.30 XCB wildcat, from scratch.

[cbrick]

Ok, time to catch your breath on this stuff so a little thread drift is in order.

Tim, how much do want to blue that Blackhawk you said you wanted to blue when you were here? Hhmmm . . .

Rick

[Love Life]

Tim, to caveat on the thread drift, when are you gonna make a sweet case prep tool like cbricks?

[btroj]

Ok, time to catch your breath on this stuff so a little thread drift is in order.

Tim, how much do want to blue that Blackhawk you said you wanted to blue when you were here? Hhmmm . . .

Rick

Thread drift? Where?

Yeah Tim, when are you gonna make a case prep tool like that?

[cbrick]

He must be a couch potato, just sittin around all day getting nuthin done.

Rick

[Love Life]

That picture is cruel. I have been cranking along today with my Wilson trimmer....

[btroj]

Rick, nobody likes a tease. That is just cruel. I hope he over polishes your revolver and dishes out every screw hole on it!

Does my jealousy show?

[Love Life]

^^Nice!!!!!

[cbrick]

Cruel? I don't understand, I think it's quite nice. See all that brass around the machine? You would never guess how fast it turns 414 Super Mag brass into 41 mag. Or uniforms primer pockets, flash holes, chamfers & deburs, outside neck turns, inside neck reams.

Did I mention that I can uniform a 1 hundred round box of primer pockets with attached Sinclair tool in 10 minutes. Geez, what's cruel about all that?

[Love Life]

Rick, nobody likes a tease. That is just cruel. I hope he over polishes your revolver and dishes out every screw hole on it!

Does my jealousy show?

Then he'll have Colt quality!!

[btroj]

Cruel? I don't understand, I think it's quite nice. See all that brass around the machine? You would never guess how fast it turns 414 Super Mag brass into 41 mag. Or uniforms primer pockets, flash holes, chamfers & deburs, outside neck turns, inside neck reams.

Did I mention that I can uniform a 1 hundred round box of primer pockets with attached Sinclair tool in 10 minutes. Geez, what's cruel about all that?

I'll send you some brass to trim up for me.......

That is one sweet machine. Making 414 into 41 mag is no small job for a trimmer. Think of how many blisters you don't have because of that thing.

[MBTcustom]

Weeeeeeeell I'll tell ya. I just happen to have a nice little motor here that a forum member across town gave me. However, I got to looking at it, and I think I might just build an adapter so that I can attach the Forster to my milling machine. I'm going to make a set of jaws for my vice that will clamp several different case heads, and simply attach the cutter to my milling machine spindle. Do away with the base on the Forster altogether.
*Yawn*

Rick, I charge $175 for bluing a rifle or a pistol, depending on how high you want it to shine.
Some people need something......special.
Take this Colt Python. It belonged to my client's deceased FIL and it had been cleaned with vinegar or something that severely damaged the finish. Said he wanted my best work.
When I delivered it back a few weeks later (OK, it might have been 7), his wife burst into tears.
Attachment 89994
Here's the latch:
Attachment 89995

[btroj]

I Think that qualifies as polished.

Dang it Tim, you are competing with the mould guys to empty my wallet. Good thing I don't buy many moulds.....

[MBTcustom]

Well, I'm still learning about all this, but we have some very talented forum members that have run the bluing tanks for some of the most renown manufacturers in the business. One feller in particular ran the bluing tanks for Dan Wesson, and was good enough to spend some time with me and tell me a few things, and I really do try to follow instructions.
I use the buffing wheels with a light hand, and do my best to make sure that your average enthusiast couldn't tell that it had been reblued.

[Doc Highwall]

That would be me with the bluing tanks at Dan Wesson.

[btroj]

He must have listen well Doc, looks like some darn nice work there.

[MBTcustom]

Indeed it was. Thanks again Doc! You sure helped get my feet under me.

[Idaho Sharpshooter]

I got a similar notion years ago. I had a hundred and twenty-some new 7.65x53 Argentine cases given to me. I just ran a few of the cases thru a 308W FL die. My old gunsmith used to make single flute reamers in his spare time. Took him about an hour, and you could get a chamber and arbor press dies out of one. The gun shop he worked at had purchased about fifty M1919 Browning machine gun barrels years back for like $10 apiece. We built all sorts of 30 caliber rifles with them. Fun, but not any more accurate than a 308W. Then, we went to a necked down 8x57. The idea was to use a Loverin style bullet and enclose the entire body in the neck. It was the most accurate of the iterations we played with. The cartridge did not need any throat, the ogive was short enough not to require one. The stock was an old Bishop BR stock, with the 3.5" wide fore end, and the rifle weighed about 19-20 pounds empty with an old 24X Unertl.

[MBTcustom]

Weight= poor mans accurizer.

[nhrifle]

And a little more thread drift... Tim, that's some darn fine work on that pistol!

[geargnasher]

Not sure what you're looking for there Geargnasher. A properly set up rifle (Like you have) should accomplish the goal you posted. You may not be bugholes in all environs, but I bet you'll be sub MOA in all environs.

By the time I posted that the context was lost somewhere on the previous page......I just meant that I'm not trying to build a "one trick pony" here to excel at one thing, it's a test bed for a lot of theories that are strong points of contention here on the forum regarding lube, alloy, and high-velocity cast boolits.

