30 molds in an 8mm

[pupsdad]

Anyone patch 311 up for an 8mm?

[Ben]

I don't think that would work very well.
Way too much patch material would be needed.

[pupsdad]

Gonna have to buy another mold then I've just bought a 8mm barrel for a 98 action that's been sitting on my bench

[yeahbub]

Pupsdad, you have hit upon an excellent idea if your mold casts close to bore diameter in your 8mm barrel. Molds which cast .315 or so have worked well for me, particularly a 311291 which is a bit on the fat side. I patch with 100% cotton drafting vellum for a finished diameter of .324-.325 which what the throat in the 8mm is. For molds which cast closer to .311, three wraps of paper and sizing to throat diameter have also given good results, or two wraps of .004 paper that reams of printer paper come wrapped in. If you've got .30 cal molds, patch a few up and see what diameter you wind up with. You may well already have what you need. I don't have a single 8mm mold for patching and don't need any. All my 8mm efforts have been with patching .30's.

[longbow]

I'm with Ben. I think 0.311" will be too small. If you can knurl the boolit up to 0.315" (or larger) if may work (not sure what 8mm bore diameter is but the boolit should be bore diameter or larger).

I made a mould for patching for my .308 and it cast at 0.301" which is perfect and it worked pretty well in my .308 but when I tried it in my .303 using slightly thicker paper to get to groove diameter I had no success (0.303" bore). I decided the paper must be slipping so I knurled the boolits up to 0.304" and got decent accuracy. Not sure if the rough surface, larger diameter (slightly over bore diameter) or the combination did it but it worked.

NOE and MIHEC both produce .30 cal moulds that will cast to 0.315"/0.316" and even a Lyman 314299 might cast large enough or could be Beagled or lapped a though or two. Accurate will make whatever diameter you want and Tom already has several PP designs in his catalogue.

Longbow

[Hardcast416taylor]

Simple arithmatic really. Figure a .311" boolet being patched up to work well in an .323" - .325" bore. It can be done, but is a tedious job to execute.Robert

[longbow]

I think more than just arithmetic to get diameters right. If the rifling doesn't compress the lead (real thick paper) then the lead core is liable to "squirt" out the middle. The general recommendation for core size is at bore diameter or up to about 0.002" over.

Having said that I have never tried any thicker wrapping than I did for my .303 with the undersize core and that was a failure. The larger core fixed that.

Thick wrapping may work but I would be inclined to check the bore after each shot to make sure there was no paper tube left in the bore.

Longbow

[hardy]

Well,I,ve paper patched Lee 155 grain,180 grain and 200 grains .Shot,em thru a Yugo .314/.324" and guess what? They all worked just fine and dandy!!All wrong according to some others.. I,ve also shot R/H patched boolits in my Enfields.Again ,all wrong but they also worked fine..The Lees were .311/312" as cast.Never know lest you try,em.Guess even a blind pig sometimes finds a truffle..Of course other days turn to @#!$ soon as I get out of bed.Have fun and be safe,Mike

[yeahbub]

Hardy, I've used the CTL312-160-2R in various Yugos and Mausers and my experience has been similar, as well as a couple of fat Lymans that are supposed to be .311 but are a thou or two over. The Loverin designs patch very nicely, the 311466 being a favorite. I've also patched sized .309's I had handy with thicker paper, the previously mentioned .004. They weren't the most accurate but they provided an afternoon of plinking and experimentation from 16gr of 2400 to full loads of IMR 4895.

Longbow mentions the possibility of the boolit slipping out of the paper and leaving an obstruction in the bore. I imagine that a "slick", a smooth-sided casting might conceivably do that. I've heard it said slicks benefit from being rolled with a file before patching to give them some grip on the paper. Some years ago, Ross Seyfried wrote an article about patching .308 jacketed bullets up to 8mm and file-rolling them because the paper didn't want to stay put when seating them in the case, as well as in the bore. I don't recall his mentioning any that slipped the patch, but that had to be a consideration with something that hard and smooth. That being said, full diameter cast .30's intended to be used bare all have driving bands and lube grooves of some variety which gives the paper far more to hang onto than anything the throat or bore can offer and the outside of the patch would be lubed. Quite true that there has to be some bite into the casting, imprinting the texture of the paper for added grip - more is better in this case, but none of the Chase patch or cross patch shooters I talked to have trouble with castings slipping the patch. Their patches are applied dry, one layer thick and the whole assembly is only a slip fit in the bore, but they do depend on obturation to seal things up. Patching a .30 to 8mm is essentially the same as patching a .301 for a .314-.316 groove barrel (Mosins), something commonly done without difficulty, sometimes the only available accurate solution. Paper is essentially uncompressible (hence its usefulness as temporary shim stock in machining ops) and any added diameter will be impressed into the casting as it enters the rifling.

[hardy]

Yessiree,there,s more than one way to skin a cat..I try to read as much as I can before starting a new "project" but still drop a ghoulie sometimes.As long as you,re within safe limits I,ve picked up some other good loads unintentionally but gratefully accepted but by far the majority of my info has been from Castboolits,God bless,em Cheers,Mike.

