350 Legend and Cast Boolits

[Oldfeller]

bikerbeans, I am glad you had a good casting experience. Hexagonal boron nitride (bullet and bore conditioner) makes a very good mold conditioner --- it is sold in industry for that exact purpose.

Yes, I am very slack at going to the range in the winter time. I don't like the cold and huddling down behind a rife at the range is about the coldest cold I have had since riding a motorcycle in the wintertime, something that I also no longer do.

But, I can give you some cycling from the magazine --- both bullets work as good or better than the LEE molds mentioned upstream, but let's be real, until they are being gas cycled with normal loads that is only an approximation. Encouraging, but not final.

More later when it gets warmer.

[colonelhogan44]

Hopefully, one of the two of you will be able to report on function soon.

Have either of you loaded any dummy rounds to check for nose damage during feeding?

I'm also getting ready to load your powder coated bullets I got in exchange for a blank Lee mold (Finally -- there's been a lot of "life" outside of rifles in the past year). I'll report back as well on all the flavors (160, 180, 200) that I have on hand.

[Oldfeller]

P Flados, please do not think that we do not appreciate your work and your generosity with your AR357 molds, we really do appreciate it.

I know first hand how recovering from shoulder surgery is a painfully slow and long recovery and I understand that hurting and feeling "damaged" from that particular surgery can affect your mood. I remember clearly. I have occasionally felt that some things that I had done to me were not totally to my advantage, and my shoulder surgery was one of those things that I felt that way about when it was going on.

Good news is that 1-2 years from now you will still be picking at the stitch debris still coming out of your skin and swearing that you will never do that again ---- but you will be shoulder able and shoulder mobile. 4-6 years from now the scars will all be fading and flat to the skin and your shoulder will resume looking and working like just a shoulder and you will get your muscle mass back to a degree. That sick looking divot where they pulled your rotator cuff back together will disappear and your shoulder will resume its normal shape.

And you will grow longer lever arms on your heavy duty reloading press, because you really do not want to aggravate your shoulders or create another need for another surgery ........ NEVER AGAIN is your motto now.

Yes, you will take great care of both your shoulders going forward, I think we damage them earlier in our lives by being innocent of the price we may have to pay for some of the careless things we do to ourselves when we are young.

Be of good cheer, my friend, both you and your work are appreciated. Your molds work excellently and your ideas proved out well.

[bikerbeans]

Hopefully, one of the two of you will be able to report on function soon.

Have either of you loaded any dummy rounds to check for nose damage during feeding?

I plan to powder coat/heat treat and size the boolits i cast this week. I have to make a range trip before I can load these boolits as all my 350L brass is loaded.

BB

[Oldfeller]

Good news, new table saw switch became available and it was installed, the follower block was then cut and hand sanded to be a slip fit inside the magazine.

Now comes the harder part, placing the shaft and bearings inside the wooden block such that the rotating rasp cuts flush to the base of the rib .......



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WARNING: Winchester factory stock 350 Legend brass won't load, stack and feed right from the 30 round converted 5.56 PMAGs. The extra head width of the Winchester brass causes a slow building "binding action" that stops the rib trimmed 5.56 mag from loading more than 10 rounds reliably. There are also issues with bullet nose forms and the narrow nose form of the 5.56 PMAG.

Simply wait until aluminum construction 30 round mags come out specifically for 350 Legend and save yourself the aggravation.



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Don't expect an experimental first pass piece of tooling to be pretty, generally speaking they never are. A tool for the right rib, another mirror image tool for the left rib and a much shorter, simpler tool to remove the center nose rib will be needed. All can be made from pieces of the same stretch of formed center wood that I have already made up, and they all use the same shaft and rotary file cutter interchangeably.

What this does do is prove out that I can use a drill powered rig up to machine/rasp/abrade (you pick the term you like) the glass filled polymer to be flush to the rectangular section of the magazine. What I learned is that the nose form of the magazine is sub-flush to the main rectangular section by several thousandths of an inch as molded -- plenty of room to accumulate a bunch of post machining plastic fuzz on the nose side that will require a sanding or scraping post operation to get rid of it.

