Cast boolits for my Carcano........

[John-n-va]

With alot of advice and help from Buckshot, I now have reloads for the little 7.35 Carcano.

Buckshot walked me through slugging my barrel and throat. After that he made me a push thru boolit sizing die in .301. I purchased a Lee 90366 mold which drops at .310 and 156 grains with a GC using straight wheelweights. Using a .309 lubrisizer to lube them with Lyman Moly lube and installing the gas check and then running them thru Buckshot's push thru, the boolits come out right at .3015 which is perfect for my .3005 bore....i think the extra .0005 is springback.

Bought some 6.5 Carcano brass from Graf and ran them through a 7.35 full length die. Trimmed the cases to 2.00", flaired the case mouths slightly, added 20 grains of IMR 4198 cause I had some in my powder stash and the Lyman book said that would work with cast.

I was a little concerned about maybe having to turn the case necks down a little which would be a PITA since I have no equip. to do it with at present. I miked the loaded case neck at .325. Loaded a round with just a little more pressure than normal on the bolt handle and touched it off with quite a bit of flinch :razz: :razz: Everything worked well. Checked the case for any signs of excess pressure. No blowback and the primer wasn't flattened hardly at all....cool. Miked the fired case neck and it was still .325 hmmmmmm. Don't see any evidence of the neck rubbing in the chamber and it extracted just fine. Fired a few more just to be sure with the same results. Still a little concerned that the case neck may be a little tight in the chamber but no signs of excess pressure is encouraging. What do you guys think???

Now I need to go to the range and start working up a good load. This was a ton of fun exercise and I learned alot thanks to Buckshot!

[drinks]

John;
Thick necks are usually a problem when sizing down, not up.
Sizing up actually thins the necks.
Don

[Buckshot]

..............John, glad to see your post. Since I had called you once before, I was going to again. One, I wanted to know if the sizer worked and you'd shot the Carcano yet, and secondly to find out if you'd bought (or got) that lathe and milling machine you'd mentioned? If you did, you can make your own caseneck turner 8)

My M38 Carcano shoots cast better then jacketed, which is fine with me! The jacketed ones came from Hornady and are 123grs. It's possible I didn't hit on the right load, but I did load 5 combinations and none were worth a hoot. The cast lead ones were the 150gr Lee and I think it was 5-6 different loads I used. Some were the other side of 2000 fps and they shot very well.

How much 4198 didja use? If you didn't see any signs of the caseneck rubbing in the chamber and they measured the same after firing as when loaded the chamber neck could very well be just a thou larger. Next time you load some soot up the caseneck on a couple or use a magic marker on'em. Chamber and extract a couple and see if they're marked.

Neither of my Carcanos are real smooth feeders. They require a bit of effort to strip a round out of the clip, and then to close the bolt on'em. My M38 also doesn't have a particularly smooth boltface either.

...................Buckshot

[John-n-va]

Thanks again for all your help Buckshot!

The lath is still sitting at my work place. Don't know when or if I will ever be able to talk my boss out of it. Its a 10" Delta/Rockwell.

I started out with 20 grains of 4198. I plan on increasing the load by 1/2 grain up to about 25 grains and see what kinda accuracy I can get. The 20 grain load appears to be pretty mild pressure wise. I plan to load up a batch tonight and head to the range tomorrow if it doesn't snow too much.

I'll let you know how I do.