[HABCAN]

Admittedly, I've never SHOT these myself, but............I've patched Lyman 31141 and loaded .32 Special rounds, and LEE C312-185-R and loaded 8x57mm rounds, for shooters who have had success and no complaints. These guys are not 'technical' enough to test the loads on paper for accuracy, but they say that whatever they shoot at they hit and keep coming back for more, please. YMMV.

[longbow]

Sorry, I was thinking bore not groove diameter for 8mm which at 0.324" would require a pretty thick patch on a 0.311" boolit but being 0.314" bore diameter you are not that far off with "fat" .30 cal boolits at 0.314" or even 0.311" boolits.

If the bore is 0.314" that is fairly close to some available boolits like the Lyman 314299 which should work well in that case as it would be bore diameter or very close (mine cast undersize at 0.312"... with wheelweights). NOE makes the same design in 0.316" which should be perfect fit. The Lee mould HABCAN mentions would be a good candidate too.

Patching up from 0.311" is a bit much though if it can be avoided. It won't hurt anything and might work fine with the right paper but 0.003" under bore size is quite a lot so accuracy may not be good. If knurled the 0.311" boolit would swell by at least a couple or three thou and lead pot said he managed to knurl boolits up from 0.358" to 0.366" so it can be done.

It certainly doesn't hurt to try, and I stand corrected, at the diameters and patch thickness you are looking at it is unlikely the boolit would leave the patch in the bore. Again, I was mistakenly thinking bore diameter at 0.324".

Longbow

[HABCAN]

Admittedly fired at very short range indoors with mousefart/catsneeze loads (5.0 grs. Red Dot in .303 Brit #5) but the PP’d 7mm soup can vs. the LEE 113 gr. FP which I’d plain-based shot right alongside each other (if you ignore the sighting flyer, LOL!). POA was the upper lefthand corner of the 1” black square. By PPing with wet paper shrink-wrapped onto the bare boolit and well dried before loading, all the paper deposits about 8 feet in front of the muzzle.

[NoAngel]

Even if you could do it, you'd likely never see any real accuracy. Paper patched needs the bullet sized just over bore and patched just over groove. A .311 bullet will have an of opportunity to move which is no good.

[HABCAN]

NoAngel, I guess you didn't read my posts showing results of actual SHOOTING, not theoretical guesses?? YMMV, but accuracy DOES 'occur'. Let's hear from others who have DONE it.

[yeahbub]

HABCAN! Am I seeing this correctly? You got a group like that patching a .285 up to .312 or so? That's thicker than I ever tried before, a difference of .027. I'm impressed! That pretty much gives the lie to the idea that general rules of thumb must never be ventured outside of. I suppose it depends on individual results whether this is workable. I once patched .360's up to .378 but my results were poor. Have you tried these at anything faster than the aforementioned cat-sneeze velocities?

[HABCAN]

Not chrono'd, but 'pretty quick' out of my #5 loaded on 2.2 cc. IMR4198, and they splash in the water in the dugout @ 200 yds. right where they're pointed. NOT scientific, but it's what occurred at the time.

Very wet printer paper rolled VERY tightly and well DRIED (shrunk) before loading seems to work OK. I never knew there was a 'rule' to this, so if I needed a boolit for a caliber bigger than I had a mold for...... This pic shows the bumpy plastic shelf liner material I roll the patched boolit on to force the wet paper into the grooves.........

I've made big .40's into .44's and .44's into .45's: they all seem to work to a point. I wouldn't try it for bench rest competition, BUT......think SHTF scenarios and what might be possible. I wrote a piece for WRSA years ago about 'Expedient Ammo' based on these trials.

[Three44s]

I remembered this treatment:

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/show...bigger-boolits

Best regards

Three 44s

[yeahbub]

I hadn't thought of using that drawer liner material for rolling patched boolits, but that's an excellent idea. I once had a piece of rubber gasket material with a surface texture like a painted shut window screen about .080 thick. Rolling patched boolits on it had the effect of tightening and stretching the patch so effectively I took to cutting the patches some .060-.080 short and rolling them until the ends met perfectly, assuring they would be very tight. Then, one day, I noticed I hadn't seen it for a week or two. I must have put it in that special place from which nothing is ever known to return. Going to have to try that drawer liner, though. Might be just the ticket.

As for cross-caliber patching, I'm all for it, and use it to feed a .36 cal. cap and ball revolver. The repro chambers are generally .366-.367, so I size the bottom driving band of a soft-cast 158gr RNFP to .356, leaving the upper bands unsized at .359-.360. I patch to add .008-.009 and they're perfect for some very accurate shooting. At ~.365, the base band slips right in and the others provide the press fit. My chamber mouths have a radius polished on the edge (rather than a chamfer) which prevents cutting the patch. Also going to give that 180gr WFN another try in a .375 Win. a fellow has. It casts at .360 and the groove is .378. I'll patch to .380 and see how it fits in a fired case.

[HABCAN]

yeahbub........EXACTLY!