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Thread: Just a few tips for new rifle casters.

  1. #101
    Boolit Master brewer12345's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by ChuckO View Post
    Thanks to the "Wayback Machine", web.archive.org, the earliest posts here are still available.
    Perhaps someone could post them in the thread so that we don't just have an empty/garbage sticky prominently displayed at the top of the forum?
    When you care enough to send the very best, send an ounce of lead.

  2. #102
    Boolit Master trapper9260's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by No_1 View Post
    I was a bit short with my last post. He was banned some time back and by choice stayed away for a while even though the ban had expired. He eventually returned and was posting until he received an infraction. A few days later he changed a bunch of his post to reflect the message below. Apparently he has determined we are not worthy of his knowledge. Such is life....

    Robert
    Sad how things can go .Thank you for letting know.I was wonder what happened to him.I was learning some thing from him also.
    Life Member of NRA,NTA,DAV ,ITA. Also member of FTA,CBA

  3. #103
    Boolit Master
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    Just to save folks from figuring out the wayback machine, here is a link to the first page and the content of the first post. http://web.archive.org/web/201408150...-rifle-casters

    If you are thinking that loading cast boolits is a little different than loading jacketed bullets you are right! This is a totally different deal. I didn't realize either until the fellas on CB got me lined out. The good news is that this is relatively simple once you understand what needs to happen and why. It’s just that you can be an expert reloader with jacketed bullets, without realizing that you are taking a whole slew of things for granted that you must control individually with a cast boolit. These same things are necessary with a jacketed projectile, but the extreme hardness of the bullets, make a lot of this a mute point, to the detriment of performance on the intended target. It has taken me a while to give up on my jacketed bullet crutch, but I have finally come to the conclusion that there is nothing that a jacketed bullet can do, that a cast boolit will do even better at 75% of the speed, except long range hole punching. If you can find a way to deliver a cast lead boolit to the target, it will out perform a jacketed bullet every time, but getting it there takes a little.....savvy.

    You need to know the bore diameter and the groove diameter of your rifle.
    In order to get this precise information, it is necessary to slug your barrel, and possibly use a pin gauge set.
    In order to slug your barrel, get a pure lead slug (a fishing egg sinker works well for this) and drive it through a clean, oiled barrel, dropping it on a soft cushion like a T-shirt or a rag of some sort. Measure the OD to get your groove diameter. If you have few enough grooves, measure between them to get your bore diameter, or use precision pins in the actual barrel to get your bore diameter.

    Next, you need to know what your chamber is like, and have a measurable rendering of the throat, free-bore, and neck of your rifle.
    You can achieve this several ways, but the best is a chamber slug, followed by a cerosafe casting.
    In order to get a chamber slug, take a once fired piece of brass from your rifle, and fill it with molten lead to just below the case mouth. Cast a lead boolit of pure lead. Insert the lead boolit into your breech, followed by the lead filled casing. Close your bolt on the casing. Take a 5/16 rod of aluminum or brass longer than your barrel, and put it down the muzzle until it touches the pure lead boolit. Use a hammer to pound the rod until it bounces, indicating that the lead has flowed everywhere it can and has filled every void. Carefully, open your breech and extract the lead filled cartridge casing. Give the rod a few light taps to dislodge the chamber slug from the breech. Measure it to determine the profile of your neck to throat transition, the throat diameter, and the length of the free-bore if any.
    Edit: for more detailed information and pictures on how to do this operation, see this link:http://castboolits.gunloads.com/show...o-a-pound-cast

    Now, your boolit should match these dimensions.
    First of all, the nose of your projectile should be exactly the same as your bore diameter, or no more than .0005 less.
    Second, the driving bands are to be .001-.002 bigger than your groove diameter, unless the free-bore of your rifle measures bigger than the groove diameter, in which case the boolit's driving bands are to be .001 less than the diameter of the free-bore.
    If your rifle has no free-bore, and all you have is a tapering lead-in, (aka throat) then the boolit must be .001-.002 larger than the groove diameter of the barrel, and the forward-most driving band should have an angle that compliments the throat angle, and should not protrude from the case mouth far enough to crash into that angle. A chambered cartridge should make the driving band just kiss the throat angle with perhaps .001 press upon closing the action.

