high velocity with cast.

[dtknowles]

red the cooling doesn't matter it's the heat.
the time of the heat isn't overly important it's how much.
you have to get to between 700-715 for the molecules to re-align in brass and for the annealing to be done.
I use time to get the temps to the same point.
if a case takes more or less time it is different than the rest of the batch and doesn't belong.

I use time and feel to gage proper annealing. I use a simple propane torch and hold the case neck in the flame with my thumb and fore finger holding the base of the case, rotating it back and forth about 180 degrees while counting to ten. If it gets hotter than normal I will drop it in the water early or if it does not get as hot I hold it a bit longer but normally it goes in the water at the ten count.

Tim

[dtknowles]

A topic I constantly trying to get smarter at. It seems to me it almost requires it own sub-forum.

My own high velocity interests pretty much revolve around the 22 calibers. I never fails to amaze me what matters and what doesn't. Why does a boolit with a good static fit shoot like garbage yet another that appears to be totally un-suited shoot so well? Why do I get great accuracy at velocity with the 4895's yet moving to 4064 accuracy is dismal at any velocity?

There are certain things that I know work yet I don't know why. Some of the recent threads regarding the 30 xcb have started to shed some light on some of the things I have been running into and I hope they can continue.

Darrell

About the unexpected results. If the test samples are small or from a single range session then the unexpected results could be caused by variations or factors not related to the particular item being tested. For my testing, I can be a big uncontrolled variable. I am not the same shot each session or at in a long day at the range I can break discipline. Another big variable is wind, I have started bringing wind flags to the range and while I am still learning to read them, I can see the wind is causing shots to move out of my groups.

Tim

[btroj]

Clean case necks merely means no powder gas leaked down the sides of the neck It also means the neck is supported by the chamber, not just flopping around in there.

It does? Interseting. I can get clean necks in every factory rifle I own if I load close to max pressure. I am certain there is a bunch of neck clearance in many of them but clean necks are easy to get. Dirty necks are equally easy to get in most rifles.

[tomme boy]

Junior, if you have to index a case to get it to shoot, something is not lined up to begin with. What is the whole point of making the brass and the bullet as straight as possible then shove it into an off center chamber.

I know most chambers on factory rifles are not as straight as we would like. Remington and T/C come to mind here. They are scary how far out of center I have seen. But they shoot jacketed really well. Cast can be another story sometimes.

[leftiye]

Gear, the idea of using vise grips to check neck annealing belongs to Ken Light and yes, sounds kind of crude but it does work. Here is a really good article on annealing where what, why, how, when to anneal is discussed. Lot's good tips and cautions.

http://lasc.us/CartridgeCaseAnnealing.htm By Ken Light.

I'd still like to know if anyone has done a side by side accuracy test of annealed brass against virgin brass and fired brass not annealed. The results would certainly indicate a level of success of the annealing.

Rick

Would hardness testing the necks (if it were possible) fulfill the need for uniform neck "pull"?

[dtknowles]

Would hardness testing the necks (if it were possible) fulfill the need for uniform neck "pull"?

I would not go to the trouble to control that one variable. There are many variables that effect neck tension. Brass wall thickness, bullet diameter, internal neck brass roughness, sized neck diameter, bullet straightness, brass hardness.... To me it is easier to control the easy to control factors and use bullet seating feel to screen out the bad actors.

Tim

[Bullshop Junior]

That makes me feel better, to know I'm not the only one trying to learn a way to get really high velocity cast to work. .257 Weatherby mag @ 3600fps I've found do-able with paper patched loads,but when a 100gr boolit just explodes & doesn't penetrate through a yote...I got some alloy work to do. Only way I can get consistently defect-free boolits to wrap is casting a core, swaging it in a die I had made for use in my 20 ton shop press.....monotype way too hard, lino was still too hard & would crumble/crack when swaged, AC WW's work ok but blow up @ impact. I mean it looks like you taped an IED to a yotes shoulder...huge hamburger-like depression blown out & no through penetration, not what I want for beanfield deer shootin'.
Oh well, back to the drawing board, maybe with a good discussion by others who know far more than I do, I just might learn enough to get somewhere.

I don't know what the flash point is on your paper, but what about swaging your paper patched ACWW alloy and then heat treating? (Not sure what all in involved in that, just have seen a few guys mention it)

[BruceB]

As far as high-velocity cast loads are concerned, my most-forgiving rifle is a Ruger #1..... in .416 Rigby!

The most-common factory loads are 400 grains at a nominal 2370 fps. I say "nominal" because my rifle has never seen a factory cartridge in its 2600-plus rounds. Apart from maybe 300 jacketed rounds, all were cast bullets, the RCBS 416-350 at 365 grains in my alloy.

My go-to load for fun AND hunting runs at 2050 fps, and groups TEN rounds in an inch or a tad more from 100 yards.

HOWEVER.... a high-velocity research sequence saw the RCBS bullet departing at just over 2600 fps, driven by a charge of well over 100 grains of H4831. This load groups 5 rounds in 1.5" at 100 yards. The downside is that it is BRUTAL behind the butt.

The .416 Rigby is great if one can tolerate the recoil. I have a load for the 300-grain X-bullet that leaves at a flat 3000 fps, with a trajectory about like a 150 .30'06. What an elk load THAT would be.... but again, one had better not have tongue-between-teeth when touching off this hummer.

