.30 XCB wildcat, from scratch.

[btroj]

[Bjornb]

Share some load or other details? Nice shooting!

[Love Life]

Btroj, For the love of all that is precious, please say you are one of those rare shooters who still shoots at 100 yards.

[MBTcustom]

Btroj, For the love of all that is precious, please say you are one of those rare shooters who still shoots at 100 yards.

Yes please do.
I have a glass of bourbon on the table and my cigar is getting soggy waiting to light it. LOL!

Darn good shooting Brad.

[tomme boy]

Don't you hate it when your heart beat messes up a good group?

[MBTcustom]

Gents, I have the NOE XCB boolit mold in hand. By all apearances, Al has once again lived up to his reputation. This is without question, the finest mold that has ever been delivered to me by a custom maker. Simply beautiful.
I will cast up a bunch of these this weekend and get them set aside for seasoning.
Thank you SwedeNelson for a superb piece of workmanship. Your products have benefitted from your experiance and are better than ever.

[MBTcustom]

I have taken the new XCB mold to the silver stream, and I am very very impressed!
Here is what I got from Al yesterday
Attachment 114807
Attachment 114808

Tonight, dispite interuptions, I set about to cast with this fine mold come hell or high water (It's 12:30 in the morning here and I just got done)
From the first, this mold cast like a dream. The boolits never stuck in the mold and just a faint tap on the handle was all that was required for both boolits to tumble out into the bucket of water. This is what we all hope to get. Truly a booliteers boolit mold.
I cast in three different runs pausing to handle business and top off the pot, keeping the mold warm on the hot plate.
Once casting resumed, the first three or four drops were dumped on the workbench to be recycled, and then I started depositing in the water bucket again.
After I had accumulated a decent pile of boolits, I fished them out of the bucket, dried them with paper towels, and began to create a bell curve such as I described in my consistency thread:
http://castboolits.gunloads.com/show...-are-you-REALY
I was shocked at the results.
Attachment 114809
That right there is a total deviation of only .8 grains over three casting sessions, done with a Lee bottom pour 20lb pot. That makes this my most consistent mold.
The boolits also came out very very round and consistent, measuring .3102 with my micrometer.
After being pushed through a .3100 sizer, they were checked in the XCB throat, and I found that they pilot like a Morse taper, exactly as they should. This was the most critical part of the cavity and I do believe Al nailed it right on the money as he did on every other aspect of this fine tool.
All in all, I am impressed, and when it comes to things like this, I am very very hard to impress.

Now, all of this does not mean that the rifles are going to love this boolit as much as I do. All I know at this point is that the boolits fit better than anything I have witnessed thus far in this sport, and they are also more consistent than anything I have seen.

She looks good in a dress fellers. Now let's see if she knows how to dance.

[Love Life]

What alloy are you using?

[MBTcustom]

I started with my basic 98.5Pb/1.5Sb alloy but I was unhappy with the fillout, so I added 6" of lead free solder (has a stiff of copper in it)

This is how the boolits engrave the rifling (I made a gauge by cutting just the throat of the XCB chamber in a 3" section of barrel.) It doesn't match quite as well as the Accurate TC boolit does, but I think the slight difference will be negligible. It still contacts in all the right places and once fully engraved it has all the support I was hoping for.
Attachment 114850

[Love Life]

Now go shoot it out of a 30 XCB. Pretty please!

[JonB_in_Glencoe]

I started with my basic 98.5Pb/1.5Sb alloy but I was unhappy with the fillout, so I added 6" of lead free solder (has a stiff of copper in it)

This is how the boolits engrave the rifling (I made a gauge by cutting just the throat of the XCB chamber in a 3" section of barrel.) It doesn't match quite as well as the Accurate TC boolit does, but I think the slight difference will be negligible. It still contacts in all the right places and once fully engraved it has all the support I was hoping for.
Attachment 114850

I can see that stiff of copper, it must have floated to the top as the mold was held with the bottom of the boolit upwards.

===========================

I fired up my pot today, with 94-3-3. and cast with my aluminum version of this mold, mine dropped a little larger and .001 out of round, .312 x .311

[MBTcustom]

Now go shoot it out of a 30 XCB. Pretty please!

I will Dick. But there is a process here that must be maintained. These boolits must now sit for 6 months to properly age harden before I can shoot them.

[MBTcustom]

Oh yeah.
Darn. I was hoping to cheat and shoot these on Christmas holiday.
Oh well, 2015 it is.

OK, all kidding aside, I'm going to let these boolits season up for two weeks before I shoot them.

[Larry Gibson]

I received my 310-165-FN from Al yesterday. What a beautiful mould! Didn't take me long to get it prepped for casting. Even though it was 104 degrees when I started and 107 when I finished I suffered through it. I used Lyman #2 alloy (4 1/2 lbs linotype, 5 lbs of lead and 1/2 lb of tin for 10 lbs alloy) and WQ'd the bullets. Al specifically cut my mould for #2 alloy and I requested a .311 as cast bullet. Let me tell you Al did a marvelous job! I ended up with 359 bullets in the bucket. I sorted out 37 of those bullets to defects on a careful visual inspection. Weight sorting left me with 290 very good bullets in the 159.5 - 160.0 gr weight. There were 19 heavier bullets and 13 lighter weight bullets. That was a 81% retention rate which is excellent. The bullets are very round and mic .311 on the bearing surface. All I can say is WOW!