Will the sanding/scraping post op be good enough to remove the original free standing rib in the first place? I don't think so, but we shall see. When you take into consideration that the base of the rib the entire rib is .200" wide at the base, sanding it all away would be difficult without damaging the magazine well surface some. Plus, the PMAG is made of some more mean plastic, really. Doing the entire job by sanding would be really tough to do.

I think machining it away relatively cleanly in a few minutes work followed up by some smoothing sanding/scraping is likely the best way to proceed. I am currently using a flat bastard file to remove the fuzz and flatten the top of the burr machined rib.

REFINEMENTS

This block is now labeled as "A" and I consider it a roughing block for the first rib removal. Use it to get most of the rib out of the way, trying to use the clearance tilt tricks to get all the rib completely removed only in the last 2-4 inches up at the lip end of the magazine. Goal can now be as simple as knocking off the mass of the rib so you can use a different configuration to do the final (fine) removal.

Then install and use "B" to take that rib out completely. "B" block is a lot easier to use and it cuts flush to slightly sub flush as its natural motion.

Now you need to finish cut the "A" rib. To do this change over to the "B" block installed backwards over the "A" rib and pushed up to the lip end of the magazine and install the shaft and then run the burr all the way up to the base end of the magazine. Use this configuration to accurately remove the entire "A" rib all the way down to the root in one pass.

[Oldfeller]

In response to a PM'd question that came in this morning, I did not increase the size of my throat, it remains within some 5 tenths taper to the original .357" diameter. It is deeper, considerably, at .300" from case mouth to start of rifling. And as you can see from the tap bullet (seated flush to the end of the chamber/case mouth) the larger 200 grain projectiles cannot exit the case mouth before they start to get support from the forcing cone and the rifling.

.............. yep, the bullet is P Flados's 205 grain Big 'un ................

Pistol bullets can exit the case, travel the throat and hit the cone, but the trip has no more than .0005" of running clearance on a bare lead slug. Since I shoot PC bullets which are up to a thou larger even after sizing, arguably the throat is engaged the whole way down and the shortest of the pistol bullets has no real chance to get cocked in the throat.

Did I notice a change in accuracy after throating? A very very slight change, if any. Gets lost in the powder coating effects. In other words functionally no change, really.

I sure noticed the MUCH INCREASED ability to unload a round from the chamber using the extractor, which is really why I did it.

Is powder coating better or worse than plain greased lead when considering accuracy alone? Me, I have bad eyes and I don't shoot well enough to challenge either one, really ---- so how can I even express a valid opinion on that question?

Powder coat has been totally clean so far, which I do appreciate. I can unload my rounds at will, too.

Plus I can do a little trick and press in a little hollow point into the bullet tip (right through the powder coating) without disrupting the tip any.

[bikerbeans]

The boolits from P Flados mold are powder coated and heat treated. Will size them shortly and hope to get to the range soon to generate brass so I can load them.

Oldfellar, where can I get the hexagonal boron nitride mold lube?

Thanks,

BB

[Oldfeller]

https://www.amazon.com/MICROLUBROL-H...6201875&sr=8-4

Amazon, of course.

The stuff isn't rare, you can buy it from industrial supply houses, cosmetics supply houses, any of the gun shops and supplies that are relatively "larger", etc. etc. One ounce will coat thousands of bullets, treat dozens of rifles, prep dozens of boolet casting molds.

[P Flados]

BB, You mentioned boolits falling out of the mold.

Although the HBN probably helped, I can usually get my NLG molds to drop without using a mold tapper.

When I go back to one of my regular molds, I sometimes ponder groove removal.

[Oldfeller]

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WARNING: Winchester factory stock 350 Legend brass won't load, stack and feed right from the 30 round converted 5.56 PMAGs. The extra head width of the Winchester brass causes a slow building "binding action" that stops the rib trimmed 5.56 mag from loading more than 10 rounds reliably. There are also issues with bullet nose forms and the narrow nose form of the 5.56 PMAG.

Simply wait until aluminum construction 30 round mags come out specifically for 350 Legend and save yourself the aggravation.


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Today was a good day for finishing something.

