Help to determine iof these bullets will work

[fourbore]

My first post, I hope you guys can help me out. I have a schutzen style rifle in more/less 9.5x47. I plan to form brass and load black powder.

I just received a new mold made to my specs. I cast a few bullets with old roof flashing. I had specified 1:20. Is that critical? I am not able to drive a bullet down the barrel from the breach because it is a martini action. I have attached a photo a bullet I drove in the muzzle with a hammer and an as cast bullet. I am concerned the bullet diameter is too large.

The mould is from Accurate for bullet 39-215R. I specified .383 in the order. Using a dial caliper. I might be off a little on these numbers.

Here are some posts that provided inspiration and led to my registration:

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/show...-5x47R-loading
http://castboolits.gunloads.com/show...9-5X47R-Rounds

[sigep1764]

Wow. It looks like you are gonna lose most of your lube bands.

[fourbore]

What would you do? Once I get my brass squared away, I could fire and recover one. I hope this is due to driving the bullet from the wrong side of the barrel. The conventional wisdom seems to be that over size is better than under? And 383 should not be oversize or not by much.

I did a cerrosafe chamber cast including some of the rifling. It dropped out at ~.380 ish but after 24hr expansion it was 383. At .995 that is 381. It is hard to know down to the 1/1000. The condition of the muzzle driven bullet has me concerned. I am worried, I could be as much as 3/1000 over on the mold and that driving band is 5 over that.

[sigep1764]

Before I scrapped anything, I would try to size down the boolit 5 thousandths and see what it looks like. See if the lube bands squish or if anything else deforms.

[Tatume]

I would size those bullets only so small that the loaded cartridge will chamber easily. Then shoot for accuracy. That will be your answer.

[JSnover]

Lube them before you size them. They'll go thru the die easier and the lube will support the grooves: you won't lose them.

[fourbore]

I was thinking that sizing was not an option because of the driving band.

[JSnover]

You can nose-size only. Screw the die way up or use a short plug under the boolit (may have to do both) so the stroke only pushes the boolit part way in. Use a wooden dowel to knock the nose-sized boolit out of the die.

[fourbore]

I have some pure lead and also have an order for 1:20 ingots. Is there any reason not to use up the pure lead? Might pure lead be more forgiving of a tight fit? The round is very similar to 38/40 and will be black powder only. The actual measurement is 9.7x37mm.

[JSnover]

You could start with pure lead.
Bear in mind the Germans went from .323 down to .318 with their 8mm and the "conversion" amounted to little more than a throat ream. With jacketed bullets.
Start low and work up, might be a lot simpler than nose sizing, which is what I do with my 45-70 but it gets tedious sometimes and isn't absolutely necessary it's just something I decided to try after I miscalculated a fit.