35 Whelen chamber dimensions

[Black Jaque Janaviac]

Well, I may have to stick with J-word boolits for hunting purposes in my '92 .357 mags since they are cut to SAAMI specs and have that "forcing cone type" throat.

I do have a .35 Whelen which is nothing more than a Savage 110 with an Adams & Bennet bbl on it. I'm guessing that has a SAAMI spec chamber too.

Well, I've done a little tinkering with paper patching with that one too but have not found anything that rivals j-word accuracy. I'm wondering if my problem may be the chamber neck is longer than the case necks. SAAMI chambers are 2.52" from head to neck while the cases are 2.494". Often my re-formed .30-06 brass are quite a bit shorter than 2.494 - more like 2.484"

That can be a total of .036" of neck before getting to the throat. Any way to correct this?

I suspect this may be ruining my accuracy because I occasionally find little paper rings falling out of my chamber. I can only imagine that a ring or two might even remain in there during the firing of a subsequent round which could really hose up the accuracy.

Any thoughts?

[Harter66]

This might help . Too much info to recount.

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?t=126711

[geargnasher]

Like these?



Check out the link Harter66 posted, particularly the posts and pics by Lead Pot.

Gear

[Nobade]

Hey Black Jaque, don't give up on that 357 yet. Check this out -
http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?t=109679

Ranch Dog has a boolit just for your rifle. That big fat nose will engrave without having to be set so far out.

As for the 35 Whelen, are you using any filler between the powder and boolit? If not you should give it a try. (Assuming the proper powder) I have seen a dramatic improvement in every one of my rifles firing PP boolits by using either Cream 'O' Wheat or BPI original shot buffer. Doesn't take much - .3 to .5 CC is plenty. Makes a huge difference, and helps those paper rings too.

On the subject of paper rings I got Dave Manson to make me a neck/throater for my 375 Taylor with no step in the end. Just a 7 deg./side cone from the end of the chamber. I cut the neck with that and then used the 1.5deg/side throater to make the throat the length I wanted. Voila! No more paper rings, no matter how hot I load it. And amazingly good accuracy, like 7 inch groups at 500M and 4100 foot pounds of muzzle energy. Great fun, just kind of hard on my shoulder. I think that previous thread was pretty much spot on, at higher pressures the rings start to show up but using fillers seems to keep them under control until you hit max pressures.

[MBTcustom]

I dealt with the dreaded paper rings myself and it was caused by short brass, There were rings left in the chamber from previous firings, and it did muck up the accuracy.
This is what you have going on:

What you are looking at is a section of a mock chamber I made when I was building my wildcat. I used it to determine the cause of the paper rings. That gap in front of the case neck is what was causing the rings, as they were exactly the same thickness as that gap.
The first thing you should try is getting dedicated 35 whelen brass. midway sells it cheap enough:
http://www.midwayusa.com/product/160...rass-35-whelen
The other thing is that you should try a slower powder. I was running H335 and it soundly vaporized the paper patches and I am convinced it contributed to the paper rings. I tried IMR4831 and the results were much better.
Dont give up! PPing is a tinkering game that rewards those who spend the time with free homemade boolits.

[geargnasher]

I'll add one thing, even with brass that is too short, switching to 100% cotton vellum paper and BPI Original shot buffer stopped them from forming in my .30-'06. If the paper is fuzzy at all or weak like printer paper or notebook paper, it can make some vile rings and they DO affect accuracy for certain if not fished out of the chamber every time.

Gear

[MBTcustom]

Very true geargnasher, Just like leading is caused by gas blowby, the paper is being vaporized in that small gap, especially if it is extremely fuzzy in nature. I think I got better results from 4831 because the powder itself acted like a buffer. It being such a slow burn, I believe that the patch had made it securely into the barrel before the burning powder got to the base of the boolit. Of course, not being able to actually see inside the chamber at the moment of ignition means that this is guesswork on my part.

[Black Jaque Janaviac]

Gentlemen,

Thanks. This will be very helpful. The links were excellent. I don't know why they didn't come up when I was searching for such threads before starting this one. I probably searched for "paper rings" not "paper ring".

Gearnasher, yep rings like what is shown in the upper right of your photo. I've used both 25% and 100% vellum. Same marginal results. Always enough to keep my interest in paper-patching, never enough to be confident in hunting with them.

Nobade, don't worrry I won't give up on the .357 just yet. My plan is to try Lee's .358-158-RF again but size it to .356" then patch it up to .366" and load it as is without any sizing after patching. I had an extra Factory Crimp Die ring laying around and sanded out the inside to accept .366" dia boolits. I know the FCD is not recommended but with that boolit I've found that my '92 action will not feed if the cases are not crimped. The boolit contacts the top of the chamber at the same time the case mouth touches the bottom edge of the chamber and there it jams. A heavy crimp is all that is needed to fix the feeding problem.