A tooling stage finished, a set of 4 each PMAGs modified for the 350 Legend using the simple wood block tools, a new deeper mold sourced from LEE/Titan so we can do 4x multi-cavity rifle bullet cavities from a $20 LEE supplied blank (blanks by way of Titan Reloading),






First, the wooden blocks and sleeve bearings and the long T-6 shaft to hold the rotary file that was used to remove the glass filled nylon ribs from the PMAGs. One of the tools shown (the last one made) worked 100% as desired and intended when it was used the very first time. The previous two tools had to be rebuilt/reworked a couple of times to get ever closer to right (and to learn how to do the trick right in the first place). I can attest it ain't as simple as it looks, really.






These are the four partially loaded magazines using the LEE 200 grain rifle bullet. The LEE 200 has a meplat that is larger than the P Flados Big 'Un but the magazine as rib-cut will still feed it properly. A magazine full of these heavy slugs weighs A LOT and I expect to have me some spring force problems moving that mass up so the carrier can take the next round --- and in "simply keeping up with the gun" with the longer 30 round magazine size as shown.







And now we roll over to the new larger and deeper "cut your own" mold blocks that come to us courtesy of Titan Reloading and LEE. Note the blocks themselves are larger and deeper so that you can cut yourself a 4 cavity mold (just barely) using the P Flados 205 grain Big 'un. LEE could improve this block set by moving the location pins closer to the bottom of the block --- the current location seems somewhat arbitrary and needs "optimization" to increase the available space above the pins. I would suggest 0.160" - 0.170" up from the bottom of the block set as an initial "improved" pin location (measured from the near edge of hole to bottom of block). This is the same dimension that is used on the shorter LEE blocks and is the same as the "to the sides" dimension as used in the current larger & deeper molds.

When you go to design this change into general use at LEE, remember the goal is to maximize the length of the bullet that can be cut 4-up into the die block (ie don't be stubborn about it, your customers want more space to play around with in the larger blank mold blocks).

And LEE, remember that you too may want to build yourselves a line of 4-up powder coat simple bullet forms to sell to people, so take our ideas and implement them in your line of 4-ups as you best see fit. But remember to listen to your customers, they really do know what they want.








This is the smaller "cut your own" block that is sold by Titan. It is only useful for shorter pistol rounds when done 4 up. When shown against the P Flados 205 grain Big 'Un it is clear the blocks simply are not large enough to hold 4 each of the larger bullet, much less be deep enough to avoid having the cavities hitting the pins.

Remember, the new larger LEE/Titan blocks have some notable thermal advantages to show you when you are putting that much molten lead into a mold at one time --- you will still have to rag quench the mold at the end of each cast just to keep your casting speed up and all the extra mold thermal mass is going to be a very good thing to have when speed casting with a 4-up large rifle bullet mold.

[Oldfeller]

https://www.ammoland.com/2019/12/mag...#axzz68CDk3jcH

Palmetto Arms and Ammoland.com are selling 5.56 PMAGs on sale for $7.99 each.

https://www.ammoland.com/2019/12/mag...#axzz68CDk3jcH

I ordered 4 more PMAGs to rib cut while I still had the tooling on hand, figuring I could tune the tools one more time before sending them off to be "roving tools" and to get me a supply of rib cut 30 round mags built up that would be big enough to last me for a goodly while.

I can see where the plastic mouth lips have already begun to spring open and take on a bit of a set that lets the follower peek out some after the last round is gone, especially on that very first magazine that I used to develop everything as it had the most general wear and tear on it --- so me having 4 extra 30 rounders already rib cut and ready on hand is a good thing in my eyes.

Plus, if I wait until I can use the magazines in the gun a bit more and incorporate any use-related "tunes" I come up with into the mix THEN I can send out as good a set of tools as I can, tools that will work well until somebody messes them up in a however/whatever fashion.

Sad thing about that, the folks who will use these tools that have no tool building/using experience and despite me providing instructions to them they will still break the stuff by accident or by misuse.

And they will certainly mangle a magazine or two along the way .......

Yep, I learned that the hard way, right here on this list. So if you share your tooling or your molds, you have to write it off in your mind before you first put it in the mailer.

P Flados wondered why I was so careful about his mold and that I didn't go past a certain point in either using or maintaining the mold and why I shipped it so very very carefully -- I was exercising my "past bitter experience" that had nothing to do with him or his mold, but I was gonna be dammned if I was going to degrade or damage his stuff in any fashion trying to "fix it" or by careless shipping as had happened to my quite expensive custom-cut Mountain Mold that Dan had built for me once in the past.

