Two steps foreward, three steps back. Good thing easy isnt as much fun as a challenge

[Chill Wills]

radar,
I shoot a 40/72 with 84 gns powder pushing a 440 gn pp bullet 0.125 in the case, and a 45/2.4 with 100 gns of powder behind a breech seated 540 gn bullet.
these loads with the 45/70 are sort of middle ground in bpcr.
keep safe,
bruce.

All, this is a little OT for the thread so sorry all....

Bruce, what is the twist ratio on that 40-72? Wondering because I am about ready to rebarrel a 40-70 SS using a 13"-1 twist. It really shoots well and then throws a few out and then shoots well and then does not ...and like that ...
I have gone through everything else and I am down to twist. It is only $ and stubbornness that keep me trying. I should have rebarreled a case of powder and a ton of lead ago!

[BRUCE MOULDS]

twist is gaintwist, ending at 1/13.
the rifle shoots ok.
keep safe,
bruce.

[Chill Wills]

twist is gaintwist, ending at 1/13.
the rifle shoots ok.
keep safe,
bruce.

Hmm - OK. I will keep at the 13 T 40 one more summer.

Sink or swim for it.

Thanks!

[BrentD]

Michael, what about a longer, heavier bullet? If you can come up with some, it might be the cure.

[Radarsonwheels]

Great suggestions thanks fellas and hijack away I'll learn any way I can

[Chill Wills]

Michael, what about a longer, heavier bullet? If you can come up with some, it might be the cure.

Yes, I went that route, I have a 430gr Money bullet and a fine shooting 445gr Hoch (in my 14.5 twist in my 1877 Sharps) Maybe I still need to work the long bullet angle.

BTW- Rick sent me a copy of the Oak Ridge match, Nice Shooting!

[BRUCE MOULDS]

Michael, I have used bullets 1.420" to 1.550" long out to 1000 yds, all o.k.
I have played with the shorter ones in case wind shear ever became a problem with long ones.
1.550" should be well and truly o.k., but my mainline bullet is 1.530" to hedge the bet.
these bullets have been either money or elliptical nose forms.
a greaser I designed at 1.530 long wanted to shoot, but displays stability problems at 500 meters.
this bullet was an experiment in shooting dirty, and the nose is 0.010" under bore diameter, with the front 3 bands at bore diameter.
it is suspected that the nose could be bending sideways when the light comes on, going off centre.
keep safe,
bruce.

[Radarsonwheels]

The new load shot horribly. Shotgun pattern at 50 yards with several keyholes.

It was 81gn goex ff drop tubed, cci benchrest LR primer, 45-90 cases annealed fireformed and trimmed to .004" short of max that would chamber, baco money nose .444 PP bullet cast from 20:1 with two wraps baco onionskin making a final package just under .450 that chambered with thumb pressure, compressed to .1" seating depth in the case over a wad cut from a milk carton.

I was hoping for at least a group that could be a starting place for load development. I am stuck between enjoying a challenge and saying screw it and just shooting .458-.460 patched or greasers

[Radarsonwheels]

Oh and I was wiping three patches moist with moose milk and one dry inbetween shots. I'm not sure what the next move to try is. I did recover one horribly mangled slug from the berm. The one clean side showed good rifling engraving and a decent base. It struck the target/berm sideways...

[semtav]

Radar.
Maybe you should consider something in the line of 40-1 alloy and or more wads. Try sticking a .030 ldpe wad on top of the other one.

[Gunlaker]

That was more or less how my .45-110 worked when I first got into paper patching. A fellow here named Dean Becker suggested a 1/8" lube cookie between two 0.030" veg wads. The transformation was instant. The rifle instantly became my most accurate BPCR. I have others that are better now, but I still use that basic load in this rifle and it worked well enough to win one of our local gong matches with targets from 550 to just under 900 yards.

Chris.

[Bent Ramrod]

Sounds like a pretty normal beginning to me.

I haven't tried Goex, or even Olde Eynsford for paper patch loads. Swiss 1F is what I settled on, as you can compress it a little if necessary, or not at all if you don't want another variable to mess with. Goex often needs as much as 0.4" of compression for best burning. I've been able to seat a boolit as deep as 0.230" with good results, but again, that was with Swiss 1F. I use Olde Eynsford 1.5F for grease groove boolits, and it works fine there.

What does your final dry patch look like? Faint even gray, darker even gray, dark gray streaks, dark gray circle with dark gray streaks, black streaks, solid black circle, solid slug of black goo? If my dry patch isn't always the first or second, it gets another wet patch, then another dry patch.

I seem to do better with 1/32" or so cork wads beneath the boolit. A lot of modern experimenters who seem to be able to agree on a standard loading also seem to have special chambers cut for paper patch boolits only. And, even there, disagreements occur.

That Money nose is for improved air resistance on the way to the target, not for concentric transition up the bore. My slugs got markedly more accurate when the lead was hardened. Below BHN 8, I would get a core group with flyers; much above 10 and I would get scatter and keyholes. Try 16/1 or even a little harder and see if that helps.