Lots of people get very tiny groups at cast. Some get tiny cast groups at long range. Very, VERY few know how to get tiny groups, very fast, at long range. I've been trying to learn the tricks, and have been given some basic pointers that weren't (though they should have been) intuitive to me, and have been working with that for the past couple of years. I've done some things with some guns that 99% of the people on this forum won't believe if I posted them. What Tim and I want to do is blow the doors off the mystery, pin down some specifics, and make high-velocity, accurate cast boolit shooting more practical for those wanting answers to such. We're both a bit tired of people coming up with all sorts of excuses why it isn't possible, or that anyone who says you can't do such and such with such and such a twist because of such and such is barking up the wrong tree.

We know some things limit the accurate velocity potential of factory rifles: Crooked chambers (there are ways around that, to a point, but it's a PITA). We know that neck clearances are excessive with typical brass and factory chambers (there are tricks around that, depending on what cartridge it can be simple or very complex to overcome), we know that case capacity has a lot to do with getting HV accuracy, but there are ways to fool powders and twist things around where we still get what it takes for a good launch. We know that it takes a good crown to get good accuracy, no way around that one. We know how to fire lap constrictions, reverse-tapers, and irregularities out of bores, we know how to fix bedding issues with factory and some military rifles. We know how to tune loads to match harmonic nightmares like the M1 or the Swede. We know how to balance alloy toughness and flexibility to survive launch and acceleration. We know a little bit about CORE and lube characteristics affecting performance. We know how to fit cartridges to our chambers, how to fit boolits to throats, how to achieve consistent neck tension, how to make concentric ammunition, and how to properly pre-load the headspace for consistent origination of harmonics (ignition plays a big role in that, too). We also know the mechanics of casting good, consistent boolits, how to seat primers and uniform pockets and flash holes for ignition consistency, and how to tune a load based on the shape of groups on target. We know how to modify our tooling to achieve the all-important objective of static fit, and how to establish static fit and build a load so that proper dynamic fit is achieved and an undamaged boolit emerges from the muzzle. I'm sure there's a LOT we don't know about, but right now we know about the challenges that factory and military rifles present to the cast boolit shooter both accuracy-wise and velocity-wise.

The object I have with this rifle, and Tim and I have discussed at length, is to eliminate the known artificial obstacles in the path of achieving high-velocity accuracy with cast boolits so we can see what's REALLY going on, and where the real limitations are.

Some will argue that excessive rotation from too-fast twists kill your groups past a certain point. Yup, no chit. Been dealing with that for years. But I'm not content to leave it at that. I know what really causes the problem, and am going to show why with this rifle. It's difficult to show others clearly with, say, a Marlin lever gun, what exactly it takes to shoot 5/8" groups consistently at 2100 fps. I won't even go into what I did with the Swede last year because nobody will believe it anyway (not as good as what Joe did, but I know why: Didn't have a boolit that fit quite right in the throat).

Another point is boolit lube. If you can't control or eliminate a thousand other variables, it's tough to pin down just what changes what or make any sort of informed generalization about a lube ingredient if the gun is uniquely sensitive to such things. How many times did one of us come up with a lube that worked great, only to find several other people, with different guns and different loads, found it sucked? I want a rifle that makes no compromises. If I change a percentage of one ingredient in a lube formula and the groups suddenly fall apart, I want to chrono the load and see that the lube changed the barrel time slightly and it fell out of a node, then adjust powder and see if that's the reason why the lube fell apart rather than assuming it just made things too slick or too grabby or whatever the suspicion was. If the change made to the lube makes it worse even after re-tuning the load (possible only with a predictable, stable, well-built rifle), then I have stronger data that the change was a bad one in general. Eliminating variables with the test platform is the only way I know to make the Lube Quest easier.

I also want to prove to people, definitively, that x amount of neck clearance has x effect on group size, when taken as a single point. I want to show how poor boolit and case fit, even in a good rifle, won't shoot well past 140K rpm. I want to show how just exactly what most people are doing wrong that limits them in both velocity and accuracy with their cast boolits. Essentially, my intentions are to tear the lid off of the secret can of cast boolit knowledge that either has been tightly sealed, or so well blended with the other cans that few can figure it out. Will everyone benefit from what we learn and show with these rifles Tim is building for us? I'm sure not many will. But some will. Being able to lay out the basic necessities of accurate, fast cast boolit performance should be helpful to the few who seek it, and it should no longer be necessary for a secret apprenticeship of years with a master to be the only way to learn. The problem in the past has been the format of knowledge, and how to convey it. There is a difference between technical writing and academic writing, and none of us that I know of who are willing so share what we know are particularly good at either, though most lean toward the academic. Academic articles of HV cast are fine and dandy and give for lively conversation and get the thoughts flowing, but they don't TEACH. Teaching a subject, or writing about it in an instructive manner, is the field of technical writing. Not much exists on "how to" shoot HV cast. Tim has built the foundation of a rifle which I believe will speak for itself and help shed some much-needed light into some dark corners of our hobby. Using this and a factory Savage .308 I've obtained for the same purpose, together with a "right and proper" lightweight sporter .30-06 with a factory twist that hopefully Tim will have time to rebarrel next year, I hope to put all this together in a technical way so that any intelligent, dedicated cast boolit shooter can learn how to get more out of their rifles than they ever imagined before. Plus, it's as good and excuse as any to buy guns, shoot them, and waste a lot of time typing on the internet.

Gear