.458 Win Mag sanity check

[303Guy]

They were lubed with a beeswax lube / waterproofing concoction.

... any lube that was on the surface of the paper patch was getting skimmed off ...

There should not be any surface lube on a patch and beeswax is a sticky stuff and should not be used on paper patches. (My personal findings only). The patch should be as near as dammit dry. JPW is said to work well and I use a light rolling on my lube pad of STP. I have demonstrated the the light STP treatment works better than completely dry. I havent tried JPW but I have tried auto wax polish but the one I tried did not agree with the paper I was using.

[offshore44]

No more bees wax. Gotcha. Even old dogs are trainable, eventually. I'll try the STP thing as a lube on the next go around.

So, to recap, here is where I'm at:
I ordered a Lee sizing die of the appropriate size.
I'll patch the bullets up to 0.462 - 0.463" diameter. (Still working on the correct paper for that.) Green bar? 16# printer? We'll see. Lots of advice around that one. I've ditched the 100% cotton tracing paper on this project.
No post patching sizing allowed.
Seating depth = 0.250" +/- TBD.
Try a powder that is different than H4895, H335 suggested by 303guy.
Lap out the seating die to fit the paper patched bullets size.
Get an expander plug that will expand the case appropriately, size TBD.
Figure out the case annealing thing.

Lots of stuff to do here...

[bearcove]

Seating dies are a problem to fix with lubed also. Seems they are to tight for the size boolits you need for fit.

[offshore44]

I'll agree to that statement whole-heartedly! I'm going to end up with two different seating dies. One for paper patched and one for the cast gas checked bullets. If I could get additional alignment sleeves from Hornady, I could just hone those out to fit the various applications. Haven't seen those available on the Hornady site though. They are very easy to change out. Pull the retainer spring clip and they slide right out.

[man.electric]

I am addicted to this thread. I have only owned a 458WM for two weeks and purchased it as cast/PP big bore. I am looking at PP'ing Miha's Ruger only 45 colt boolit for this this rifle as a light end plinking load and chipmunk killer. They are dropping from my mold(.454") at .453" with my current alloy and I think they will be a good candidate for this application.

[windrider919]

Oh Boy!

Lots of heat on the subject of 'reading the patch' as what should you look for when the PP boolet exits the barrel. How and when ate up a LOT of electrons here and I think changed or educated NO one. I have tried for years to locate a setup where I could high speed film a PP exiting the muzzle (no success. Anyone...anyone.....Bueller?). It has a tremendous amount to do with accuracy and is ANOTHER place where the BP and smokeless shooters seem to diverge.

Everyone agrees that the patch MUST come off.

Everyone agrees that the patch must separate evenly or it will 'throw' the bullet off.

But does the centrifugal rotation throw off the 'cut' patch/

Or does the airflow past the bullet strip it off like a regular sabot?

Or does the muzzle blast PAST the bullet as the base clears the muzzle shred the patch from back to front?

NO one agrees on exactly WHERE in flight (distance from muzzle) this all takes place.

The BP shooters look for small strips of paper, cut by the rifling, like petals of a flower, that seem to peal off the bullet and are found on the ground from 4 to 8 feet from the muzzle. Remember though, they are shooting a patched to the BORE size bullet and we have found that with smokeless, it is better to patch to groove or more size. The BP shooters claim that their bullets 'bump up' to groove size in firing. I have my doubts because when I recovered PP BP bullets, they showed NO rifling indentions where the lands pressed into the paper. With smokeless, many if not most shooters found bore sized PP bullets gave excretable accuracy (and wondered what they were doing wrong and frequently dropped PPing.)

That is why we have TWO Paper Patch section at Cast Boolets - we just spent too much time arguing and flaming each other over what was "right".
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
What do I think?