    Now, your brass should be as long as it can be without crushing the case mouth into the end of the chamber. Your neck should stop just .001-.005 short of bottoming out in the chamber.
    Load a dummy cartridge to these specs, smoke it with lamp black, and chamber it. You should see the lands wipe shiny streaks on the bore-riding section of your boolit, and leave shiny marks around the perimeter of the first driving band. Obviously, the cartridge should chamber easily. If you have no contact in these areas, do it over with a longer dummy till you find that spot. Don't quit until you have this right.

    It may require mold modification or brass modification or even new brass, or a new mold, but that does not change the fact that it must be this way, but you are working on becoming an expert reloader, so this should be no problem.

    Once you have these things right, pull the boolit as gently as you can from the casing and measure the OD. If it is not .001-.002 over the groove diameter blah, blah, blah, make or have made, a neck expanding tool, or buy a Lyman M die so that your brass will quit squishing the boolit down undersized. Once you have this taken care of, reload the dummy, smoke it and do the whole cambering thing again.

    Once you have things going your way on every last one of these instructions, load up ten dummies, smoke them and cycle them through your magazine/tube/etc etc and cycle them as you normally would. Observe if they are consistent in all these critical points. If they are, do it for real. Load up 10 rounds and shoot them. Don't worry about accuracy for the moment, just load 'em somewhere in the middle and blast them off and see what your barrel does. If you get leading,(which I doubt) use a harder/tougher alloy like 94/3/3, or water quench your boolits to get them a touch harder.
    Shoot again. You want a smoky looking barrel with a little bit of a lube star on the muzzle and NO LEADING.

    I am sure you are aware of ladder testing? Load 50 cartridges each with different lubes. Just for starters I would load FWFL, White Label BAC, and Javalina lube.
    Load 50 progressively larger charges of powder, starting with the minimum and ending at the maximum, with each lube choice. Go to the range and shoot them methodically.

    Note your accuracy nodes and keep the most accurate combination. (Edit to add) Since writing this I have changed my method so that I load 5 cartridges each in each charge 1/2 grain at a time, minimum to maximum. Each charge is a law unto itself. The one merit that shooting a ladder has in this case is that you can easily determine when and if your lube fails, but you'll know it either way, so I just do 5 shot groups till I'm pretty sure I'm on a node, then I go to ten shot groups.

    This is the best I can do to explain how to get the most from cast boolits.
    Any of you more experienced shooters feel free to chime in and set me strait if I am wrong on any points here, this is just the way that I do it but I am still learning. I base every bit of this on what I have learned here at Cast boolits and can site who told me what, and why I believe it to be true.
    I hope this helps somebody get where they are going.

  4. #104
    Boolit Master Drew P's Avatar
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    SO first you ban him, then when he takes his posts and leaves you decide to forcibly revive him. That’s just downright funny if you ask me. I’d love to know what his “infraction” was lol.

  5. #105
    Boolit Master
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    Quote Originally Posted by Drew P View Post
    SO first you ban him, then when he takes his posts and leaves you decide to forcibly revive him. That’s just downright funny if you ask me. I’d love to know what his “infraction” was lol.
    yep,
    +1

  6. #106
    Boolit Buddy
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    Quote Originally Posted by Drew P View Post
    SO first you ban him, then when he takes his posts and leaves you decide to forcibly revive him. That’s just downright funny if you ask me. I’d love to know what his “infraction” was lol.
    Considering some of the frequent flyers who are complete jerks every time they post, you have to assume it was more than simply being "controversial". I doubt the details are for the public.

    Sent from my XT1710-02 using Tapatalk

  7. #107
    Boolit Master
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    Quote Originally Posted by Drew P View Post
    SO first you ban him, then when he takes his posts and leaves you decide to forcibly revive him. That’s just downright funny if you ask me. I’d love to know what his “infraction” was lol.
    I didn’t ban him or forcibly revive him, I simply posted a copy of the information that he provided previously to the forum. It’s the internet, that’s how it rolls.

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Abbreviations used in Reloading

BP Bronze Point IMR Improved Military Rifle PTD Pointed
BR Bench Rest M Magnum RN Round Nose
BT Boat Tail PL Power-Lokt SP Soft Point
C Compressed Charge PR Primer SPCL Soft Point "Core-Lokt"
HP Hollow Point PSPCL Pointed Soft Point "Core Lokt" C.O.L. Cartridge Overall Length
PSP Pointed Soft Point Spz Spitzer Point SBT Spitzer Boat Tail
LRN Lead Round Nose LWC Lead Wad Cutter LSWC Lead Semi Wad Cutter
GC Gas Check