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Thread: Accurate PC 350 Yds part 1

  1. #61
    Boolit Buddy
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    It is easy to remove with the "Bore Tech" either eliminator(has copper as well as carbon remover) or their carbon remover but that is the only thing I have found to date. A long range shooter put me on it. I have tried letting it soak with Kroil oil over night. With my normal patches and jag it sounded like rubbing your fingers together when they are squeaky clean and patch came out with just a smudge. Today after a cleaning at range tried running a wet patch of ATF at suggestion of another shooter and it significantly reduced additional buildup and accuracy degradation.

  2. #62
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    a 50-50 mix of acetone and atf is about the best creeping bolt loosener out there.
    it might be of benefit here.

  3. #63
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    Bama do you know the bhn of the as cast and the water dropped PC bullets?
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  4. #64
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    Quote Originally Posted by runfiverun View Post
    a 50-50 mix of acetone and atf is about the best creeping bolt loosener out there.
    it might be of benefit here.
    Thanks for sharing that info. Been following this thread and wanted to wait until a solution to cleaning the fouling is identified. I looked up the Bore Tech solution, and thought "WOW That's Pricey Stuff". Saw it available at: https://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&pag...%3ABore%20Tech.
    Mustang

    "In the beginning... the patriot is a scarce man, and brave and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot." - Mark Twain.

  5. #65
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    swheeler, I really don't know. I use a RCBS pro melt I rebuilt which I believe is a little over 20 lbs rating. I use WW, about 1/2" bar of super hard, small ingot of melted down pewter (for tin) and approximately 6 heaping spoons of copper sulfate. Not a well defined formula but so far using PC has resulted in a really accurate bullet. Till I started adding copper I would run them up to point where they would come apart. With adding the copper I can run them with no issues. There is a point were accuracy actually gets better with some bullet deformation(point slump?). There is some good threads on the addition of copper on this board that are really worth reading.

  6. #66
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    If it is burnt hydrocarbons, get a can of Seafoam and let it sit overnight. Or what I use to decarbonise guns is GM Top Cylinder Cleaner 1050002

    . I don't know if they still make it or not. I have had my 3 cans of it for about 20 years. It will cut ANY carbon you wipe it on.

    Seafoam cleaner or any of the Outboard manufacturers make a de carbon solvent to clean the carbon out of 2-stroke outboards
    Last edited by tomme boy; 12-08-2016 at 09:57 PM.

  7. #67
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    that GM cleaner was the stuff.
    I don't know what chemical it had in it.
    but I'm sure the EPA had sumthin to do with getting it off the shelves.

  8. #68
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    Wonder if the new stuff is as good?

  9. #69
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    Quote Originally Posted by Bama View Post
    swheeler, I really don't know. I use a RCBS pro melt I rebuilt which I believe is a little over 20 lbs rating. I use WW, about 1/2" bar of super hard, small ingot of melted down pewter (for tin) and approximately 6 heaping spoons of copper sulfate. Not a well defined formula but so far using PC has resulted in a really accurate bullet. Till I started adding copper I would run them up to point where they would come apart. With adding the copper I can run them with no issues. There is a point were accuracy actually gets better with some bullet deformation(point slump?). There is some good threads on the addition of copper on this board that are really worth reading.
    Yes I experimented with the Popper method 3 or 4 years ago except I replaced zinc with copper as opposed to your replacing tin. Mike and Edd were using a different method of dissolving copper wire into babbit and using that as a sweetener. I believe it was the first thread on here of the popper method/copper sulfate. Samples were sent to be XRF ed which proved that it replaced the zn with copper, bullets cast with it were measured for BHN air cooled and water dropped at several intervals of aging, measurements were taken of bullets post sizing over a couple months to determine diameter growth and how long they continued to grow. I quit using the ZEPs root killer as I had some kind of sinus reaction to it though.
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  10. #70
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    Fascinating work, Bama.

    You discovered something which is all but lost on most who attempt to shoot cast bullets accurately at high speeds, and I want to point out its importance whether you powder coat or not:

    ... the slump or swagging which occurs before the bullet moves very far completes the alignment.