Well, with smokeless powder, I NEVER got long strips of paper patch, cut by the rifling. What I DID get was paper flakes almost too small to see and sometimes I would find the folded patch base (another point of argument was twisted vs folded - my accuracy experiments...folded won - when using smokeless. Try your own if you want/have the time). And the paper seemed to be shredding up right at the muzzle. I tried making a 'trap', a 12" tube sprayed inside with adhesive to see if I could determine anything from the particle 'blast' pattern. What I found was that the muzzle blast was too strong for poster cardboard rolls of 12" dia - it just blew them apart. tried it with 20" cylinders/tubes but what i caught was paper flakes pretty much even for the ID, from about a foot in front of the muzzle all the way to the end of the 24" roll. So I ASS-U-ME that 'with smokeless' the muzzle blast shreds the paper as the bullet exits.

So how WOULD it act with a muzzle brake? One of my rifles has a threaded muzzle protector with some oddball non-standard thread....But...HaHA!, I have a thread gage and lots of gear combinations on my lathe. Now one of the key factors on brake efficiency is the bullet to brake clearance. The tighter the gap, the less gas went forward in the 'jet effect', adding recoil. Research showed that the 'brake experts' liked .008 clearance over barrel size. [thats actually .004 per side, not .016 total] So I machined a brake out of aluminum with a bore of .466 and three gill slots on each side, .500 tall. First slot closest to the muzzle was .125, middle was .187 and furthest out was .250. with .200 'bulkhead' between each one. I wish I had taken pictures cause it looked neat on the rifle and it WORKED well using jacketed and regular cast, gas checked bullet. Felt like it took 25% off easily but sounded three time louder. Was asked by the other people on the line to quit shooting! The sound was really blasting them on either side of me but it did not seem THAT loud to me as shooter.

Results on another day with my best, proven accuracy PP load were that group size doubled and I even had a couple of bullets hitting the target cocked, leaving oval holes. There was no paper caught in the brake but it was being blasted sideways FROM the gill slots. A friend standing six feet to the side of he muzzle watching and preparing to take pictures had blood spots on his arms from the debris from the first shot. He refused to stand near for any more shots. So the paper was coming off inside the brake and maybe causing contact and throwing off the bullets flight. So I chucked the brake up and cut .010 out of it, went back to the range (I only live a few miles from Pearland Sportsmans Club, www.psc.com). Ten shots later, I determined no keyholed bullets but still extra large groups. Unscrewed the brake (screwdriver in the slots) and shot another ten and had the tight group I expected. Went back home again, bored ANOTHER .010 out to .486. Shot ten with disappointing group. The next day, I had bored the brake a third time, .010 to .496. No change in apparent group size which was still running 2.5" to 3". So I bored it to .540 and this time the groups size was almost as good as without the brake. But the brake, which now had .040 clearance between bullet side and brake, did not appear to be doing much good, the recoil seemed to be as much as without it.

So I took the brake off and I think/believe that PP and brakes just don't work well together. Anyone else want to try it and check my results?
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ And the powders I usually use for PP since each of them gives about the same accuracy and plenty of velocity are 4198, Reloader 7 and H322

[bbqncigars]

Thanks for another informative post windrider919. I'll have to check the clearance on my brake, I am not going to risk harming a $200 brake that is definitely needed for shooting the Amaxes. Who made your bullet mould? A longer version might be just the ticket in the 45-70 Sharps I'm playing with.

[windrider919]

When I had that one made I was not set up in my shop to make molds yet.

So I checked/shopped around with multiple mould makers (sending them my drawing) and Bernie at:

http://www.oldwestbulletmoulds.com/

seemed to have the best delivery date promise.

