advice on trapdoor patching

[rmatchell]

I have been wanting to try patching for some time but haven't got around to it yet. I have a trapdoor with a 462 bore that gave me fits until I tried the lee 405gr hollow basean finally got it to shoot decent.

I have been thinking about ordering the 441 paper patch swage dies from RCE, but was wondering if trying to patch up from 441 to 462 would even be possible.

I have a set of ch 101 dies in 451 that I made up a bunch of 390gr bullets to try patching because I had the dies on hand and I thought maybe the 451 would make going up to 462 easier.




Any thoughts or advice is welcomed this is new territory for me.

[Larry Gibson]

Patching up from .441 is probably too much. The rifling is not going to cut the patch.

For use in my TDs I've sized my Lee 405 HB bullets (cast of 40-1) down to .452 and .454 in steps by lubing the bullets with Lee's water based case lube in .459, .457, .454 and .452 sizers. I then wash the lube off in hot water and let the bullets dry before patching. I use the .452 bullets in my H&R OM with it's .458 barrel and the .454 sized bullets in my target TD with original barrel of .461.

That way the Lee 459-405-HB makes an excellent bullet for PPing in TDs.

Larry Gibson