350 Legend and Cast Boolits

[P Flados]

can't wait to put together an AR Legend.

Having a similar AR (357AR), the 350L is certainly a new option for those that are really into the platform.

However, if you want the best chance at a 350L cast boolit weapon, those entry level bolt guns seem to be doing awfully good.

[Texas by God]

Oldfeller- I apologize if I stepped on your toes even though you weren't mentioned at all. I have followed this thread as it floated down the river. I simply remarked that I was glad to see some results. Happy New Year.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G930A using Tapatalk

[mehavey]

277 posts for 3 pics of groups on paper! That has to be a record.

Oh come on.....

[BrutalAB]

Just finished reading all 15 pages. My bear creek arsenal upper gets delivered tomorrow. My dies probably on saturday. I plan to get loads using my noe version of the rcbs 180 sil and lee 200 rf.
Got new starline brass.
I powder coat.
First powder to test is aa 1680.

Oldfeller, did you shoot either of these two boolits before you altered your barrel?

[Oldfeller]

Brutal,

Yes I shot it before and after but only using the LEE 200 grain rifle bullets and my original crop of pistol bullets.

There were no major "instantly noticeable" degradation effects on accuracy after making the throat .200" longer at the same .357" diameter. This would not be true if you increased the throat diameter any at all, or had made changes longer than the .200 increase in depth.

My PC coated 200 grain LEE lead rifle bullets still hit throat's end and pick up good rifling marks before the butt end of the bullet even exits the case. This is not true with the longer noses on the more aerodynamic bullet shapes like the P Flados Little 'un.

Do not increase your throat's diameter, simply size your bullets to .3565" by using a LEE .356" push through sizer and you can extract them from the lengthened throat when unloading them (most of the time). Realize that paint irregularities on your PC bullets may still cause you to have to get out your barrel inserted "tapping rod" on occasion.

You will never make a .358" 35 Remington out of the Legend, so don't even try to go there. You can shoot a lead .358" bullet by putting the entire bullet down into the case, but forget about hanging one out into the throat -- it ain't happening.

Learn to love what works well with your gun. Do that, and be happy with what you got.





Why you do not want to get involved in this Winchester 350 Legend mess right now ----

Brass is problematical .... You can only buy it cheap as range brass from Graff & Sons. Full Length resizing dies are only sporadically available from LEE (small custom runs). Chamber throats in Ruger guns are "somewhat strange" to the Winchester/SAMMI standard and in general throat lengths vary a bit between brands.

Larger capacity Legend magazines are only just now starting to become available. The first ones are quite expensive and are somewhat rare right now.

YOU CAN'T MODIFY OLD PMAGS AND YOU CAN'T MODIFY 5.56 MILSURP BRASS. Well, you can if you are crazy --- but it doesn't work flaw free, that's for sure.

You are signing up for endless consecutive levels of mild frustration if you use the AR platform for your Legend. You will be constrained by this and followed by that, followed up by the other .... until you finally make up a mix of stuff that will run out an entire magazine full in banging style -- then you just quit fighting it and just do what you discovered works whenever you want to shoot the gun using "banging style".

...... mostly you just shoot it with its 10 round CMMG magazine that came with the gun.

[Oldfeller]

OK, attempts to sand the internal surfaces of the converted 5.56 PMAGs so they would digest stock Legend brass from Winchester without building up a "stack up resistance" at 10+ rounds failed miserably. The sanding worked OK and blended in all the machining residue marks, but the sanding uncovered a new set of ribs to deal with.

New learning --- there are very short (small width) RIBS that you cannot readily even see on the case head side of the 5.56 PMAG that are your culprit. Removal of these tiny ribs by sanding isn't going to happen, the PMAG material is too tough to simply sand them away. All you can do is round them off and blunt them a little.

All my cutsaw driven sanding did was make the tiny blended ribs stand out from the rest of the shiny plastic by covering them with sanding marks.


She's a biatch, boys

[cwlongshot]

My magazine alterations haven't been as insurmountable as ol fellers. I started with MISSION FIRST brand magazines. (Cause thats what a lil shop I stopped in had in stock.) Plus they matched the stock.

Single issue after sanding ribs smooth was last round feeding. Tommyboy suggested the mag spring. I suspected same. Testing by stretching it leaves a odd looking mag before loading. But feeds and functions 100% Now. READ 100% FUNCTION.





CW

[BrutalAB]

I had no plans to lap my barrel or anything.
I have a 358 and 357 sizer, do you suggest i go ahead and order a 356?
Originally i was going to modify one of my 30 or 40 round mags, but i have realized thats probably more of a headache than its worth. Ill just wait until they are availiable.