His website does not have a selection of bullet forms but he sent me some pictures of what he had made. I had my own in mind so I did not pick a design from anyone else. [the flat nose because in the 458 magazine, a round or simi-pointed is going to be bashed on firing the first round and get flattened anyway. It only flattens so much then stops so that is the size I specified it to be 'pre-formed'. It ended up 460 gr because bearing length was specified along with the overall length - weight was what it was. Nose is 450/bore riding and has a short taper, not a step up to the first driving band at 454 so the PP would fed into the chamber/throat/rifling with less to hang on. With low velocity or BP PP the bullets are usually smooth sided. But I had found that sometimes the patch 'slipped' upon firing and caused a flier. some people were rolling their bullets under a course file before wrapping the patch to give the patch something to hang on to. I thought that the mini-grooves, similar to Lees Tumble groove would hold the patch nicely AND decrease the bore friction because only the ridge tops would actually be tight against the barrel. It many grooves would also act like a labyrinth seal {used in turbine seals}] preventing blowby past the patch. As a safety measure, when fired, the bullet is gripped by the paper getting crushed down on it, in an excessive crush situation for any reason, the grooves give somewhere for the paper and lead to crush into yet the bullet stays concentric.]

So, some pros and cons of OWBM ; Got prompt reply's to my questions as we worked out what I wanted. And when I said 'go" I had the mould in 3 weeks, as promised instead of the 6 to 10 months everyone else promised.

And I received a beautiful two cavity brass mould that has one small flaw...when the blocks heat up the faces touch in the middle and leave a .001 gap all around. I have to grip firmly to keep the bullets perfect. I guess I could have sent it back but it produces good bullets if I just take a 'hand' break every so often. Not a real problem and less problem than flaws I have gotten from other mould makers in the past. Sometime let me tell you about my NEI nightmare!...$470 wasted/useless!

The fly in the pie - I paid for a new cherry which he still has so that is a $ hundred twenty dollars you could save by using mine. But I also paid for a set of handles which he did NOT send and he claimed I had NOT paid for. Not worth arguing about and if he was not such a good mould maker overall, I would not pass on his name

alternate email contact for Bernie at: ALLISONMONUMENT@aol.com

Note; if you wanted to save money you can request my cherry (ohhhh..Kinky!) I had it made under the Windrider name) and he will/can make a double mould with TWO bullet styles/weights On my mould from him I hve one cavity the 460 Windrider design and the other cavity is a very nice 458, 350 gr regular grease groove, gas check truncated cone 45-70 design.

[pdawg_shooter]

I have never worried about "reading the patch." If the load gives the accuracy I need with the velocity I want I could care less what the expended patch looks like. I have found patches up to around 10 feet in front of my bench and have looked at them but with little interest. If it shoots as expected, who cares?

[offshore44]

I'm going to change course in the conversation here a little bit...I was messing about with some of the patched, but not loaded, bullets on the bench this morning. They were all left over from earlier in the process of developing loads, (before advice to the contrary) so they have been sitting for several days.

The thing that they all have in common was they had been run through the sizer die to reduce the diameter of the patch to 0.459", and miked out at a few ten-thousandths +/- that dimension afterwords. The bullets that were patched with the 100% cotton tracing paper and treated with the "magic goop" (since abandoned) had increased in diameter by about 0.0005" or a little more. The bullets patched with bond paper and no goop had expanded a full thousandth of an inch and a little more in some cases. I checked the loaded rounds, and came to the same results. I doubt that they have expanded inside the case, but that is a different story for a different day.

I pulled some of the bullets apart that I had gooped up to examine what the layers of paper looked like as well. The Sno-seal had penetrated the first wrap of paper patching pretty consistently, but not the second. The first layer was saturated and had dried to a firm, ceramic like consistency. The wrap against the bullet was still dry, but somewhat compressed from being run through the sizer die. All of the bullets got de-patched are now back in the pot waiting for further developments...

They sure look nice though, sitting in the box.

What I am going to do with this information, I don't know yet...

