1st 45-70 Reloads...Do they Look Right?

[curator]

Chili: These look mostly good to me. Cast boolits touching or lightly engraving on the rifling's leade is usually good. "Store-bought" cast boolits are often undersize (.458") for best accuracy in most .45-70 barrels, My various .45-70s require .460 to .462 to shoot accurately without leading. Mike your boolits and see how different diameters shoot. The slightly scuffed area visible on cases just below the boolit appear to be a tiny bit bulged. Crimping at the same time as seating the boolit can and will create a bulge and affect neck tension. ALWAYS crimp as a separate step with the seating screw not touching the boolit to avoid this.

[Chili]

Curator...thanks for the advise. I do crimp as a separate step. Those loads were not crimped in the groove. I don't plan on using store cast bullets for ever, just until I can get a NOE mold.
Those store bullets were all over the weight range...400 through 406 grains. Too much variance for my liking.

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[Chili]

Knifemaker... I will be testing 4 different loads this weekend. Previously the accuracy wasn't too bad, 5 rounds about 2 inches from 25yards.

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[Chili]

I shot 20 rounds in 4 batches of 5 rounds. All had a commercial cast 405 gr lead bullet with SR4759 charges of 24.5, 25, 25.5 and 26 grains.

From what I could tell both 25gr loads seemed to group very well when tested at 25 yards. The problem is they hit about 11 inches below point of aim even with the rear sight set almost to its highest elevation. What could be the issue? Too high of a front sight?

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[Chili]

Here is the target. I was aiming at the center of the middle blue diamond. Bullet impacts are circled in red.



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[2ndAmendmentNut]

I have two older Browning 86s, at first both shot low. I posted about this a little while back, lots of good suggestions for raising point of impact in those threads. For smokeless loads I found 39grs of RX 7 with a paper patched 405gr boolit to cycle and shoot wonderfully. The carbine I corrected by filing the front sight, the rifle shot paper patched loads significantly higher than standard grease groove boolits. Both now shoot 1.5" to point of aim at 100yards from a rest.



These are roll crimped and loaded in the magazine. No reliability issues.


50 yard target.


100 yard 3-shot group measured center to center (ignore the shots to the left, that was before I adjusted the sights).


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[Lloyd Smale]

ill go against the grain a bit. Yes as they are you should have no problem but if your shooting a fairly heavy recoiling load theres a chance the ones in the tube might jump crimp a tad. No big deal if your shooting targets but I wouldn't want to take that chance on a hunt. Id shoot them up and seat the next ones a bit deeper or if you cant because of the crimp grove trim your brass a bit shorter. An 86 isn't a bench rest gun and never will be. I rather have total reliability then a 1/10 of an inch smaller group.

[Caster1977]

I do my accuracy testing off a Bog-Pog bipod rest. It helps ME absorb the recoil a lot better. Shooting from the bench causes serious bruising and soreness.


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[TCLouis]

Looks like they followed TC's lead in chambering technique and have NO throat in the barrel.