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I bought a 30 caliber FREECHEX tool about eighteen months back and have not looked back since. With my 30-06 Garand and Al checks on a special PP boolit I am getting good accuracy at 2800 fps. By purchasing a roll of 0.014" Al roof flashing from Home Depot for a pretty low price I have cut and formed over a thousand checks and still have a couple of yards of Al left. I am talking well less than a cent per check. That is economy! Gas check shanks vary a little from boolit to boolit and mold to mold and I found that sometimes the GC would come off in flight. This was indicated by a little poof in the dirt about halfway to the target and poor accuracy. A little super glue on the boolit shank just prior to seating the GC fixed this problem and I have not looked back!
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So it seems that .014" is the required thickness for aluminum with .35 revolvers.
It is a shame that the recommended thickness for the tools is .009".
I seem to have a roll of .009" roof flashing that has been nicely cut to strips all in vain.
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Whistler:
Do not give up on the .009" material until you have tried it.
My NEI mold casts a gas check shank of .342"
.342 + 2(.009) = .360" --- If you are sizing less than .360" you should be fine. I like to have some swaging effect (check to GC shank) when the boolit is sized so the check stays on the boolit.
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As I wrote, I have tried it extensively in ranges from target .38 Special loads to very hot .357 Magnum. The groupings are all over the place at 25 yards and though swaged to the boolit in the sizing process the checks come off in flight. I size to .358" in a Lyman 4500 with RCBS sizer die.
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Whistler,
You might try placing a dab of super glue on the bullet shank just before seating the GC on it. That trick worked for me on the 30 caliber GCs, as I was having them come off in flight before doing that.
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I had an extensive Skype call yesterday with Charles Darnall who makes the Freechex tools . He helped me with what to look for and it was pretty soon discovered to be a case of extrusion from too soft material. When the check extrudes, the walls become uneven and higher than the CIP spec of .100". This makes the check wall touch the rear driving band, which in turn causes a gap of air between the boolit base and the check.
The solution would be to use .008" material or a harder .009-.010" material like brass or litho plate aluminum. He will send me some samples so that I can test it.
Super glueing the checks is a big no no for me. I shoot way too many boolits each year (25-30k) so it would simply not be worth it.
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If you need the thicker GC then is is a simple matter to lap out the form die to stop the extruding. I have done it and now have tight GC that stay on.
Von Gruff.
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It looks perfectly fine when punching it out. It becomes extruded when run through the bullet luber/sizer.
If the check was thicker it would extrude even more during sizing...
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I took my initial foray into aluminum gas checks yesterday with a sample pack from Sage's. They are for an 8mm bullet. The specs say that they are intended for a bullet base diameter of .301, which mine are. The material thickness mics at .012. The .325 as-cast diameter bullets are run through a .3245" die I made for my Lyman machine (.323 groove diameter in my rifle). Sorry for the preamble, but the problem is that these checks won't stay on. In fact about half of them stay put on top of the ejector pin when I pluck the bullet out of the die.
The final diameter of the checks is a heavy thousandth more than the diameter of it's bullet mate. Am I experiencing springback? If so, is springback a common trait of aluminum checks? I wish very much to break free of servitude to Hornady copper crimp-on checks, which work fine, but if this is indicative of what to expect when messing with aluminum checks then I don't know if I want to pursue this.
I get great satisfaction from experimenting with alloys, bullet designs, velocities, etc. I don't want to add gas check issues to the mix. I've come to look upon Hornady checks as a given commodity that don't need second-guessing.
I'm sending a query to Sage to see if there's a solution.
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Been using aluminum GCs for a few years now...try this. Use the Hornady & then the Aluminum on your favorite bullet/load & shoot at some paper tagets..see how they compare. I did and I found that the aluminum GC's are comparable if not better. Are you using in pistol or rifle...if in rifle calibers I have a trick I can share with you...
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Got a reply from Jim Sage. Very nice guy. We're going to try some with different material thicknesses to see if that helps. I'll report back. (These people are swell to deal with.)
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whats the rifle trick wally
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I ordered up a 250 pack of .303 Aluminum Gas Checks from Jim Sage to try on my Lee 185/.312" boolits. According to the specs they are designed for a .284" base which is what my Lee Cast boolits mike out to on the end so I will be checking them out soon. I have a Lee .311" Sizing die coming to do the chores. I will try out the Lee Alox Tumble Lube first and if that doesn't work out as expected I have some Lyman Orange Magic that I can pan lube with and try out.
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gnoahhh-
i have to use .014 with my .30 and 8mm tools or they just wont stay on my .313 and .324 bullets.i believe they need to be a couple 'thou bigger than the diameter you size to grip.I use .014 material checks on .30. bullets sized .309 and have not had a spring-back problem.
g-
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I just ordered 3 Patmarlin check maker, hoping to find a good check on all my cast bullets
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another Pat Marlin fan
enjoy working with different materials to come up with the 'perfect' metal to use in check making
while I love the 'free factor' of using aluminum cans I find the coils I buy cut the work load down to what makes me happy.
I do this for fun and slitting cans into strips isn't that much of it