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View Full Version : Steady, If Slow, Improvement



Bent Ramrod
12-10-2008, 03:39 AM
My experiments with the Hoch 505-gr paper patch boolit in my Pedersoli .45-2.6" are out to 400 yards as of the last session. Many of the shots clustered well; I even got an 8" 5-shot group. However, I seemed to be spending a lot of time chasing odd flyers with sight adjustments.

I was holding the powder charge constant (87 gr of Swiss FG) and increasing the wad column one wad at a time so that the boolit was pushed further and further out of the case and into the rifling. Also, I alternated five rounds unsized and five neck-sized cases at each wad increase. I used a carbide .45 ACP sizer die to reduce the mouth of the shell 1/8" or so, just enough to be able to pick the cartridge up by the boolit without it coming apart. A .45 Colt sizer was too loose and the Lyman neck sizer had no effect on the boolit pull.

The paper and boolit combination is about 0.451" in diameter. I can feel it slide into the rifling when I push the cartridge home, and the patched boolit could be shoved through the bore with a stout cleaning rod. I cleaned between every shot, two sides of a patch wet with Ballistol/water and two sides of a dry patch. I would then wet the dry patch for the next cleaning and get a new dry patch.

I didn't finish the whole series of 50 shots. As Ned Roberts said, cleaning between shots is a lot of work around a little bit of shooting. It seemed that the neck sizing didn't help accuracy, while the farther into the rifling the boolit was, the better, in general was the group. I don't know how this is going to work out ultimately. If the boolit is barely into the mouth of the shell and loose, it's not going to be very convenient to handle. The chamber is, obviously, cut for grease-groove boolits, which do under 2 MOA fairly consistently.

A friend and I had just looked over the litter of confetti in front of the firing point and I'd commented that the patches seemed to be coming off the boolits OK. He left, and I went down to repaint the metal target. I found these slugs in the berm around the gong, no doubt the reason for the flyers.

I wrap the patches wet, rolling up with the nose of the boolit to the right. Haven't been able to get them to stay wrapped tight when rolling them dry. I wouldn't have believed they could travel that distance and impact in the sand and still have paper clinging to them. The photos might not show it well, but the rifling impression on the sides is quite well defined; the boolits are slugging up OK.

Once I get this problem straightened out, I hope to revisit the optimum cartridge length and see if increasing the powder column at the expense of the wads helps any. Right now, 87 grains seems the optimum. I also want to try grease cookies, to see if I can get away from that endless cleaning between shots.

All this is pretty elementary, no doubt, but I started out with worse groups at 200 yards only a few sessions back, so I'm pretty pleased with the way things are progressing.

powderburnerr
12-10-2008, 11:45 AM
is the paper tearing at the seating depth?.........Dean

45 2.1
12-10-2008, 01:20 PM
I wrap the patches wet, rolling up with the nose of the boolit to the right. Haven't been able to get them to stay wrapped tight when rolling them dry. I wouldn't have believed they could travel that distance and impact in the sand and still have paper clinging to them. The photos might not show it well, but the rifling impression on the sides is quite well defined; the boolits are slugging up OK.

I' ve never seen a patch stay on. Out of curiosity, just what alloy are you using and its BHN. It appears to me that the PP boolit is just riding the lands and is not bumping up to groove diameter, otherwise the patch wouldn't be still attached and in very good condition considering what cartridge and load your using.

Bent Ramrod
12-11-2008, 01:01 AM
Guys, thanks for your comments.

I guess the patch could be tearing on the neck-sized cases as the boolit begins to move forward, but, if so, only the innermost part of the wrap stays stuck. It looks like the front part of the patch is the part stuck on, while the rear has sheared or blown off. The confetti out in front of the bench ranged from pieces that would have gone almost half around the boolit to little shreds. They seemed of the right length but I only made a casual inspection. I'll measure the ones I see next time when I finish this series.

When I wrap the patches, there is enough to twist around and cover the base of the boolit fully, so I don't think the patch could be slipping up the side of the boolit. The paper is onion skin typing paper, 0.0015" thick.

The boolits are cast from the cores of swaged hardball .45 pistol bullets. BHN runs from 6-8, according to my SAECO tester. I miked the bases along the groove impressions and they are in the 0.4565" to 0.4585" diameter range. There are grooves and lands in all four of them; the pictures didn't show this very well.

docone31
12-11-2008, 01:33 AM
I see a bunch of powder marks on the base of the castings. I also see a concave, possibly from obturation.
I wonder, if the patch is not across the bottom of the casting. I suspect, it is just an edge, folded.
I wonder, if the patch is too light on diameter.
I wrap my patches way up on the nose, and all the pieces exit the muzzle. My rifle shoots ok at .3135, I wrap to .314.
There is a big difference between the diameter you shoot and mine, so mine might not be an example to rely on.
I wonder, however, if instead of traceing paper, notebook paper, or printer paper might be a little better. It would thicken up the wrap just a tad.
Great recovering those fired rounds. They tell a story.
In the picture with four rounds, the top row, second recovery, it looks like the rifleing is engageing after the wrap.
Could be me, but it does look that way. Perhaps wrapping a little lower?

montana_charlie
12-11-2008, 01:07 PM
I have a question/comment/speculation about the upper right bullet in the shot of four, and the left one in the shot of two bullets.