    Even F.W. Mann found that a laboriously and precisely breech-seated bullet with perfect static alignment to bore center-line would not group with its companions as well as bullets which were seated in a cartridge case in such a way that allowed them room to find their own center. Also reference Runfiverun's question to you about using bullets which are already of nearly the correct taper to begin with instead of making them the shape they want to be anyway when fired. You seem to understand the relationship between just the right amount of bump-up in the throat (I call this Dynamic Fit) and tight groups, I want you to think more about why that is and use it even more to your advantage. Getting the balance of powder pressure curve and alloy constitution correct indeed "completes the alignment" as you stated, but the first part of alignment involves the static shape of the bullet and how it is presented to the throat during lift-off, and how you approach THAT will vary from one rifle to the next. You are using a two-diameter fit approach and the bullet is coming out of the muzzle telling you the shape they want to be to group the best, and that is a different shape than you are making them initially. This obviously works well for you in a couple of rifles, but can have some limitations which you might want to consider in light of the AR-10 that you mentioned. A "self-aligning" bullet with a combination of nose angles (none parallel) is more versatile and will allow a bullet to find center, deforms less overall as it bumps to final fit (assuming alloy and pressure curve are a match for this) all without needing to "be engraved by the lands" when chambered. A certain degree of slump (which happens from the rear, not from the front, by the way) does indeed complete the alignment which is key to both solid land engagement and for making the bullet end up absolutely concentric with the bore center. This small but important aspect of final fitting is what eludes many in their pursuit of higher velocity cast bullet shooting in barrels with standard rifling twist rates, and as you discovered only certain combinations of powder and alloy will work to achieve it.

    Thermoset resin (particularly the Polyester stuff) is very slippery and very tough, which allows bullets to self-align in the throat with less damage than bullets which are not coated, so the dynamic is a little different and more like copper-jacketed bullets than bare cast. Think about that when considering both static and dynamic fit, and remember your observations about the bullets bumping up the area between front driving band and middle of the bore-riding nose portion shooting better. Regarding rifles with manual actions, there are several ways to achieve proper bullet alignment at take-off, and you have found one, but with autoloaders you may need to think more on how that bullet ended up after being fired and try to emulate that BEFORE it is fired. As mentioned, some final alignment during firing will need to take place, and also some final bumping to get it perfect (counter-intuitive, I know, but the results will speak for themselves), so my advice is continue to design your loads and bullet alloys so that a slight fluid stage is achieved during the peak of the pressure curve at launch regardless of which bullet style and method of static fit/pre-alignment you choose.

    When crafting reliable, accurate ammunition for self-loading rifles you may find the self-aligning bullet design practically necessary regarding the static fit (static meaning how you arrange things in the chamber and throat before the primer is lit). Your bore/groove, two-dimensional or two diameter static fit approach is going to be more difficult to achieve, particularly with cartridges that have more body taper (such as the .30-'06) and rifles which have weak camming action such as the AR-10. The tapered chambers tend to feed cartridges along one extreme side of the chamber, which is oblique to bore centerline until almost fully in battery, which tends to get the bore-riding noses started a little crooked. We want to avoid crooked starts at all costs if we want to get good groups at long range. Having ANY pre-firing contact of the bullet with the chamber sucks inertia out of the bolt assembly and often will cause hiccups in the cycle of going into full battery. For the utmost in reliable function, particularly as chamber and throat fouling accumulates, you want the case suspended between the datum line on the shoulder and the ejector plunger on the case head when the cartridge is fully in battery and the exposed part of the bullet more or less floating in space a few thousandths off of the ball seat. If you use a two-diameter bullet with no taper at the root of the nose, it will have a difficult time self-aligning with the bore as it is fired. To assist in alignment, a tapered nose base tends to do a little better here, and powder coating helps immensely in allowing the bullet to funnel to the center during takeoff without one side or the other getting overly compressed or wiped off altogether. It's like shooting baskets, you want "nothing but net" as the bullet enters the throat but unless you're using perfectly concentric ammunition that is VERY snug in the chamber (fireformed brass, bolt action) and an action without a spring-loaded ejector, that simply isn't going to happen. Your situation in a self-loader will be the ball always catching a little bit of the rim, and how well you engineer your bullet to make it though the throat and remain "all things concentric" will determine the size of your group dispersion. I'll let you skip to the end here and mention that two-diameter bullets fall into the difficult to impossible category when both reliability and supreme accuracy are desired from cast bullets in an autoloader. Also, in an ordinary bolt-action, you may see some benefit to the self-aligning bullet which does not engrave upon chambering, as it will reduce the precision requirements of your cartridge to chamber fit considerably and allow you some ability to universalize your ammunition to shoot well in a number of different rifles with different chamber, throat, and bore/groove shapes and sizes.