Goodsteel, Yes your picture is exactly what I was imagining! Here's my plan let me know if I'm about to do something foolish/dangerous.

• Make a chamber cast of Whelen and trim brass to the length of the chamber.
  
• Use Reloader 17 with .3cc of Cream-o-Wheat filler
  
• If Cream-o-Wheat works I'll look into using a non-vegetable based filler - would talcum powder work?
  
• If none of these work - try a different powder.
  
• If no success then look into altering the angles of the chamber.

[MBTcustom]

I almost guarantee, that if you get the neck of the brass to fill out the length of the chamber properly that will eliminate the paper rings and improve accuracy.
Definitely try the COW next but understand that it may or may not work, and if it does it may get you only so far. Remember that fillers increase pressure so use prudence with your loads, 35 whelen is a prime candidate for fillers though because of its shallow shoulder.
Definitely experiment with powders.
Do not mess with your chamber unless you are able to fix it if you screw up! I did this as a last resort on an extremely sorry #4 mk1 enfield rifle but the truth is I was looking for an excuse to rebarrel it, which I did.
The very next thing I would try is messing with the neck tension on that brass once you get it to the right length. Just get Lee to make you a collet neck sizing die for your rifle, or get different expander balls to blow the necks out to the bigger sizes. They are amazingly cheap when it comes to making custom dies; like cheap enough that you consider buying from lee even though you have a lathe in your garage. That cheap.
Once you get the dies, get with me to make modifications to the mandrel.
I ended up finding good accuracy when I had .001 press on the PP boolits.

[Black Jaque Janaviac]

Goodsteel,

RL-17 is on the verge of "too slow" for the Whelen. It takes all the powder you can fit in it to get Hornady's 250 RN to go over 2450 fps.

So I'm thinking I can fill to the top of the shoulder with RL-17 and then .3cc of COW, and then the boolit. Just off the top of my head I think the max OAL with this boolit is 3.385" which still feeds through the magazine.

I will try a chamber cast to see what kind of neck the chamber has. I hope this is something as simple as not trimming the brass down to 2.494"

[MBTcustom]

Maybe you could post a picture of that chamber cast? Could prove to be valuable.

[Black Jaque Janaviac]

Rather than fussing with the cerrosafe I just filled a Whelen case with cornmeal and tamped a soft lead boolit until it peened out to fill the chamber neck. It worked sufficiently to identify the cause of the paper rings but the boolit compressed the cornmeal too much to give me a picture of what the throat to rifling looks like.

I casted up a few 280 grain boolits last night. Should be cool enough by the time I get home from work today to patch. Might even be able to shoot 'em this weekend.

I will post a photo tonight.

[MBTcustom]

The way I got a chamber slug was to fill up a case 1/8" from the rim with hard lead, and then cast a long slug out of pure lead. inserted into the chamber and hammered a steel rod into the tip of the boolit to give me a perfect rendering of the chamber.

[geargnasher]

+1 Goodsteel. For those new to making chamber slugs, don't forget when measuring that the case will probably shorten some and this will increase the apparent gap between end of chamber and case mouth. You want to use hard alloy for the case and dead soft for the boolit.

Gear

[Black Jaque Janaviac]

I don't mean to be nit-picky - but if the soft bullet fits in the case I would think that it would have compressed my cornmeal which should have exerted outward force on the case and therefore should not have shortened the case.

I guess I'm just being lazy and don't want to have to re-do the chamber cast.

Now about that picture. I'll get to it. . .

[MBTcustom]

I personally did not experience any shortening of the case. The advantage of the chamber slug, as opposed to the chamber casting, is that it does not shrink after it has been removed from the rifle. Another thing that can be used is quicksteel epoxy putty. Oil the chamber well ,then press the quicksteel into the chamber. Push it out after it hardens with a cleaning rod.
The main thing is that you get a real idea of how long to trim the cases. tamping a boolit into a case filled with cornmeal doesn't give you anything solid to measure because the cornmeal can offer some "spring-back" and there is no way to prove that it has not done so. You need something that you can measure to +- .002" that will give you an idea of how long the cases need to be. Otherwise, you may trim a whole batch to short or too long and be no closer to an accurate dimension than you were before and waste a lot more time than if you had just done it right in the first place. If you want accurate groups you need to practice accuracy in your load development, preparation and building. If you cut corners you will not get good quality loads, you will get discouraged and just quit trying. We are not telling you these processes because they were the easiest for us, we are telling you specific operations that will give you good, solid results that you can depend on and take measurements from.