My "standard" 2050 fps/365 grain load has avery usable trajectory to 200 yards and more.... three inches high at 100 places the bullets on point of aim at 200. With a cast soft-point on the RCBS bullet, that makes an effective big-game load, especially since I try to make 200 yards my MAXIMUM range for shots at game. This is actually much like a moderate-weight bullet in a .45-70 at the same speed, but a skosh flatter-shooting.

[RickinTN]

With the comments about sizing/squaring gas checks.....Is there a benefit to annealing the checks? I've tried a few and don't think I saw a difference but maybe had too many of the other variables out of kilter for it to show. Any experiences?
Rick

[geargnasher]

Would hardness testing the necks (if it were possible) fulfill the need for uniform neck "pull"?

IDK, I tend to think some sort of inside expanding collet-type mandrel that could give a .0015" controlled stretch and indicate pressure required to achieve it would be more of a direct test. One would also check before and after neck OD to detect any permanent deformation. Pressure required and permanent deformation point would be good to know, but practical? Only if one can devise a machine to check.

Gear

[cbrick]

With the comments about sizing/squaring gas checks.....Is there a benefit to annealing the checks? I've tried a few and don't think I saw a difference but maybe had too many of the other variables out of kilter for it to show. Any experiences?
Rick

I tried annealing checks and wasn't impressed, probably didn't give it the attention it deserved but I went back to sizing them with the punch.

Rick

[geargnasher]

CBRick, don't they get annealed slightly when you heat treat your bullets? You mentioned installing them before heat-treating and I wondered if 400-ish was enough to knock the suds out of the copper or not.

Gear

[cbrick]

Would hardness testing the necks (if it were possible) fulfill the need for uniform neck "pull"?

Here's how I attempt to control work hardened necks. New brass goes into an MTM ammo box correct for it's size. Never is this brass to be mixed with any other brass, not in the tumbler, not anyplace. That brass is loaded, fired, tumbled and prepped as a single lot of brass. No brass in that box is reloaded until all of them have been fired. A piece of tape inside the lid is marked how many times that brass has been loaded. All brass in that box has been loaded/fired the same number of times.

When I went to a championship long range match I didn't go to the firing line with a box of ammo where some had been fired once and some 10 times, they were all as identical as I could make them.

Rick

[Bullshop Junior]

Junior, if you have to index a case to get it to shoot, something is not lined up to begin with. What is the whole point of making the brass and the bullet as straight as possible then shove it into an off center chamber.

I know most chambers on factory rifles are not as straight as we would like. Remington and T/C come to mind here. They are scary how far out of center I have seen. But they shoot jacketed really well. Cast can be another story sometimes.

I am not saying it is nessisary, i am saying that it takes out another variable.

[Bullshop Junior]

Here is a thought. It may exist, and I may not have seen it, but I am gonna flap my thumbs anyway.

I have seen several post, mostly from r5r about feeling how much pressure it takes to seat the bullet, and separating them by lot on how the bullet seats.

What if we add a pressure gauge to the seating die to regulate how much pressure it used. You could defiantly be more accurate with a gauge then my feel I would think.

[cbrick]

CBRick, don't they get annealed slightly when you heat treat your bullets? You mentioned installing them before heat-treating and I wondered if 400-ish was enough to knock the suds out of the copper or not. Gear

They might, not sure. They do dis-color but they are crimped on tight and don't loosen any from the heat treat. The only rounds that I'm heat treating is for the long range match revolver, everything else I'm currently shooting is COWW +2% Sn air cooled. All handgun and rifles to 2000 fps, none of them benefits from a harder bullet. Since I'm not competing anymore I don't load that revolver much these days.

Rick

[brotherdarrell]

The only rifle I have had consistent high velocity success with is my 222 (rem 788) and that only happened when I started forming cases from 223 and added an extra .015" to the case length. Before that accuracy stopped at a little over 2k fps. It is now holding moa @ 100 yds up to 2500 fps.


Please keep the info coming, and thanks.

Darrell

[offshore44]

A comment on bore riders... (I know we are talking about brass prep at the moment, but i wanted to get this in here before I forget)

From my experience bore riding designs are very dependent on alloy / boolit strength vs. velocity / pressure. Given properly prepared brass, accuracy degrades rapidly at a certain point. Try pushing just a little faster and groups turn into patterns. Increase boolit strength and accuracy returns. Given that the bore riding section fits the bore correctly, at about 0.001" over bore size that is. This has happened in four rifles. .308, 8mm and the .45 cals. (45-70 and 458 Win mag) Bore riders are very accurate, but very picky beasts, and require more of a balance with fit, boolit strength, launch pressure and brass / chamber fit. When the balance is there, higher velocities are achievable.

[btroj]

Alright, here is a question for all.

In the past Run has commented on using a bit of Dacron even with almost full cases. He says it helps boost powder burn rate by making the powder think it is in a smaller case. It could also help protect the bullet base a bit from hot gases.

Would using a bit be a worthwhile experiment with the 30 Sil and RE19? Powder is on the slow side for good results based on what I have seen. I figure it can't hurt to try it and see, just looking for some input from others.

[geargnasher]

RE19 I think is a touch too slow in the XCB with the 182-ish bullet. You can advance the burn curve considerably by using Dacron filler or even more with buffer, but buffer is a double-edged sword and might insulate the initial swaging through the throat too much and not get enough bump. Only way to know is try, blah blah blah..

PM me and I may be able to give you some safety tips and starting points on the buffer as I've used a lot of it.

Gear