    This is all just some food for your thought, you seem to be very much on the right track here and I wish you the best. I do not read or post here very much anymore, but your self-discoveries and results were pointed out to me by another member and after reading all this I was compelled to log on and encourage you on your way and underscore the importance of some things you've observed.

    Gear

    P.S. MEK is the ASTM standard solvent used to determine the durability and cure of thermoset resins. Fully cured bullet coatings should be completely cross-linked and highly resistant to solvents, however the fouling in the barrel may simply be coating particles which have abraded, been subjected to temperatures above the thermal failure point, and have condensed on the bore surface similar to the mechanism that attracts lead alloy and copper jacket alloy fouling...put more simply "just atomized, melted and smeared down the bore". Still, this burned polymer fouling should be expected to be highly resistant to solvents and is not necessarily an indication of under-cure. I would suggest further experiments like Popper has mentioned using traditional bullet lubricants in tandem with the powder coating, and even suggest trying a very thin final coating of "Ben's Liquid Lube" on the powder coated bullets to mitigate the bore fouling, since BLL has shown little tendency to accumulate fouling of its own or cause the pesky "cold barrel flyer".

  11. #71
    Boolit Grand Master popper's Avatar
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    HiTek has a solvent for his product but it isn't cheap. Acetone works for HF powders, haven't tried it on Smokes powder. Chem lab testing by 'burning' PC shows it breaks down to various unlinked hydrocarbons, specific for polys and unspecified for epoxy. Bore Tech claims EPA friendly, don't know what that means. The stuff I got from the gas key looked and felt like cylinder head carbon. Hard and crunchy - had to use a slow speed twist drill to get it out. Coating was ~ 1/2 HF and 1/2 Smoke's shiny black. Don't remember trying acetone on Smoke's PC, already shot all those boolits. The 308 was all HF red. The rifle gas upper had 1/2 jacket & 1/2 HF red, don't know why it wasn't plugged. Strange, some load in both. 4895 still burning in the carbine?
    Last edited by popper; 12-12-2016 at 12:08 PM.
    Whatever!

  12. #72
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    Quote Originally Posted by popper View Post
    Busy tracking my kid running the Dallas Marathon. Avg 9 min/mi. with 2 sore ankles. Hope he finishes under 4 hrs. 2 1/2 hrs in, still chugging.
    If you were any kind of a dad, you would be running with him! :P
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  13. #73
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    Great Post. Thanks
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  14. #74
    Boolit Grand Master popper's Avatar
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    I quit using the ZEPs root killer as I had some kind of sinus reaction to it though Use a painter face mask. I've not had problems with the Zepp, it releases H2O. The very fine powder left from the conversion is nasty, it will bug you. Bout the same as PC powder. I'll try my filtered shop vac & beeswax to see how well I can dispose of it.
    Whatever!