Here's a picture of some of the bullets, the bullet in the throat gauge Time made for me and the bullet seated in the .308W to the leade in my Palma rifle. Note the top of the GC is inside the neck. I'm giving them 48 hours aging time and will GC and lube (2500+) in a .311 H&I die tomorrow. I will load them from 44 gr through 49 gr AA4350 initially. Then will test with H4831SC and RL22. I'm looking at pushing to the max in the .308W. I will cast more in the future (DUH!) and will also test in my '06. I can't wait for the 16" twist barrel.........

Larry Gibson

Attachment 114925Attachment 114926Attachment 114927

Again, thanks to NOE and Al "Swede" Nelson for an outstanding product and all the help with the design.

[MBTcustom]

I received my 310-165-FN from Al yesterday. What a beautiful mould! Didn't take me long to get it prepped for casting. Even though it was 104 degrees when I started and 107 when I finished I suffered through it. I used Lyman #2 alloy (4 1/2 lbs linotype, 5 lbs of lead and 1/2 lb of tin for 10 lbs alloy) and WQ'd the bullets. Al specifically cut my mould for #2 alloy and I requested a .311 as cast bullet. Let me tell you Al did a marvelous job! I ended up with 359 bullets in the bucket. I sorted out 37 of those bullets to defects on a careful visual inspection. Weight sorting left me with 290 very good bullets in the 159.5 - 160.0 gr weight. There were 19 heavier bullets and 13 lighter weight bullets. That was a 81% retention rate which is excellent. The bullets are very round and mic .311 on the bearing surface. All I can say is WOW!

Here's a picture of some of the bullets, the bullet in the throat gauge Time made for me and the bullet seated in the .308W to the leade in my Palma rifle. Note the top of the GC is inside the neck. I'm giving them 48 hours aging time and will GC and lube (2500+) in a .311 H&I die tomorrow. I will load them from 444 gr through 49 gr AA4350 initially. Then will test with H4831SC and RL22. I'm looking at pushing to the max in the .308W. I will cast more in the future (DUH!) and will also test in my '06. I can't wait for the 16" twist barrel.........

Larry Gibson

Attachment 114925Attachment 114926Attachment 114927

Well, I don't know about you Larry (you have been doing this a few more years than I have LOL!) but this mold that Al cut me is just about the nicest mold I have ever cast with. I'm taking a break right now from my second run, and it's absolutely amazing.
I have dialed in my process a little better now, and I have found out what was causing some of the variations in that superb bell curve I posted earlier. Turns out that how well I prime the spout of the Lee pot has a direct correlation to the weight of the boolit that drops out. For instance, if I just bump the handle a few times and then fill, I'm going to get boolits that weigh 166.4 or 166.5 but if I prime the spout real good for a couple seconds and then shoot the cavities, I am predictibly dropping boolits that weigh 167.0-167.1 right on the money. The brass is very forgiving and doesn't seem to care about cycle times. With this mold, I need to prime consistently and throw the lead stream straight down the hole (or at least make sure that the fill finishes with the stream going right down the hole).
Can't wait to weigh this batch and see what I've got. I've been dropping every 10th or so pour on the bench and weighing to see what works. I think I've got it by the short hairs now.

[Bjornb]

Yeah I can only add to the accolades about this new mould and design. I'll go with Larry's advice and make up some real Lyman #2 alloy, and I noticed that Larry's bullets were dropping lighter than Tim's due to the Lino content in Larry's alloy. I've been using a lot of scrap lead in my casting for rifle but this experiment calls for a more accurate alloy.

[Bjornb]

Attachment 114928

Color does kinda grows on you

Sarge that color is just YOU--- you'll be a shoo-in Designated Marksman for any job that calls for hiding in a poppy field.....

[taco650]

Al specifically cut my mould for #2 alloy...
Larry Gibson

Attachment 114925Attachment 114926Attachment 114927

Again, thanks to NOE and Al "Swede" Nelson for an outstanding product and all the help with the design.

Forgive my ignorance but what effect does lead mix have on how the mold is cut? If the explanation is too long or inappropriate for the thread, just reply with a link and I'll check it out on my own.

[cbrick]

The percentage of antimony (Sb) determines the amount of shrinkage upon cooling. A high Sb percentage will yield a larger diameter boolit than will a lower percentage from the same mold.

Rick

[taco650]

The percentage of antimony (Sb) determines the amount of shrinkage upon cooling. A high Sb percentage will yield a larger diameter boolit than will a lower percentage from the same mold.

Rick

So lower antimony % means the mold has to be cut "fatter" to maintain final boolit size?