The paper seems to be folded forward from the base, and I will assume you didn't do the folding.
The patched diameter is .451", but the bullet base has to pass through a .460 freebore over a quarter-inch long.
You say your alloy is a 6 to 8, but it's unclear if those are Saeco numbers or they have been converted to BHN.

Is it possible that a 'hard' bullet...of bore diameter...passing through a 'roomy' freebore with not much bump-up...could be allowing gases to bypass enough to fold the patch forward?

If that is the situation, it makes me think that using a fatter bullet and patching to groove is the answer for rifles (like the Pedersoli) with substantial freebore dimensions and gentle leade angles.

CM

Lead pot
12-11-2008, 01:25 PM
Are you rubbing lube on the patch?

idahoron
12-11-2008, 06:58 PM
I am amazed that the paper stayed on. What direction are you wrapping? Ron

Bent Ramrod
12-12-2008, 12:20 PM
The patches are wrapped such that they go clockwise when I look at the base. (The rifling is clockwise, too; maybe I should wrap in the opposite direction?) I don't lube the patches. They do indeed look like the portion at the base was blown off in a forward direction, curling the remaining paper toward the front. I don't know whether the lines on the base are the imprint of the twisted-over patch bottom or what they are. The edges of the bases look pretty sharp and even.

The BHN numbers are off the SAECO chart; I've also confirmed them with a LBT tester.

Using even slightly thicker paper makes the boolit impossible to seat into the rifling. It is, however, easier to seat it more securely in a neck-sized case. It fills the chamber and leade like a grease-groove boolit then. I have gotten some fair groups this way, but I do get the occasional thin ring of paper mentioned on another thread. I was going to get more thoroughly into that type of patching after trying the bore-diameter route. As I mentioned, when I seat the cartridge in the chamber, I can feel the boolit drag on the tops of the lands. With the thicker patching, the cartridge simply comes to a stop beyond which I can't push it any further unless the boolit is seated in the shell more deeply.

The rifle was originally chambered in .45-70; the guy I bought it from had the chamber lengthened to .45-2.6". I haven't done a chamber cast, so don't know what the leade is like.

Thanks again for your comments. I'll try to get some better pictures later.

montana_charlie
12-12-2008, 02:12 PM
Using even slightly thicker paper makes the boolit impossible to seat into the rifling. It is, however, easier to seat it more securely in a neck-sized case. It fills the chamber and leade like a grease-groove boolit then. I have gotten some fair groups this way, but I do get the occasional thin ring of paper mentioned on another thread.
How closely does your case length match your chamber depth?
CM

Lead pot
12-12-2008, 04:55 PM
I have never found a pp bullet down range unless I lubed my patches or I did not get all the lube cleaned off my swaged PP bullets and wet patched bullets that I added a few drops of milk with the water to hold the patch tag ends down.
There is some contamination in the liquid used to wet patch those bullets or on the bullets them self for the patch to stay with the bullet after impact into the berm like those have been.

Bent Ramrod
12-13-2008, 01:04 AM
Lead Pot, there may indeed be some sizing or something in the paper that makes it sticky. It's some old typing paper that I saved.

I've tried dextrine in the past, with smokeless paper patched boolits, but not with these. A little bit in the water stuck the patches together like glue. Maybe a longer soak and a change of water would get any stickiness potential out of these patches.

Montana Charlie, I haven't done a chamber cast, but have made sure the shells are trimmed to 2.6". The rings only show up once in a while, generally when I'm depriming. Maybe two or three shells in 50, when I patch to groove diameter.

RMulhern
12-13-2008, 07:04 PM
The patches that appear to be folded forward are caused from ABRUPT STOPPAGE!!

Bullet on upper left of the four appears to have quite a bit of concave base! Maybe I missed this but.....WHAT..???? are you using for a wad adjacent to the bullet?? The bases of a bullet or two looks as if the base has been 'bead blasted' which is nothing but explosive particles of powder doing that I think!

There is SOMETHING you're using that is causing the patches to be GLUED to the exterior of the bullet!

FWIW!!

Bent Ramrod
12-14-2008, 07:22 PM
FPMIII,

The wads are thin corrugated cardboard that is used for stiffening calendars for shipping. I came across a bunch of them, and thought they might better fill the space than a bunch of solid wads. I'm punching some LDPE wads out and have some veg fiber wads; next session I'll have those adjacent to the boolit base.

I'll try to loosen the patches next time before loading the boolits. Dan Theodore had a good article in the latest BPC news on paper patching. He cooks the damp patches on the boolits with a hot plate, and seems to be able to slide them off without having them unravel.

Lots of Holiday stuff to do; I'll get those pictures when I can.

Thanks again, to all, for your comments.

RMulhern
12-14-2008, 07:53 PM
Yep...DT wrote a good article.

The 'warming plate' works good! Been using it a while!:drinks::castmine:


http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b67/Sharps110/BPCR%20SHOOTING%20RELOADING/Hotplatetodrywetpatch.jpg

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