  15. #75
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    When you cook off the blue copper sulfate crystals a small amount of sulfuric acid is released, This is best done outside and give plenty of room until you see the white crystals. I have been using material from Co Op which has about 25% active copper

  16. #76
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    Bama that's probably what I got a whiff of, smelled like a battery charging. It seems like Badgeredd tried it too and got the same thing as me, burned/bloody nose, the ol H2So4 burn. Keep up the good work! You might try HBN tumbling those coated bullets in your vibratory tumbler, 30 min inside a small container lid taped shut with black electrical tape, dump wipe and load as usual. It seemed to help with the streaks in the barrel on 45 acp and 308, just a thought.
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  17. #77
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    I tried lube too but didn't stop it
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  18. #78
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    Accuracy at 350 yds update

    Finally warmed up to go shoot. Have been running test on velocity and barrel fouling using a Savage 308W rifle with a 26" barrel and a Whitt Machine break using powder coated Lee 170 gr cast bullets( with copper). PC was one coat shake and bake after setting gas check and locking it in with a Lee .310" push through die. After PC (water dropped) and resized sized to .310" on the drive rings and bore rider section to .301" with home grown sizer which uses modified Redding neck sizing bushings. Brass was processed with a neck sizing die and then with a homemade expander plug to give .002" neck tention. After the initial inside brass neck chamfering , from then on the long taper chamfering tool is run backwards in a batter powered drill to eliminate ANY scraping. Bullets are seated using the old CH seating dies with the sliding which perfectly aligns thr bullet with the case and completely eliminate scraping and mis aligned bullets. Over the last couple of months I have been working on PCed HV rifle velocities and the resultant barrel fouling. Just to eliminate variables bullets we cast at one time, dried, powder coated with different powders but bake in the same oven wit a thermocouple to insure temperature. CCI 200 primers and IMR 4895 powder. I plan to stay at 41gr till summer weather due to the flatting of primers (not excessive but there is significant increase from 12' to 30'F Today for 50 round the lowest when barrel was perfectly clean was 2634fps for first shot and as the barrel begin to foul velocity went up to 2790fps. Accuracy did degrade but not enough that could not be managed by field clean. I will include a 300 yd plate just for fun before it was cleaned and cleaning patches showing color, powder charge, and number fire before cleaning. There is a difference between fouling and the colors used as well as some colors seem to continue fouling longer than others. Smokes John deer Green so far seems to build to a low level and does not build any higher. He is looking to help determine if it is the pigment or the polymer that makes the more desireable powder for HV rifles.
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  19. #79
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    There is more than one type of powder coat as we all know. Im under the assumption that the ones we use are thermoset coatings. Thermoplastic would remelt much more easily and reform when cooled.

    Im aware of 4 different types of thermoset coatings. With those 4 different types are varying degrees of performance and uses in the consumer market.

    Epoxy, Acrylic, and Fluoropolymer are resin based coatings with varying levels and types of applications.

    Then there is the thermoset polyester powder coat which is the most commonly used. These type fit into the AAMA 2603 powder class. But dome hybrids perform in the AAMA 2604 intermediate class.

    Im curious which thermoset coating type and class we are using and if the upper class AAMA2605 high_performance class used on building exteriors may be a better performer for full powered rifles?

    Either way it might help to know the type and class of what we are using to determine what we may need to try.

    Ill do some inquiries into the AAMA 2605 class powder and see if i can procure some.





    Sent from my LGLS991 using Tapatalk

  20. #80
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    Thermoset is sort of a misnomer for PC. HF red will reflow before deteriorating, as will Smokes gloss black. Hitek is closer to thermosetting, shrinks a bit then deteriorates.
    Whatever!

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Abbreviations used in Reloading

BP Bronze Point IMR Improved Military Rifle PTD Pointed
BR Bench Rest M Magnum RN Round Nose
BT Boat Tail PL Power-Lokt SP Soft Point
C Compressed Charge PR Primer SPCL Soft Point "Core-Lokt"
HP Hollow Point PSPCL Pointed Soft Point "Core Lokt" C.O.L. Cartridge Overall Length
PSP Pointed Soft Point Spz Spitzer Point SBT Spitzer Boat Tail
LRN Lead Round Nose LWC Lead Wad Cutter LSWC Lead Semi Wad Cutter
GC Gas Check