"water slugging" ??

[sergeant69]

wanna slug bbls (for now) for .44mag, .40 sw, .45acp.
i have gotten lots of good advice from this site and appreciate it all. but...all this talk of beating lead thru a bbl/cylinder w/a wooden dowel, brass rod etc etc makes me a little nervous to be beating on everything. so.....i have a bait tank in the neighborhood of 4'X3'X 4' deep. i'm thinking why not just fill it up, stand on a ladder about 10' above the tank and pop a round into the tank and recover/measure it? i remember as a kid in west tx we used to get pop 38/357's into the stock tanks (w/out a ladder either) and let it rain on us. and the boolits were recovered intact and remelted. whadda think?:redneck:

[sergeant69]

wanna slug bbls (for now) for .44mag, .40 sw, .45acp.
i have gotten lots of good advice from this site and appreciate it all. but...all this talk of beating lead thru a bbl/cylinder w/a wooden dowel, brass rod etc etc makes me a little nervous to be beating on everything. so.....i have a bait tank in the neighborhood of 4'X3'X 4' deep. i'm thinking why not just fill it up, stand on a ladder about 10' above the tank and pop a round into the tank and recover/measure it? i remember as a kid in west tx we used to get pop 38/357's into the stock tanks (w/out a ladder either) and let it rain on us. and the boolits were recovered intact and remelted. whadda think?:redneck:

ALSO... i live on a river. why not just sink a 5 gal bucket about 6" under the water level then stand on my dock and pop a round into the bucked thru 6" of top water?

[xr650]

If you think you are hitting harder than recoil, maybe you would have a problem.
I haven't had to "beat" any of my slugs too hard. Tap, tap, tap.
With the autos you are only tapping on the barrel.
Smack away.

[.357]

my old neighbor had a perfect recipie for popping a primer on one or two grains of powder and plopping the slug into a 10 gallon pail of water in his garage in the center of town. sadly I never paid enough attention to what he was doing, i was young and dumb.:|

[jimmeyjack]

Don't you think The bullet is gonna expand when it hits the water?

[Blammer]

one shot and your tank will be toast, I'm presuming it's either made of glass or concrete.

[felix]

Best to use a swimming pool. Low velocity projectiles have more penetration as everyone on this board knows. I've seen boolits travel with a fairly straight trajectory through 12 feet of water before they showed any sense of vibration. Two grains of BE under a piece of toilet paper to hold the powder against the primer is about the lightest powder amount I can use in the guns (rifles) I have used for this purpose. ... felix

[sergeant69]

Don't you think The bullet is gonna expand when it hits the water?

never did w/the 38/357s

[sergeant69]

one shot and your tank will be toast, I'm presuming it's either made of glass or concrete.

fiberglass

[sergeant69]

If you think you are hitting harder than recoil, maybe you would have a problem.
I haven't had to "beat" any of my slugs too hard. Tap, tap, tap.
With the autos you are only tapping on the barrel.
Smack away.

maybe i'm making too much out of it. will probably try an egg sinker thats lubed a little. damn ur spoiling all my fun!

[qajaq59]

I think I prefer the brass rod........... but then I'm kinda conservative anyway.

[geargnasher]

maybe i'm making too much out of it. will probably try an egg sinker thats lubed a little. damn ur spoiling all my fun!

Sorry to spoil your fun, but we wouldn't recommend a procedure here that would damage your gun if done correctly. Use a brass rod, rawhide or plastic mallet, light oil, and pure lead. You will have no problems unless you pound the cylinder crane out of whack. To avoid that, slug your cylinder throats from the chamber end being careful of the ejector star, and support the front of the cylinder on wooden blocks spaced to allow the boolit to pass between as you drive it through the throat.

Gear

[ghh3rd]

I would think that the boolit travelling through water would expand it. We test boolit expansion by firing through 4 or 5 one gallon plastic milk jugs pressed against one another.

Although I've done this to test HP expansion, I would imagine that even a non HP boolit would/could expand a little bit , perhaps enough to throw your barrel measurement off?

[jonk]

I think that the problem here is twofold.

First, hitting the water can deform the bullet. Even if it looks pristine, we're interested in measurements to the thousandth of an inch, and I would not trust impact not to distort at least that much.

Second, you use an oversize slug for a reason, you don't know how far down it is going to have to go. Firing a stock diameter bullet won't tell you anything.

[sergeant69]

Sorry to spoil your fun, but we wouldn't recommend a procedure here that would damage your gun if done correctly. Use a brass rod, rawhide or plastic mallet, light oil, and pure lead. You will have no problems unless you pound the cylinder crane out of whack. To avoid that, slug your cylinder throats from the chamber end being careful of the ejector star, and support the front of the cylinder on wooden blocks spaced to allow the boolit to pass between as you drive it through the throat.

Gear

lacking a brass rod, what about a hardwood dowel w/a case on it thats of course smaller than the cyl. hole? i'll have to check my shop for a brass rod. i lost tons of gun/reloading stuff in the 2002 flood.

[lwknight]

The wooden dowel has risk of breaking at a steep angle nside the barrel.
Then the 2 pieces can wedge over each other and you have a real problem.

[qajaq59]

If you can't find a hunk of brass, go to Wally world and buy a cheap brass cleaning kit that is close in size to the bore.

[mooman76]

I have used old gun clean rods both steel and brass. You can wrap a steel rod with tape. Walmart had a cheap pistol cleaning kit with brass rods for like $5. Once you get the slug started by tappping it in with a plastic hammer or whatever it goes in fairly easy the rest of the way. I didn't wan to say but everyone talked about puting the gun in a vice. I just held mine in my hand. Tapped the slug to get it started and it went in easy after that. I have a wide selection of lead roundballs just slightly over sized which makes it much easier than a soft bullet. Less bearing surface.

[azcruiser]

Think a reduces load of trail boss or something would work into a water tank. Like 1 OR 2gr in a 44mag 1 TO IN A 45 ACP try a few loads at the range

[chris in va]

It's done in the forensics lab, don't see why you can't do it as well.

[sergeant69]

If you can't find a hunk of brass, go to Wally world and buy a cheap brass cleaning kit that is close in size to the bore.


probably my best bet.

[sergeant69]

Sorry to spoil your fun, but we wouldn't recommend a procedure here that would damage your gun if done correctly. Use a brass rod, rawhide or plastic mallet, light oil, and pure lead. You will have no problems unless you pound the cylinder crane out of whack. To avoid that, slug your cylinder throats from the chamber end being careful of the ejector star, and support the front of the cylinder on wooden blocks spaced to allow the boolit to pass between as you drive it through the throat.

Gear

lacking a large dia. brass rod, what if i take a fired 30-06 case w/the old primer still in it and fill it w/ molten lead and let it cool/solidify (to give it juevos) and use that as a brass rod? seems like that would be more than enough to get the sinker thru the cylinder hole. am i still overthinking this?

[steg]

qajaq 59. I honestly never thought of that happening, yep that would be a problem all right...............steg

[MtGun44]

Steel rod or brass rod. Just wrap the steel with a few rings of electrical tape.

Use soft lead, no big deal. DO NOT use wooden dowels, these HAVE cracked
on long angles and the two pieces wedged into an almost impossible to remove
solid wood plug.

Bill

[mroliver77]

I dont pound anything through my cylinders. I size boolits say .451, .452 etc for my .45 and see what fits through the throat. I guess I am lucky to have lots of dies. For the barrels soft lead slug and mild steel rod. One day I will get a set of ground rods to use.
Jay