More testing with the Lyman devistator and my ruger 77/44

[Tripplebeards]

Been testing on and off since last fall using water jugs to catch my boolits. My first try was using my 16 to 1 mix consisting of pure lead and pewter mix. It had a BH of 7.5. I tested this alloy with a Muzzel velocity at 1575fps. It made it into and stopped in the third small gatoraide bottle. (Updated)I just found the slug, weighed, and mesured it. I measured .645" and weighed 133 grains. I found another laying on the ground after my shooting session laying next to the bottles that weighed 110 grains. Both boolits looked the same accept for The overlapped pedal around the back of this boolit which accounted for the extra weight.





The next test was with. A 50/50 mix ACCOWW and pure adding 2% pewter to the mix. It had a BH of 10.5. I did not chrony the load yet but used 23.8gr of w296. I'm guessing it has to be between 1700-1800fps? It stopped in the 4th milk jug and weighed 124gr. It expanded to .780".








The last test I did today. Instead of milk jugs...because I didn't have any, I used totes filled with water. I tried four rounds into two totes I had lined up back to back. The totes were about 15 feet or so from my muzzle. I caught the first boolit and the front tote let loose at the same time and cracked so the other three rounds went completely through the first and second and into the ground. Needless to say I took a bath in the process. The alloy I tried today was a mix of 80/20 ACCOWW and pure. I added 12% pewter to the mix. It had a BH of 15.4. The boolit I recovered weighed 155 grains and had a diameter of .679". It made a nice looking mushroom.the boolit stopped in the opposite end of the tote and broke it on the opposite end and bounced back. Im guessing the tote it stopped in was as wide as 5 milk jugs, maybe more.

[Tatume]

Very nicely done, and you appear to be enjoying yourself. Keep up the good work.

[Tripplebeards]

The PC shedded off all boolits while they were expanding. I never a any PB fouling in barrel testing any of the loads. Here is what was left of the totes. I shot four times. I have four holes but one stayed in the blue tote. One of the others went awol and you can see it curved and went out the upper right of the grey tote. I believe that was one of two Lee 245 gr HP I had loaded with 23 gr of w296 I let loose after the first two devastator loads. I was hoping to catch a Lee as well but gotta a feeling the smaller hp cavity helps it penatration further.






And the test subjects...

[W.R.Buchanan]

That last one is a good looking boolit. You couldn't wish for a more perfect expansion.

Can't wait until my Mihec mould gets here.

I will be powder coating mine as well. I'm thinking the pretty orange color. I love being able to color code boolits!

Randy

[Tripplebeards]

I know water is a lot harsher medium than a whitetail but figured if I hit bone I want some weight retention. I always Color code mine in 1 grain increments accept for this funky batch. The Last boolit of 80/20 mix and adding 6% pewter to the mix will be my go to deer load when loaded at max velocities. It mushroomed nice and reminds me of a Remington core-loct. I've seen some testing of ACCOWW on YouTube at pistol velocities with pedals shedding but no testing at rifle velocities so I wanted to have a little fun and try some alloys out with some stout loads. Been reading some of the old posts here with what alloy mixes works best with the 44 mag devistator for expansion and staying together on thin skinned game and put them to the test. I've been reading and seeing photos of using straight coww alloy (approx 12-13 BH)will cause the pedals to brake off making the boolit look like what's left of a nosler partition. I added some pure and a lot of pewter to my 80/20 6% mix per past readings and it made a nice looking mushroom vs what I've seen at less velocities using straight coww. I would assume at lower velocities I would get better weight retention and a nice looking mushroom to boot. I will slow this boolit down a little while load testing for accuracy and if I get a better grouping than my current 2.3" with 50/50 using 23.8 gr of w296 at a 100 yards I'll water test it again and see what I get.

Orange turns out nice when you bounce it in purple and blue after tumbling to get the excess PC off...

[KVO]

If you can fabricate a pin for your devistator mold that has the dimensions of your Lee HP pin you will get much more retained weight in any test media, or game for that matter. It doesn't take much to get expansion at those velocities. I've found having a thick wall to a HP cavity with a round nose/ rounded ogive helps keep them together. SWC nose profiles tend to act like a stop shoulder and arrest the nose expansion. The HP nose will then either shear off or hold together depending on the velocity and alloy. Very cool and please keep posting your results!