[leftiye]

I knew sno seal had ta be good fer sumpthin'! (I flat don't like it, but I do have some)

[offshore44]

Ya, in the Matthews book there was a recipe for a home made paper patch lube consisting of bees wax and Vaseline. I've used Sno-seal since the late 60's on my rough country / mountain boots as a conditioner and water proofer so I knew that it was essentially Bees wax and Vaseline, plus some petroleum aromatics that are used as a carrier. My thinking was that it worked good on my boots for the conditions that I experience, it was essentially the same or similar to the Matthews formula, so give it a try...

I have received advice that it is probably defeating the purpose that I intended, so I dropped using it on paper patches. Still use it successfully on some of my boots though.

[windrider919]

Got a question and instead of answering it privately thought it would be more informative here.

A 'bore riding' bullet is considered a little more accurate because its nose centers itself yet is not cut by the rifling. Obviously, the better centered and aligned a bullet is with the bore the more accurately it will enter the rifling, without having to be distorted. A topic already covered. So ALL bullets are cocked a little in the shell case. That is why match shooters have that little block with a dial indicator on it they roll the complete cartridge in to check the 'run out', or amount the bullet is cocked in the case. Beyond a limit the shooter picks, he does not use that round. Hence the entire purpose of match dies, to produce a loaded round with LESS run-out than stock dies. Actually, the stock dies of today give an average run-out as good as the match dies I had custom made 35 years ago. And the match dies of today are just awesome! Tech has improved so much. Note- there are NO match dies for .458 because no one gives credit for anyone using one of these rifles for accurate shooting, they just can't comprehend it.

On the .458 the bore, the original diameter before the grooves were cut is .450. Then the rifling is cut giving an ID of .458. That gives the rifling/lands a height of .004. There is some variation, slugging or Cerosafing the bore is the only way to be sure. [* note - .308 is .300 with groove dia of .308 = .004 land height*] So in designing a 'bore riding/nose centering' bullet all it requires is a section of the nose that is .450 that will be inside the rifling but not engaging the rifling. The bullet is being supported in the center of the barrel. Some bore riding bullets can have anywhere from a small length between the ogive of the nose and the full bullet diameter and other bore riding the length can be as much as half the OAL of the bullet – lots of .303 cast bullets do this because the two groove rifling distorts the bullet so much, a bore riding section keeps the main mass of the bullet non-distorted and centered {center of rotation point coincides with the center of gravity} Then there is either a “sharp transition” shoulder or a “gentle transition” ramp where the bullet diameter goes up to the groove diameter which WILL engage the rifling when the round is fired. In a bore riding bullet this change in diameter is what is just touching the rifling in the chamber for best accuracy. If the bullet has to jump forward in 'empty space' from case mouth to rifling it has the chance to cock slightly. (And this is also the reason that fitting the PP bullet diameter to the throat is more important than to the barrel ID, it keeps it centered in the chamber.) The bore riding bullet will help some here too as it guides the flying bullet back to center of the bore some. Since it is difficult to get a patch to go from groove diameter over a sharp shoulder to bore diameter without wrinkling, I used a ramp/cone where the paper is able to wrap without fighting wrinkles in the patch. If you look back to the 'windrider' bullet you might be able to tell that there is a short section in front of the shoulder that is cylindrical and bore riding before the curve of the nose starts. Not much but in this case I did not need much to bore ride and center my bullet.

And on the subject of holding the patch on,.. knurling the bullet was mentioned but.....BUT, I tried knurling cast bullets yet it ALWAYS makes the bullet a little out of round, an accuracy no-no. Yah, I know some bulk buy pistol bullets are knurled to hold the lube but accuracy sucks on them. I did have fair luck by making the surface of the mould rough finish instead of smooth/polished. IE- leave tooling marks on the side of the bullet. More like a drilled hole finish than machined, it seems to hold a patch . But if you run the bullet through a sizer {pre-patching} it smooths out the mirrored tool marks. What happens with this rough sided boolet is that when fired, the patch is compressed down onto the bullet, holding tightly and ALSO smoothing the bullets side like the sizer die would have. So when it exits the muzzle, it IS a smooth sided bullet for better aerodynamics. So I elected to have very small grooves in my design. What you see is much larger than I really wanted but that is as small as could be made on the cherry. Running the design on an aerodynamic simulator resulted in the data that such small grooves do NOT significantly affect the airflow around the bullet. (several people had claimed that the many grooves would create so much drag the bullet might even tumble. Both the computer aerodynamic and the real world testing showed the many groove sided bullets shoot just fine!) Of course the difference between a smooth sided bullet and a conventional grease grooved bullet with a couple of deep grooves is slight but makes a difference at very long ranges...maybe 2 or 3%...only the very long range shooters even notice. If you are shooting at less than 600 yards...”forget uh bod id”.