[cwlongshot]

Problem with attempting modification of larger then ten round mags is getting inside to remove (COMPLETELY) polish and smooth the insides. My recommendation stick with 10 round. Later BUY higher cap as they become available.

YES ABSOLUTELY, you must have a way to size to .356.

CW

[BrutalAB]

Thank ya, ordering a noe set now. I like being able to save time on this project.

My idea for mag was to take a metal mag, make a ring brace or two, one for near the bottom and one for just below the mag well, and then drill out the ribs. Dunno how well this would work, but i have a few mags that i bought a few years ago still with the 4$ price sticker on them. So i figured i wouldnt be out much if i destroyed one in the process.
But i do have some 10 round cmmg on their way in, ordered those when i got to around page 7 or so. (I really do appreciate all the knowledge and time saving ive got from this thread)

Ive sent emails to magpul and duramag telling them i want 30 and 40 round mags. Magpul responded by saying no plans to at this time.

[P Flados]

Brutal,

For cast, I would recommend you try your 0.357" sizer, but also try a 0.356". Some sizers run ± 0.0002" or so.

If you size down jacketed, people seem to have much better luck going down to 0.356".

With my side rib removed Magpul magazine, the meplat on my Lee 200 was too big for optimum feeding when loaded to magazine length. My gun was also prone to beating up the nose on the Lee 200. Some have said they got the boolit to work, but I am not sure what mags they used or what their COL was.

Good luck with your boolits. Hopefully you will have better luck with the CMMG mags than I had with my modified 223 mag. Do let us know how things work out.

[tomme boy]

Lee 200 works fine in mine. I don't have the length right now but it is seated so the front drive band is even with the case mouth. Sized 0.356". I am using C Products and Ruger mags. I tried the Wilson mag but it does not work in my gun. The mag bulges out and it will not even go into the gun. I just use that in my 556 guns now.

[BrutalAB]

I know im way behind yall, but i havent seen too many pics of ammo comparison around between 350 legend and 223



Got a dummy round loaded up and tested, its the noe version of the rcbs 180 sil sized to 357. Passed the plunk test so I loaded from an unmodified mag and chambered fine. Of course it was only one round i knew I wouldn't get more than that, just wanted to test the ramp and such.
I still needed to get that 356 sizer cause dad has a 9mm pistol that hates 357 boolits.
Plus i got 360 and 361 bushings to size down all these boolits that are 363 after powder coating. My sizing press couldnt handle a long arm for extra leverage. Already broke one lee c frame attempting to do that.


Its a side charger, so manual charging wont be as annoying.

[Oldfeller]

BrutalAB,

For you and folks coming late to the party I have edited this entire thread (all 15 pages of it) adding in some DON'T DO THIS advice in purple text that should stop you from spending money on tooling you don't need and from following pathways that lead to dead ends.

This is NOT a thread for low understanding beginners ....

when you first read it the disclaimers and warnings at the front should have been listened to and you should not be here at the end of this thread requiring re-edits from me to be done here at the end to protect you from following dead pathways. And yes, about half the pathways go NOWHERE useful, but that is the price of learning from scratch.

Some of this stuff is dangerous. Some of what you have posted indicates you are a very young reloader.

Remembering my own youth, you are not going to pay attention to jack sh__t that people like me say to you in reasonable attempts to protect you. Instead you will spend a bunch of unnecessary money and wind up bleeding somehow.

Being of Grandfather age now, I feel very strongly that you need to be protected from some of the dangerous stuff that goes far beyond your current level of comprehension.

I wish youth could listen a little better to age, but it never has.

Yes, this all sounds like fun to you, but no, it is really some inherently frustrating and potentially dangerous stuff. If you start copying the loads and powders we talk about or start modifying your gun in the manners we discuss YOU ARE TREADING ON DANGEROUS TURF and you lack the knowledge and experience to walk there safely.

Hate to rain on the parade, but I think some of it may be needed here.

[BrutalAB]

You are correct oldfeller, i am relatively young at both reloading and age.
As such I had and still have no plans to modify any part of my rifle. Unless magazines count, which i scrapped that idea when i realized how much trouble yall were having.
Which is why i started emailing mag manufacturers telling them I want to buy a product they are not making yet.


I do not consider any of my purchases thus far to be wasted. As the only thing I have bought that is 350 legend specific is brass, dies, and aa 1680 powder. And im pretty certain i will need all of those.

I dont even consider the .356 sizing bushing to be a waste since it should make my 9mm for my dad function better. The larger ones are because i have a lyman wad cutter that drops at .362 or something ridiculous that i want to be able to use in 38 special. Thats the boolit that broke my press about 4 or 5 years ago.