[P Flados]

I definitely appreciated your handling of the mold and understood you concerns about taking chances.

You know, as a youngster I took to heart the Boy Scout attitude of leaving things better than you found them. It is sad that so many never learned this common courtesy that make life better for everyone.

[Oldfeller]

Like any well dressed young lady, my dainty little 350 Legend requires proper accessories like 30 round magazines and a quick loading board.

Problem is that there certainly are not any quick loading boards for doing any Legend quick loading (fast stuffing) of any theoretical 30 round Legend magazines that, remember, don't even exist yet ........

So what the heck are these magazines stuffed full of ....... and what about that particular looking experimental quick loading board ?????

Well, both items are not yet fully cooked yet, even by my own admission. The LEE 200 grain rifle bullet has a fat nose and a wide meplat and when loaded at maximum bullet out of the case OAL the loading resistance of a full magazine goes up and up and up as the rounds go in, choking to a stop between 10 and 13 rounds with the big nosed LEE bullet OAL sticking out as far as can be done in the magazine.

My theory is that the fat noses stacked side by side gets into a slight bind with the magazine nose profile which builds up as the round count goes up .........

Verification comes from the Largo 152 grain 2R round nosed pistol bullet loaded out to the same OAL distance does not have the resistance build up issue at all ---- the rounds roll in slick as can be.

As a matter of fact, the exact same big LEE 200 grainer when loaded somewhat shorter in the case also has no issues quick loading out of the quick loader.

The P Flados Big 'un has no issue as well, having a slimmer nose profile and a smaller meplat.


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Live and learn, I say. Live and learn. Now you know how I spent my afternoon, anyway.

[P Flados]

Yep.

The smallish meplat and the rounded edges of the meplat were big items for the "AR Optimization" effort. The profile is the same for both the 180 and the 200. The objectives included both getting into a chamber with minimum jams and dings and also included not binding at the front of a P Mag between the front rib and the side of the mag.

FYI, for my mag, I also thinned the front rib some just to make sure the front of the boolit would not get pinched. It can handle a little larger meplat than those from the loner mold.

[mehavey]

OOC... what load/powder are you running w/ the LEE 200 ?

[Oldfeller]

Yep.

The smallish meplat and the rounded edges of the meplat were big items for the "AR Optimization" effort. The profile is the same for both the 180 and the 200. The objectives included both getting into a chamber with minimum jams and dings and also included not binding at the front of a P Mag between the front rib and the side of the mag.

FYI, for my mag, I also thinned the front rib some just to make sure the front of the boolit would not get pinched. It can handle a little larger meplat than those from the loner mold.

My center rib tool simply rasps that rib off flush at the root ---- it simply isn't there to contribute any binding actions on the very fat nosed LEE 200 bullets.

I load the LEE wide meplat 154 grain pistol bullet out as far as it can go (it is a very short very much FATTER nosed bullet with a huge meplat) but because of the shortness of the thing it does not get into any form of nose binding going on while quick stuffing a line of them.


I had used my converted 5.56 brass to make up these pistol bullet rounds, which is why they seemed to work when the stock Winchester Legend brass would get indigestion after only 10 rounds pushed into the converted 30 round PMAG magazine. The "wider head width" issue with the stock Winchester Legend brass was simply not understood at this time.

[Oldfeller]

OOC... what load/powder are you running w/ the LEE 200 ?

I use WC820 (AA#9 equivalent) in a 1.3cc LEE dipper behind the pistol bullets, or else a 1.6cc LEE dipper of WC846 (BLC-2 equivalent) which is a "heavy bullet load" for the LEE 200.

Both loads are "backed down" moderate loads, neither has been pushed for maximum speed, which in a heavy for caliber cast bullet is not needed anyway. The stock meplat on the LEE 200 grainer is perfectly adequate to kill an elk or a bear, and pigs and deer have been easily dispatched with the various forms of 158 grain pistol bullets shot at 1,200 fps out of .357 magnums for decades now, so there is lots & lots of headroom there for the exact same pistol slugs that are now being shot at 1,500+ fps out of the Legend.

