I am amazed

[Digital Dan]

Some of you may have read of my ongoing affair with the .30 Sneezer, a .30-.357 wildcat that is suppressed and designed from the onset to shoot cast bullets. It has been a successful venture and an education. Part of the latter occurred this evening when I pulled out the concentricity gauge to evaluate some loaded ammo.

Given:

-Brooks Tru-bore custom mould that casts 183.5 grains of 30:1 alloy.
-Reamer by Dave Manson who also supplied the reamer sketch which was used to make the loading dies
-Dies by the Hornady Custom Shop overseen by Ben Syring
-Barrel by Bullberry
-Starline brass

The dies are a 3 die set of what I consider to be unusual design and I did not fully appreciate the nuance of this until my second discussion with Mr. Syring. The dims are excellent and somewhat subtle. The expander plug is tapered and leaves the neck at .3085 at the shoulder junction and .3095 at the case mouth. The only requests I'd made in the process was for a bullet that cast at .309 and neck tension in the .001 range. I got a better deal than that it turns out.

The seat die functions with a movable plug cut to spec for the bullet, and controls seating depth. I hesitate to call the crimping function a crimp as it is a taper of approximately .001" over the length of the neck (about .485" long). Bullet samples of where supplied to Hornady.

This evening I pulled out the C. gauge and found that bullets seated with the crimp were consistently less than .001 run out. Some other loads just assembled without the crimp but verified to chamber properly were less than .0005" on the run out.

I've dealt with significant run out in other bottle neck cases by the usual means successfully, but I would have never dreamed that the combination of a bottle neck case and cast bullets could be loaded with such absurdly low run out.

Kudos to those fellows, they synergized in a way that amazes me.

I am dazzled....

[barrabruce]

I'm interested in your 30 sneezer.
need more info and results.

[Digital Dan]

Here you go: http://wyomingschuetzenunion.com/ubbthreads.php/topics/1211/1/Speaking_of_Black

There's a couple of threads here in the cast boolits subforum but I don't have time to search for them.

[Digital Dan]

This little excursion has been one of the most educational adventures of my shooting experience. Having previously settled upon L'il Gun for a load I took the time a few days back to close a chapter on unfinished load development. The benchmark load of LG was providing 5 shot groups in the vicinity of .5-.75" at 50 yards with a 2.5x scope. Changed that to a red dot, added the can and zeroed the rig awhile back. The loss of precision was not unexpected, but the groups remained in the 1" ball park.

Unfinished was my work with 4227 and 4759. Both had given wide ES values and typically good groups with a wild flyer, low velocity and fouling, most of which was reflected on the chrony. I assumed that was a matter of load density and with 4759 that was borne out just a few days back. For the record, my testing with 4227 is concluded and I'll not revisit that again.

The SR4759 however has found a niche in my shooting. The pic below, sorry as it is, is representative of 3 groups shot at 50 yards with a full value 15-20 mph R-L crosswind and lighting conditions that were simply horrid for use of a red dot sight. Matters not, I'll take it!

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v298/muddler/Guns/Sneezer/5May4759%202_zps2higuf2o.jpg (http://smg.photobucket.com/user/muddler/media/Guns/Sneezer/5May4759%202_zps2higuf2o.jpg.html)

[barrabruce]

I'm surprised at the bullseye results.
Have your tried a bit of dacron???
I am contemplating making something like that too.
Wanted to try and dodge fillers ...but it seems that for consistency one has to have the barrell up or down sindrome.

Hmmm the more I learn the less I know.

[Digital Dan]

Not sure what you mean by bullseye results actually. Won't be using fillers, the barrel has a suppressor. One of the curious things discovered since I started using that device is that each different load generates sufficiently unique harmonics in the barrel that with .2 grain difference in the load progression, POI was markedly different for each group. The gun is zeroed with 6.4 grains of Lil Gun and that prints .5" high, centered at 50 yards. The first load of 4759 was 7.4 grains and printed the .82" group at 8 o'clock and 1" from the X. The next load at 7.6 grains printed on the X and 7.8 grains went where you see it. The ring spacing on that target is 1/2" from X to the first ring with another 1/2" to the next and so forth. Having worked thru those loads I tried the 4227 series and they did pretty much the same thing, each being its own master. A fella would not expect that normally and the gun does not do so w/o the suppressor installed.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v298/muddler/Guns/Sneezer/Sneezer%205_zpsnfujhrsr.jpg (http://smg.photobucket.com/user/muddler/media/Guns/Sneezer/Sneezer%205_zpsnfujhrsr.jpg.html)

For what it's worth, the last load of 4759 was about 85% load density. No ups or downs necessary, likewise with the Lil Gun. Some of the others such as 2400, Bullseye and such exhibited that trait but the load density was very low.