A question about nose profile was asked by another person. Hey, we all see the nice sharp nosed, aerodynamic J-boolet and want the same thing in cast lead but it just WILL NOT WORK. Spend as much money as you want as so many of us did. Like me because I was determined I could find the secret. Several thousand dollars in custom moulds, with the mould makers fighting all the way because they knew that in this case 'the customer was dumb but the money was right'. Look up the 'money bullet' profile. It is the best for cast or swaged lead as the compromise between the material and the shape. Why did I not use it? Because of that magazine recoil problem flattening the bullet nose against the front wall of the magazine when to upper rounds were fired. I loaded a dummy round with a sample 'money bullet' in it then put it first in the rifle magazine. Loaded a couple of live rounds on top of that. Shot two shots, reloaded two, shot two and repeated until I had fired 16 shots. The dummy round had had the nose flattened out by the first four shots ( I was checking it at each reload). But then the damage/change seemed to stabilize. And so THAT is how my bullets nose got its shape, I went with what it would really be in the real world hunting camp situation over a few days if by chance a round had been loaded but not itself shot a couple of times. If I had a single shot rifle instead of a bolt action, there would be NO flat on the bullet nose.

Several mentions of lubing the PP bullet which is a 'no cookie' thing in BP but DOES work, sort of... with smokeless. If the lube completely fills the paper fiber voids then the bullet does not seem to get the best accuracy. So soaking the patch with a lube probably will not work. Also, swaging a lubed, patched bullet compresses the paper to its limit and does the same thing. If it is your only way to get correct bore dimensions, use that technique. But for that REALLY LONG RANGE shooting...counter productive. Please see the several threads where I described my experimenting and how I ended up using a 75%water and 25% water soluble wax that strengthened the PP for handling, loading and most of all ACCURACY.
Water soluble wax? Try floor wax for cheep (who let the dogs..chickens.. out? Cheap cheap :>} ) or Rooster Bullet lube.

Note - Using my .454 dia bullet, patched to .462 then fired in a .458 barrel the recovered bullets come out at .451 and only ripples show instead of the as cast mini-grooves. The rifling lands show where the paper transfers their impression into the lead

Paul Jones Precision Bullet Moulds (the Money Bullet nose Profile 1st mfg)
http://www.pauljonesmoulds.com/

Info on Long range PP
http://www.bpcr.net/site_docs-result...discussion.htm
Creedmore analysis

http://www.bpcr.net/site_docs-result...PP_Bullets.htm
Tale of three PP bullets

http://www.shilohrifle.com/forums/vi...4268dadcacb670
a Jones microgroove money bullet

http://www.public.iastate.edu/~jessie/PPB/PPB.htm
Excellent site from a PP shooter

IMPORTANT?REMEMBER - any dimensions talked about using BP can and usually ARE DIFFERENT with smokeless

[pdawg_shooter]

Ya, in the Matthews book there was a recipe for a home made paper patch lube consisting of bees wax and Vaseline. I've used Sno-seal since the late 60's on my rough country / mountain boots as a conditioner and water proofer so I knew that it was essentially Bees wax and Vaseline, plus some petroleum aromatics that are used as a carrier. My thinking was that it worked good on my boots for the conditions that I experience, it was essentially the same or similar to the Matthews formula, so give it a try...