[P Flados]

In the 357AR, I did get speeds for H110 and 200s as follows:

20.7 1848.5
21.5 1941.8
21.6 1914.7
21.9 1953.8
23.1 1998.0

See below for 200 gr WC 680 results. The faster data points at the same (or slightly less) powder charges were with slightly shorter COL.

26.6 1902
27.0 1895
27.1 1904
27.1 1934
27.4 1948
27.4 2064

Note that the amount of free space or compression in the round made a big deal for pressure signs and resultant velocities with all boolits. Some of the loads above were just barely too hot as indicated by one or two pierced primers per 5 rounds.

[Oldfeller]

OK, the next four PMAGs came in, and I have them gutted and ready to trim. The blocks and the shaft and the pusher wooden rod are all ready to go .....



Something for you to know right off the bat is that you HAVE to use the blocks in A-B-C order because the ribs are in the way if you do it any differently. B block requires the A rib to be gone, C block requires the two side ribs A&B to be gone.

You can't even get sliders to slide in if the ribs are in the way, duh ......

Things you must do for each cut ......

You must .......

GREASE the shaft, a fresh coat of light grease for each rib you are cutting.

Rotate the cutter with the drill before engaging it. Getting a cut started on a fresh rib is a little finicky and involves tilting the block some to get a starting clearance.

Stop the drill then use moderate to light force to advance the block with the stick.

Watch carefully at the end of the magazine to not cut past the end of the rib and ruin the mouth of your magazine.

STOP if things stop moving or act bindy, check your rotating shaft itself for binding against the end of the magazine and make sure you have cut a running clearance around the burr so you can advance it.

Black fuzz buildup is your most common cause of bindy slider action.

Do not peel off any clear tape, the tape is there to correctly aim the cutter and make sure it stays tight in the magazine. The A tool has the most tape on it as it was the experimental first child, so you can also expect it to take the most attention from you to use it.

You will advance the slider an inch or so, hit the drill, trim out an inch and a bit of rib then stop, retract the shaft and advance the entire slider, then rinse and repeat. The slider is stiff and it requires the use of the pusher stick going forwards or backwards in a new magazine. The plastic in the PMAGs gets warmer and also the sliders move more freely once more ribs get cut out of the way.

Tapping on the wooden stick with a hammer to get the slider to move isn't needed if you do it right. It generally is saying you've got something in a bind and need to figure it out before proceeding.

Black fuzz buildup is your most common cause of bindy slider action.

You can probe out with the cutter and the shaft quite a ways once you get good at it, and if you can see what you are doing you can manipulate the extended cutter shaft in the bearing clearances (and by tilting the slider inside the magazine clearance) to cut off to the sides (in both directions) and cause the rasp head to cut in deeper if that is what is needed.

Your odds of messing up that first magazine are increased by your learning curve, but if you are careful you can get the first rib trimmed to about flush without destroying anything.

Do only one type of rib at a time, as the use of the different tools is different and you can easily get confused and do some damage to something if you start trying to do "mix and match" cutting on different ribs using the wrong tool ......

Cut all your magazines with the A slider block (greasing the shaft between magazines) then switch over to the B slider block.

[Oldfeller]

Now let's talk about the ground up ribs which have become a mass of black fuzz sticking to the sides of the burr cut.

Easiest way I found to remove this and put a suitable finish on the two raised edges is a 10 inch flat bastard file --- the kind that is normally used to file steel. It is fine enough for a good finish and it is quick enough to get out of its own way. The sharp 90 degree edge at the end of the file will push and lift the long adhered mass of fuzz out of the burr cut and break it away, then a few strokes with the file held carefully flat to the side of the magazine will blend it all together good enough for "first approximation" cutting.

Properly used, the burr cuts a shallow curve into the magazine wall where the rib used to be, then the flat bastard file removes the fuzz and smooths and flattens the tops of the "U" shape slightly to give you a good friction free shell case bearing surface that is functionally flush to the magazine wall.

The sharp corners of the bastard file will leave scratches, so have a bit of care here.
Scratches done inadvertently by the flat bastard file are not fatal, the brass cases will roll right on over these scratch marks. During final wet/dry sanding you can blend these uglies if they offend you, I left mine mostly alone as they "did no functional evil" in my gun.