Endeavor to persevere. I'm still having ups and downs too. Finally got a scope setting for my load at the Turkey line. Several dirt diggers related possibly to thicker paper but also to the mounts coming loose. Didn't notice it for a while in the hurricane wind that came up as soon as I had the stuff set up. Those Turkeys at Three Points are also a lot harder to get a tight group on than the big squares and rounds at Ridgecrest.

[Radarsonwheels]

Wow! You guys rock. I suddenly have more stuff to try next thanks to y'all.

I am dropping 1lb tin into a lee 20lb furnace. I'm not sure how full it needs to be to hold an actual 20lbs so my actual alloy is at least 1:19 already if not 1:18ish. I'm afraid to try harder without going to groove size bullets. I definitely can go softer easily, my pot is 1/2 full so I can just top off with pure.

80-83ish grains of ff are fitting into my trimmed 45-90 cases before compression. It should be easy to try .4" compression and take up the space with a wad lube wad deal. I am thinking I can double boil some nasa lube and pour it into an old cookie tin lid, then cake cut it with a charged case thats already compressed with a wad? I hand smear lubed some 45 colt once but pretty much always use the lube sizer. Or I can use the Matthews drop a pea of lube in trick?

I have a reamer loaned from a generous member here that cuts the chamber to .459 as deep as you want with a tapered leade. I can cut the chamber to hold 80gn of BP under a 500+gn .458" bullet shallow seated, and probably not worry much about hardness since it will be engraving not obturating into the rifling. I am trying to pull out all the stops first trying to get my pedersoli sharps to shoot bore diameter slugs. I have $ tied up in molds and whittling on a $2k rifle is a last resort (that would probably work but require a new mold that drops .452...)

[Gunlaker]

If you want to try a lube cookie I would recommend either buying a lube ribbon extruder, or pouring a lube cake and cutting the wads out with your case as you load them.Chris.

[country gent]

I use a brownie sheet pan. pour 1/8"-3/16" water in it and measure up 1/8" mark set on stove top and a low flame melt lube to form an even sheet to the mark. This does 2 things it gives a nice sheet to cut cookies from and the water levels giving a consistant thickness. Or you can put lube on a sheet of wax paper with a 1/8" thick piece of flat stock on each side, another sheet of wax paper and roll it to thickness. The ribbon extruder is quick and easy also.

[Don McDowell]

Put some spent primers along the edge of any flat bottom pan, pour your melted lube in to the top of those spent primers. Then when it cools you can drop the cake out and punch the charged and compressed cases thru the cake. Push the cookie on down to the wad, seat a thin wad and your bullet..
Money bullets work best at 16-1 or a bit harder. I'ld suggest you try that before anything else.
If you're going to start dinking around in that chamber why not just take it on out to a 45-90 or 45-100 and be done with it?

[Bent Ramrod]

I would send the reamer back to the nice man with thanks. You don't need any more open space ahead of the chamber unless you want to seat groove diameter patched boolits well out.

Don't worry about a bore diameter 16:1 slugging up, especially if you have a 0.446" slug already. What I had trouble with was water dropped lino-wheelweight mixtures. Cooled slowly in air, they were still 10 or 11 on my testers, and worked, but water dropped they were 14 or harder, and gave wild shooting at 300 yards. My boolits are 0.440-0.441" so they have a lot more expanding to do than yours.

When I make lube cookie material, I put a thin layer on hot water in a tupperware container. When it melts, the container goes into the refrigerator. I pour the cold water out of the container, blot the cooled and hardened layer with paper towels and cookie cut with the shell mouths. If the lube is melted in a pan in a double boiler, it goes into the freezer for 15 minutes and the lube cake separates from the bottom by itself. Then cut the cookies likewise.

[BrentD]

Radar, Definitely try 16:1. But also, tell us what your patches look like. Were they all nicely sliced or were some of them pretty raggedy?

If your bullets are not bumping up, the patches will tell you.

You should be able to get superb accuracy without grease cookies, but it won't hurt to try them either. There are a million ways to make good cookies. I usually use a rolling pin or wine bottle to roll the lube between two sheets of wax paper with a pair of thin sticks (the desired thickness of the final cookie) on either side.

melting lube on top of hot water and allowing to cool will do it too. More or less what Bent Ramrod suggests.

[Radarsonwheels]

I only found the paper that had been folded over the bases. Perhaps I carried the paper too far in front of the ogive beginning? I was hoping for more confetti. Somebody said .446- I am using a .444 baco mold that drops at .444 and wet wrapping to .4496ish with baco onionskin.

[Don McDowell]

When you were wiping between shots, are you sure the bore was dry with no "puddles" somewhere? That will give you fits. Also did you thoroughly scrub the bore and especially the throat , to make sure any leading left over from grease groove shooting was removed? A bit of leading in the bore will absolutely wreck a paper patch load.