Can some one help me with fire lapping?

[walker77]

I firelap in the garage and shoot into phone books. I use about 2 grains of Bullseye and the boolits never exit the first 2" phone book. (of course I have about 6 of them stacked up in a cardboard box.)

How much do you think i should use of unique? I have that and trail boss and H110.

I can defiantly tell there was a constriction around the threads. I can see a small flat start to develop in that area in the valleys of the rifling.

[jandbn]

Walker77,

I used Veral Smith's lap kit on my SS 45 Bisley. Boolits were 280 grain WFN air cooled wheel weight (BHN around 12) in unsized cases with Trail Boss. I seated the boolits most of the way and then when the cartridge was placed in the cylinder, I seated the boolit the rest of the way in the case with finger pressure on the case head. The boolits were fired with muzzle pointing straight down.

For a container to catch the lapping boolits, I stuffed a catch rag (old t-shirt) into an 8-inch-tall 3-inch-diameter paper sided can with a metal bottom and fired into the rag. The end of the muzzle was poked an inch into the wadded up rag. This was my third time at lapping the Bisley (I measure often). The first lapping shot this go around was 3.5 grains of TB and it dented the bottom of the can so I dropped the charge weight to 3.0 grains and had the next two boolits stick in the bore. I went about half way between and used 3.3 grains with all remaining lapping shots and did not have any more stuck boolits (or dented can). YMMV! I removed each lap boolit from the rag before firing the next into the rag.

Noise was a factor, but I wasn't worried about the noise; it was no worse than the fireworks going off in the rest of the neighborhood a couple days after the 4th of July. I'm not sure how you would safely reduce noise if that is a concern.

[MtGun44]

Use a faster powder like Bullseye, Clays, Red Dot or something like that. About 1.5-2 gr should
do it and will have a shorter pressure pulse than Unique and probably will be quieter while
driving the boolit better. Make sure you know accurately where you started. You are
measuring with a .0001" rated micrometer, not a caliper, I hope!

Make up a carpet pad from scrap and put the muzzle right into the pad when you fire to
quiet it down. Might start the carpet on fire, so have some water handy - guess you can
drop it into the bucket.

Bill