PP Newbie, will an 8mm Boolit PP up to work in my 338WM?

[Four Fingers of Death]

I have a new group buy 8mm group buy mould (NOE from memory) that I bought in a rush of blood and never ended up using.

I was thinking that if I could patch up to work in my 338WM, it would make a nice medium game HP Boolit.

Am I on the right track here?

I will probably be using standard printer paper or cigarette papers as I have tried several stationery shops in the past and they just look at me like I am speaking Klingon when I ask for onion skin paper, etc.

[Nobade]

It should be too small. If your 338 is in spec, it should have a bore diameter of .330" so you'll need a bullet .331" or a touch bigger.

-Nobade

[Hardcast416taylor]

With that 8mm PP mold probably dropping from the mold under .320" and a .338 PP mold usually about .331" from the mold that is an awful lot of diameter to make up to be useful. I`ll venture out onto that small tree branch and say it won`t work. Now a grease groove 8mm with a .329"-.330" diameter could be patched and loaded in a .338. I sure wish that you lived somewhere near me here in Michigan so we could cast up a pile of PP boolets for a .338 in a afternoon and maybe show you a little about PP making/loading/shooting. Besides, my .416 Taylor hasn`t had the dust blown out in about 2 years and I have a supply of PP ammo loaded up for it!Robert

[Four Fingers of Death]

It sounded too easy and that generally means it is. The 8mm mould is not a PP mould, but a group buy and would probably drop a decent sized 8, boolit, but still too small no doubt. Thanks for the help and offers.

[Cary Gunn]

Howdy Four Fingers,

I don't know what specific 8mm mould you have, but, if you're very lucky, it might be made to work.

I have the Lee Custom "8mm Karabiner" and "8mm Maximum" moulds, both of which were sized to cast slugs for "loosey-goosey," nearly shot-out Model 98 8mm Mauser battle rifles. One of those moulds, using hard alloy, drops bullets as large as .327" diameter. Such a mould, if honed-out a few thousandths of an inch, would spill slugs of about .330'' diameter, which could probably be paper-patched up to use in your .338 Win. Magnum.

I know it's an unlikely stretch, but -- if you're lucky enough to have the right mould and the desire to hone it out a bit larger -- it just might work or you.

Good luck and happy trails,

-- Cary Gunn --

[303Guy]

For what it's worth, you have the mold, so why not try it? If it were me I would use a fairly thick and strong paper. Alternatively, you could try a softer alloy and bump it up on firing. I have a recovered boolits that started out with the nose end of the patched just able to enter the muzzle. After firing the exposed ogive had bumped up to contact the bore and those had a very short nose. The alloy wasn't dead soft either. As you can imagine, if the boolit nose can be examined then the velocity was not very high.

I have another recovered boolit with the patch still on the boolit, so that is another option, to design the patch to stay on. That might not work out if the rifling is sharp but you never know, if the core is under bore size it might not cut through. That trick likely won't work at higher velocities. My patch staying on boolit and load was pretty mild - subsonic actually.

[Cary Gunn]

Belay that, Four Fingers,

My earlier suggestion failed to take to into account the smaller "bore-riding nose" portion of the "Karabiner" and "Maximum" bullets.

That nose portion of the slug, even if honed a few thousandths bigger and paper-patched, would likely still be too small to properly "ride the lands" of your .338 Win. Magnum. In other words, the main portion of the bullet could probably be honed-up to properly paper-patch for the .338" diameter of your rifle's grooves, but the nose portion would probably remain too small, even honed and patched, to provide proper guidance along the top of the lands of a .330" bore.

Sorry to lead you astray. Mine was a dumb suggestion that failed to consider the "minor diameter" of the two-diameter, bore-riding nose style of the cast bullets. Honing and paper-patching would probably work well in this situation only if the cast bullets were the same diameter along their entire length up to the ogive -- and, the bore-riding nose designs just aren't built that way.

So, please forgive and forget the misguided babbling of this ignorant old-timer in his previous post.

Happy trails once again,

-- Cary Gunn --

[Four Fingers of Death]

No prob thanks