[Tripplebeards]

Worked the powder up and down today and tried some groups at a 100 yards. My original load of 23.8 gr of w296 that I shot a 2.3" group last week grouped the best at 2.0"

I have put a vartquelsen trigger kit in it and floated the barrel. The trigger is still a little heavy for me. I plan on taking it out and working it little to lighten the pull. I think I'm going to acra glass the action as well. I also have some h110 and lil gun powders to try. H110 is the same as w296 so there is no need to waste time trying it. Dose anyone have any load data for lil gun? I don't think the gun is or will ever be capable of MOA but I'd like to to see if I can get 1.5-1.25" groups with cast at a 100 yards out of it. I have a 3x9 vx2 on it. If I throw a little higher magnification on it for testing I'm sure it would help. I tried schimming the bolt but it wasn't loose enough to need schims.

21.5gr /4.05"

22.0 gr/3.6"

22.5gr/3.8"

23.0gr/2.4"

23.2gr/3.1"

23.5gr/4.4"

23.8gr/2.0"

24.0gr/3.6"

[cwlongshot]

Thank you for the well written reports! Great information!

CW

[fredj338]

I have the Dev mold. The key for me was another HP pin, shallower cup point for expansion w/o fragging above 1200fps. I only shoot lead-tin mix for my LHP & had the gc removed for that reason, plus now I am pcing them. The bullet wt went up to 270gr with the cup point & it doesn't frag. Accuracy is quite good but I only shoot them out of handguns.

[Larry Gibson]

That looks very good to me. I wouldn't modify anything until a deer or two is shot with it. That much water gives a lot more expansion than any deer will.

[W.R.Buchanan]

3 beards: One thing you can do to improve your group shooting is shoot at a different type of target.

Indexing on a specific point on a target as opposed to a Bullseye or Square is the way to close groups down.

Brian Pearce told me about the shooting he and his boys do for accuracy tests and load development for articles he writes for Rifle and Handloader Mags.

When they did tests on the Ruger 77/44 and 77/357 They used a NEGC Peep sight on the rear of the gun for all testing. They were getting consistent .75"-1" groups at 75 yds. with most of the rounds that they were shooting. Granted they shoot more in one week than all of us put together in a year, but it is where they aim that is the point.

For iron sighted guns they shoot at the bottom point of a diamond shaped target. This allows you to center the front sight on the bottom of the Vee and then index the sight for elevation by sitting the point of the diamond right on top of the front sight.

With a scope they shoot at the side points and center the cross hairs on say the left point and split the diamond up and down with the horizontal hair by picking up both side points wiht the hair.

With a red dot you put the edge of the dot next to the left point of the diamond.

The diamond has sharp points to index on, and it is much easier to index accurately time after time on a sharp point rather than a square or round bullseye.
With the other types of targets it is nearly impossible to index at the same exact point shot after shot because you can't visually discern the exact point you want to aim at. You are essentially aiming at an area, not a point.

Try it out with that 23.8 gr load that shot so well and see if it doesn't close that group down a little.

Randy

Has anyone gotten their Devastator mould from Miha yet? I am frothing at the mouth waiting for mine.

[Tripplebeards]

Randy thanks for the tip! I took the rifle apart, polished the sear and repolished the trigger group along with removing a coil from the spring. It dropped my trigger pull down to a crisp 2-2.5lbs. It was a little heavy before that I felt like I had to give it a little yank to fire. I thought I free floated the barrel when I first bought it. It turns out I did not. The barrel wasn't touching all the way along the bolt face side but was touching and rubbing on the opposite side. When I grip the factory plastic stock I can see it flex and touch even more of the barrel surface. This would help explain why I get an occasional flyer. The 22.5 gr load had 2 boolits touching and the 3rd was 3.5" away from the other two...ill have to retest after I finish my mods. I just got done floating it all the way back to about and inch to inch and a half in front of the tang. I removed enough so when the stock flexes it dose not come in contact with the barrel. I'm going to acraglass the action in a few minutes. I do this by drilling little holes in the plastic first to lock the glass in place. I did the same operation on a savage 220 slugger a few years back taking it from a couple inch groups to a .7" all in one hole group at a 100 yards.