I have received advice that it is probably defeating the purpose that I intended, so I dropped using it on paper patches. Still use it successfully on some of my boots though.

Over the years I have tried every patch lube I could think of, including Crisco! Every one of them worked to some extent. I am now using BAC, on everything, patched or not. Lee's LA does a good job and waterproofs the patch as well but BAC works best for me.

[offshore44]

I read about the 'bore riders" supposedly being more accurate than other designs before purchasing my initial three molds.

The Saeco 350 grn mold has a bore riding section that is about a tenth of an inch long. The 405 grn and 465 grn molds have a bore riding sections that are about two tenths of an inch long. All three have nose shapes that are "identical" within manufacturing tolerances. All three bore riding sections drop at, or just a hair over 0.450" with Lyman #2 alloy. Just a hair under with unalloyed lead, as expected.

Interesting stuff I am learning here. Very interesting.

On another related topic: What is the difference between using lead and wheel weights in a paper patched bullet? I have some guesses, but I'll keep my mouth shut and await feed back from the more experience.

There is actually a theory in marine design, and aircraft design as well, where small evenly spaced grooves perpendicular to flow along the length of an object reduce drag by promoting laminar flow. Very specific criteria must be met for velocity vs viscosity vs grove dimensions and spacing for laminar flow to be established. I don't think that you could even use the theory in bullet flight, but there it is anyway. The side of the windrider bullet reminds me of some test samples that I saw. In the aeronautics experiments there was no stability issues in the transition from turbulent to laminar flow, but they did show up when going from laminar flow back to turbulent flow. It was a pretty abrupt transition. The marine experiments didn't show any meaningful transitional instability.

[pdawg_shooter]

Straight lead is good to around 2200fps and WW can be pushed to around 2450fps. A BHN of 16.5/17 works over 3000fps.

[offshore44]

Straight lead is good to around 2200fps and WW can be pushed to around 2450fps. A BHN of 16.5/17 works over 3000fps.

Thanks pdawg_shooter. That implies that I got really lucky with the first bunch of straight lead paper patched bullets that I shot. They were going about the top end for WW 15' from the muzzle. They seemed pretty happy though, at the time. Sometimes, ignorance is bliss until you find out that it is just ignorance.

BTW - I've got two more sets of loads worked up and may have a chance to shoot them over the chrony and for group size this weekend. The weather looks promising anyway. At the moment I am learning faster than I'm shooting. That's a good thing.

[303Guy]

Another excellent post windrider919.
One day I am going to want to try a PP load in my mint bore two-groove No4. The shape of the throat only allows for a 180gr boolit without a bore-ride nose.

[offshore44]

Another excellent post windrider919.
One day I am going to want to try a PP load in my mint bore two-groove No4. The shape of the throat only allows for a 180gr boolit without a bore-ride nose.

I'll agree to that...windrider919 has contributed a bunch of very useful information to this thread. Very good stuff indeed.

I started honing out the Hornady bullet seating die last night using 600 grit wet / dry emery cloth and a mandrel that I happened to have on hand. Beautiful polish on the inside, but the amount that was actually removed was minimal indeed. I've got about 0.003" to remove to precisely fit the paper patched bullets that I need for the rifle's throat. At most I've removed 10% of that with several hours of careful work. It's off to the local auto parts / hardware stores to find something a little more aggressive. It takes a lot of attention to make sure that you are not creating an hour glass or barrel shape, to be sure. I sure miss having access to machine tools and appropriate gauges.

[pdawg_shooter]

BTW, I have never seen a more accurate bullet then a Loverin design. Bore riders are ok if you size them down and patch them back up full length. I have a 311284 that has a .302 nose, size that down to .3015 and patch back up to .310 and it does fine in all my 30cals, including a 300RUM.
As a bare lubed bullet, eh, not so much.