I tested that one round in an un modified mag because my cmmg 10 rounders have not been delivered yet.

Dunno where i gave the idea that i was going to proceed with any of the more advanced stuff.

Also being a young man, i have significantly less time to do anything related to reloading and shooting. I wont even be able to shoot a round of anything until there is sunlight after 530 pm.

[Oldfeller]

Just being somewhat protective like your own grandpa would be, but trying not to get all excessive about it.

Google rotator cuff injuries and surgical methods (some right gory stuff on YouTube if you want to look at it) . Both P Flados and I have had such and I STRONGLY recommend you not going there while cranking away at reloading presses that require way too much force to do excessive re-sizings, etc.

You start this chain of shoulder failure while you are young and immortal by doing overly stressful stuff ..... and it comes home to roost when you are old and start losing your main muscle muscle tone and mass.

If you feel sore after doing a session of heavy resizing, then you are doing this sort of damage to yourself.

For example, enough "equipment stress" to bust up a cheap aluminum LEE reloading press is certainly enough shoulder stress to do it to you ........

[BrutalAB]

So you are saying that my idea to size those boolits down in increments of .001 to .002 at a time is a good idea right?

. And i am familiar with repeated movement injuries. One of arms have had tendonitis, far less serious i know, but i learned to listen to my body after that and do things in ways that are more friendly to the body now.
I was unable to hold/carry my kid for about 2 months, it was painful to even grab something as heavy as a t shirt.

[cwlongshot]

Speaking cast now. Bullets size hard for a few reasons.

1) HARD alloy
2) Oversized / Wrong size
With PC you also have the disadvantage of no lube. What I do is size my bullets as soon as I am able after coating. (This keeps them as soft as they are gonna be) I also lube intermittently using Imperial sizing wax. ALWAYS ALWAYS, lubing first few they a NOE push thru. Lee is more forgiving and less lube is needed. This is because the Lee using a very thin band to size bulelt and the NOE uses a 1/2 wide band.
Sizing more than .003 - .005 is about as much as Ill do in a single Pass. But again this changes with bullets hardness. The Harder it is less you can comfortably size. Its also an amount that you may just check that you have correct mold for your use. If you know your pushing things size wise. YES size in steps.

Good luck and dont be afraid to ask questions. If worried PM someone most guys will be happy to help.

CW

[Oldfeller]

So you are saying that my idea to size those boolits down in increments of .001 to .002 at a time is a good idea right?

Using LEE push through sizers, .004" is about as much as you want to do on a PC bullet at a single step. Commonly, things more than that get sized twice, once as raw lead and once as a coated bullet.

The strength of your press determines how much you can size which can be somewhat more (but more than .004" generally requires shoulder protection in the form of a longer lever arm).

A trick I plan to check into this spring is to bulk tumble the pre-final-sized powder coated cast bullets with some hexagonal boron nitride powder to act as a final sizing lubricant and (since it will still be there pushed into the surface of the powder coating) a firing lubricant and a barrel conditioner.

I am not sure if this has been done lately or not.

[Oldfeller]

______ This slug weighs 181 grains

The curent truncated cone tooling seems to cut the cone in a somewhat odd fashion. This "expansion" of the tip end of the cone has happened to some degree on all recent trial cuts. It seems to be an expression of the curved cutting paths and vibratory run out and it is likely to show up in finished cast boolit cavities made from this tooling.

I dummy cut some soft gummy aluminum and got some chatter marks in the finished cut down at the bottom flat face of the cone. A shorter cone seems to work better for keeping the chatter marks relatively smaller, generally speaking. Still, I think the truncated cone form will not be "as consistent" from one cavity to the next so I am still looking for the best cutter form for the 350 Legend bullet.

The "round flat" tooling is slow boating its way from Hong Kong at the moment, so the next form candidate is about 20 days away and counting down.

Run out and deflection expressing itself in the round flat tooling would not likely be nearly as strong as the deflection that can be so clearly seen in the truncated cone forms. Also, the round flat tooling will "self-center itself" all the way up to the flat meplat, so the round flat form tooling may enable a more stable consistent bullet form cavity to cavity as well.

The picture shows a .260" meplat on the truncated cone form. .280" is about as much meplat as the truncated cone can do, but round flats can commonly go up to .300" diameter meplats, such sized meplats are already found on the LEE round flat pistol bullets and these meplats are very effective on deer out of revolvers, so likely even more effective out of the 350 Legend when pushing some extra weight and speed.