[Tripplebeards]

Cancel the acraglass. I just looked at how the ruger receiver is made and didn't realize that the glass will end up oozing above the front receiver block and lock it in place. I'm use to glassing 700's. I'll have to retest my load In the next couple days and see how the free floating affects the group. After googling it sounds like the flimsy stock is the leading cause of flyers with the 77/44 and floating it has been a good fix along with tightening up groups in the process. The action literally wedges in place so I don't think glassing it would help much.

[Tripplebeards]

Woke up this morning and couldn't help myself. I removed about another quarter of a coil spring and trigger is beautiful, light and crisp now. I've been googling all over the last couple days and no luck with any pics of someone bedding a 77/44 or 77/357. I winged it and went to town. I drilled a bunch of little holes in different directions and scratched the surface with a utility knife to lock in the acraglass in place in my synthetic stock. I've done it like this in the past with great success. I would have liked to go and inch and a half in front of the tang but the way the stock is designed I would need a ton of acraglass to fill in the cavity that sits in front of the tang. I put a couple coats of Johnsons paste wax on everything, dammed up the cavities with Plato, and applied a little painters tape for extra protection. I didn't want to overkill it with acraglass and just put in a modest amount in the front and rear mounting holes. I also stuck Plato in above the front tang so acraglass won't creep in and lock it into my rifle. It's drying as we speak.

[Tripplebeards]

As I am waiting for my bedding to harden I do have another devastator 80/20 plus 12% pewter Mushroom to show. I did this at the same time I did the water test. I tested with 23.8 gr of w296. For this test I wanted to see how it would stay together if I shot something harder. I took a couple pales and filled and packed them with moist black dirt/sand mix from the garden. I shot one again from about 10-15 feet from the Muzzle. You should have seen the dirt fly! I was peppered by flying chunks. I found the slug in the first pale after I sifted through it like I was gold mining. I weighed 106 gr and expanded to .605". Even though it didn't retain as much weight as the water test I was impressed the boolit did not look like a deformed blob and mushroomed out instead of just shedding it pedals. After reading about so many shooters having their hp pedals brake off using coww with the same BH I'm using I would say the pure lead and pewter mix had got to be the magic ingredients to make this boolit expand instead of shedding its pedals.

[Tripplebeards]

Tried out the rifle this morning with my new bedding job, free floated barrel, and trigger lightening. The 23.8gr w296 load that shot a 2" group last week shot a 2" group again. So no change in grouping after bedding and floating the barrel...Kinda depressing. I tell you, this stout load is not forgiving with a little flinching. I tried the 22.5 GR load that had two boolits almost touching last week with the third boolit 3.5" straight to the left. The first three shot group with this load measured 2 1/4" , the second three shot group with this load measured just under 2.5". My bedding and floating fixed the vertical stringing with this load. I had to quit after that. It was range day for hunters safety. I think my next step is to try a different optic. I'm using an old leupold 3x9 that I can't get focused and looks fuzzy at a 100 yards. I'm going to grab one of my Nikon 3.5x14's and throw it on and retest. Probably won't help much but worth a try.

Before I waste a lot more time and energy on this a 44 magnum rifle capable of MOA with cast boolits?

[White Oak]

I look forward to getting my Group Buy mold and casting some of these.
Thanks for posting your findings.

[W.R.Buchanan]

Will it do MOA? Maybe.

2" at 100 yards is not bad for a gun like this. My Marlins shoot around that. On a good day a .44 Magnum rifle is a 200 yard gun at best, and realistically 150 yards max for ethical hunting. So will a 3" gun at 150 yards kill anything you need to shoot?

So 3beards,, did you try different targets like I told you?

Indexing on a "point" rather than an "area" is the key to tighter groups.

I talk alot on another site for Mini 14's about "Acceptable Accuracy." Everybody seems to think that they must have sub MOA performance from a rifle or else it is only good for a fence post.

My usual point is that most people couldn't even shoot a Sub MOA gun to MOA in the first place. It's not the gun, its the shooter.

I mentioned Brian Pearce and his sons shooting these guns with a variety of Handloads into .75" 5 shot groups with Iron Sights at 75 yards. That is MOA, but they are alot better shooters than most of us, mainly due to being young and shooting alot every single day.

So will the gun shoot MOA? Probably. Can you shoot MOA? Maybe?

Good Luck

Randy

[W.R.Buchanan]

Has anyone gotten their Devastator moulds frm Miha yet?

Randy

[KVO]

Randy, still waiting on mine as well. They'll be here soon enough.