind of like shooting a .50 bmg slug out of a 3 1/2 12 gage with my own loads. Because I can.

[Crusty Deary Ol'Coot]

I can truely understand the having fun part. And I have owned a wild cat so I understand the doing something different part also.

However, After hunting with a 45cal WFN cast boolits long enough to take 3 deer and two elk, and seeing the great results of the proper cast boolits, I fear the next step might be to attempt to take a critter with one of the .357 "J" or cast boolits.

Talk about sending a little boy to do a man's work!!!!!!!!!!

Should you arrive at the higher velocity levels you desire, not only will the boolits likely NOT stand up to the forces involved, but the weight, dia. and integrity of the projectal will simply, "suck".

Yep, I fully understand the fun and expermenting just to, "see if."

Just stop there, before a critter suffers the results of a wound caused by a sub standard boolit at a velocity waaaay beyond it's abilities.

Crusty Deary Ol'Coot

[303Guy]

Crusty makes a very good point. Now if one could mold a paper pulp sabot, that could be a lot of fun.

[1874Sharps]

Back in the late '70s Remington came out with a line of ammo called "Remington Accelerator" which placed a saboted 22 bullet in a large case round such as a 30-06 or 30-30. The idea was to make a varmint gun out of your deer rifle. I have even seen some fellows at gun shows over the last several decades selling 30 caliber to 22 caliber sabots, but none very recently.

[pdawg_shooter]

Might try paper patching. Been around for better than a century. Works great. Full jacketed velocity and accuracy from cast lead. At 45-70 velocities pure lead works great and makes a great game bullet.

[Chicken Thief]

Now, now, now boys!

It works quite good in shotguns and the 50BMG uses SLAP.
The main thing will be if he can get the sabot to release so there's any accuracy left in the boolit.
Oh both 45, 50 and 54 caliber frontstuffers can use sabots so give the man a little space.

http://www.ballisticproducts.com/RSS-12-Rigid-Structure-Sabot-only-12ga-50_bag/productinfo/322RSS/

http://www.eabco.com/reload02.html

http://slugsrus.com/store/20%20ga%20sabot%20wad%20by%20Slugsrus

http://www.barnesbullets.com/products/components/muzzleloader/spit-fire-mz/

[Crusty Deary Ol'Coot]

Yep, the sabots might be all kinds of fun and ya, I can go there and ride along enjoying the festivities!

Just for goodness sake DON'T use one of those boolits designed for top end of possibly 1500fps that you have now pushed to 2 - 3 - 4000fps on a game animal.

It would be like the loads - really MUCH worse - I worked up for a friends Model 99 - 300 Savage with 110gr HP. That rifle would shoot inch groups with that bullet/load. I just told Darwin to NOT use it for deer, it was only for furry vermin type critters.

Well the short part of the story is, he did. Yep it put er down and did so leaving a large hole.

But at least there was a hole where a typical .357 dia handgun bullet/boolit will likely just leave a surface crater when it vaporizes.

All for fun, just don't mess up some deer or?? in the name of fun.

Crusty Deary Ol'Coot

[MikeS]

I think the key here is that the OP can get his sabots for FREE. That makes all the difference in the world! It should be kind of interesting trying out various boolits in sabots. Is there any reason that a saboted boolit has to be a lot smaller than the bore it's being shot out of? What I mean is as long as you can get custom made sabots for free, you could try shooting boolits intended for 270 in a 30 cal bore. By doing this you're basically just making a very thick plastic jacket that falls off the boolit in flight, but still shooting a boolit designed to do the same type of shooting as the gun it's being shot out of. I don't know how thin you could make a sabot, but it might be a great way of having a larger selection of boolits for a particular rifle. Say you have a milsurp 8mm rifle, if you could make sabots so you could use 30 cal boolits in it, you would have a great way of giving that rifle a much larger choice of boolit. Just my thoughts, and I might be way off in my thinking.

[snuffy]

I tried it 2 times. The first was with sabots designed for a 45 cal muzzle loader. They took .357 bullets,(J-words). They didn't shoot well in my TC Hawken, so I decided to try them in my 45/70.:D They could be pushed into the brass with my fingers. I used pyrodex RS behind them, about half full in the case.

Rifle is a H&R trap door Calvary model replica. They shot quite well, very little recoil, a puff of smoke and about 3" groups @ 50 yds.

The next foray was using my inline Ruger 50 MZ with sabots that take a 44 cal bullet. You can buy them loose without bullets, so you can use 44 component bullets of your choice. I figured if they could take a .429 J-word, they would also take my home cast 240 SWC,,,right? Yeah they worked, kind of.

First I tried them lubed with 50-50 alox and sized to .429. Not bad, but no where near the groups with just about any jaxeted. Next, I tried them unsized, as-cast @ 431. Much better accuracy, but very difficult to load/ram into the barrel. The extra few thou. made a lot of difference.

[madman]

I gave up hunting a long time ago when the State stepped in and changed everything to the lottery system and decided that hunters needed to pay a fee just to file for a chance at getting a tag to hunt. I'll only pay for fishing and possabily small game permits in the future. So no worries brothers. Mike S has it right. I am just interested in finding out why not. I have cast and loaded tens of thousands of boolits now and I have shot them in everthing from .224 cal to .72 cal Just looking for another learning adventure. Remember the Wright Brothers. HA ha. I worked with General Motors Engineers for years and I solved alot ot engineering problems that just stumped some of them. I just look at things differently than they do.
Just remember thinking out side of the so called box is great fun and a wonderful learning experiance.
Thanks to those that have a sence of adventure here. God bless. and Thank you all.

[I'll Make Mine]

I have even seen some fellows at gun shows over the last several decades selling 30 caliber to 22 caliber sabots, but none very recently.

There's still an online dealer selling, if not the same sabots, very similar ones to load .224 bullets in a .30 caliber class cartridge -- they have software output load data for a number of common .30-ish bottleneck cartridges (from .30-30 to .300 Win Mag, including .303 and 7.62x54R), and suggest you can use the listed data to extrapolate for other cartridges. IMO, too expensive to bother if you're plinking (I can buy 150 grain jacketed bullets for less than a .224 bullet and sabot -- a good bit less!), and unlikely to be accurate enough for real long range varminting with a deer rifle (especially a rifle that, with the right load and a good scope, is probably capable of reliably vaporizing ground squirrels at 300 yards anyway).

Now, if it's just a learning experience, then learn away -- I'd love to experiment with all kinds of stuff (wildcats, bullet swaging, custom rifles and so forth) if I were made of money, but that depends on my good friend Powerball coming through...

[BAGTIC]

It has been done already. No point in reinventing the wheel.

http://www.harvestermuzzleloading.com/