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Boerrancher
06-08-2008, 03:20 PM
I know that many of us have purchased gas check makers to make checks out of pop cans. The day before my surgery I discovered that all aluminum cans are not the same thickness, but only after loading a bunch of ammo that prolly won' shoot well. For some strange reason I decided to mic some of the materials (can stock) that I was using. Here are the results:

Coke can: .005 thick
Sweet Valley (Aldie's Brand): .004 thick
Arizona Ice Tea can: .006 thick

I should have miced the material before I Ever Started, but didn't think it would matter. It wasn't until I started getting some odd groupings and leading that I tried to sort things out and made the discovery. It would seem that to shoot in my 30-30 I have to have a gas check that measures .311 once it is seated on the boolit. I started with a double layer Arizona Iced Tea can for my first batch of checks, and they shot very well. I grabbed and cut out a bunch of Aluminum sheets from the cans I had laying around and started making disks to make checks out of. I made a bunch of dbl layer checks and seated them on boolits. The next time I went to the range I shot really crappy groups and had lots of leading, with the exact same load as before. Nothing had changed but the gas check. When I went back and started measuring the unloaded checked boolits at the base the gas checks were all different diameters.Ranging from .3085 to .311. I can measure the unloaded boolits and remelt, or remove the undersized gas checks and put the prober sized ones on, but what to do with the loaded ones? I don't have a way to pull them, and it seems a waste to shoot them.

Best wishes from the Boer Ranch,

Joe

MT Gianni
06-08-2008, 04:37 PM
Run them up in your press with no die. Grasp the boolit with a pair of pliers when it is atop of the 7/8"x14 threads and hang on as you lower it. Remelt as the boolit will be shot but you save powder and primer. Gianni

runfiverun
06-08-2008, 10:03 PM
and check the bottoms of those cans they should be much thicker, the tops are flatter.

45 2.1
06-09-2008, 07:30 AM
Joe-
You might want to check out aluminum printing plates. Some I have measured run 0.0075", but some are advertised as measureing 0.0125" thick.

dakotashooter2
06-09-2008, 11:25 AM
I've noticed that some of the aluminum "bottles" for beer seem to be considerably thicker than regular soda/beer cans. I know they are harder to crush.

A+ on the printing plates. They are available in several different thicnesses.