Don't tell me I can't...

[drinks]

By, Arronraad you are just getting too wound up for me.

[Prospector Howard]

Hooly dooley mate. Give the OP a fair suck off the sauce bottle. You're floggin the bloke pretty hard. Veg out and throw a few back. I think I got em all right.

[gitano]

goblism - You might find the learning curve steeper than you think. In my experience the primary requisite for acceptable machine work is patience. Experience, (or training), brings a second important skill - recognizing 'order of operation'.

I'm not really trying to talk anyone into getting a mill and/or lathe. Rather just suggesting that it's not as difficult to do simple tasks like chambering a barrel or making a die as one might think.

Paul

[skeettx]

Hello Gitano
Good postings
Maybe I missed it somewhere in the postings
But what gun are you shooting your 50 cal bullets in??
Thanks
Mike

[gitano]

1879 Martini Enfield chambered in .50 Alaskan - the .348 Win case blown out straight and essentially a .50-70.



"On theme" with "you CAN do it", I made the stock and installed the rear "safari" sight with one standing and two folding leaves and the front banded sight, both from New England Custom Guns. The wood was a piece of walnut from a friend and the fore end cap is a piece of dall sheep horn.



Paul

[skeettx]

THANK YOU
Here is my 444 Marlin Martini

Mine is a bench sitter with full diameter barrel and flat forend
Mike

[gitano]

That's actually the way the above rifle started out - a bench gun - but chambered in .22/.30-30. That was a 'screamer'. I got 35-grain bullets going over 4500 f/s out of that rifle, but... I'm not much for benchrest shooting, and there's not much up here that lends itself to "varmint" rifle cartridges. So, I sent it to "Cut Rifles" and had it rebored to 0.510" and chambered for what I would prefer it to be called: The .51x348 Win. (I have a chip on my shoulder about the size of Kansas about firearms cartridge names.) Here's a picture of it as I purchased it:


That's very nice birds-eye maple, but it was a bit garish for my tastes.

I am much happier with its current configuration.

I like the .444 Marlin cartridge a great deal, and of course, Martinis too. Do you shoot only cast bullets from that rifle, and at what range do you normally do your bench shooting?

Paul

PS - Just in anticipation:

I shoot 500-grain bullets at 1650 f/s. I use both Accurate 2495 and IMR 3031. That's what the moose bull died of.

I tried black powder, but with the case CRAMMED full of FF, the best I could do was about 1250 f/s. (I want to shoot a buffalo with this rifle, but I have to get drawn for one first. Hasn't happened in the last 30 years.) The free-ranging buffalo up here are pretty spooky, and 300 yd (my personal range limit) is not an uncommon range. 1250 f/s is just not good enough for 300 yd shots. I know, I know. "Back in the old days professional buffalo hunters shot them at 1000 yds." Even assuming that happened on a regular basis - which I don't - I don't care. I don't have the rifle doped for drop past 300 yd, and I don't want to. Even if the "professionals" did shoot them at excessively long ranges with .50 caliber black powder rifles, I don't want to and I don't want to have to chase them after I shoot them. (The professionals didn't bother chasing them. They just shot another one.) At 1650 f/s with my bullets, I can stay "on hair" out to 300 yd and still hit in the lower lung/heart area on a buffalo.

Paul

[skeettx]

I shoot any kind of bullet, I like cast, swaged, and store bought jacketed.
I normally just shoot this rifle at 100 yards, it is way too heavy to carry around.
Mike

[gitano]

I shoot any kind of bullet, I like cast, swaged, and store bought jacketed.

You bet!

Paul

[Huvius]

Gitano, I totally get what you are saying and applaud your efforts!
So many times throughout life, one's ideas are shot down by the professionals (whom, in most cases, have a financial stake in their opinions).
My experiences racing and wrenching on my own motorcycles taught me that there are certainly many things that manufacturers do best and some things that are worth trying yourself even with modest means. Making a race winning exhaust out of a Mercedes Benz fuel tank filler taught me that!
Now, back to boolits.
I have been thinking of going down this exact road and have found that in .50" there are a lot of burs to choose from with varying nose shapes from MSC and other retailers. One could also buy die blanks from most makers for less than $20 which reduces some of the steps in making such a die.
Also, I missed whether you are annealing your jackets. Are you?
And, have you thought of making your base ram with a beveled recess in the face to make a boat tailed boolit? Just wondering.

[gitano]

Thanks, Huvius.

I do anneal the jackets. Part of what I learned about the construction of the dies is that the WHOLE bullet has to fit IN the die before the swaging starts. Here's what happens with annealed jackets AND the bullet not completely IN the die before swaging starts:
(You'll note these "jackets" are from the base of the magnum cases, not the shoulder.)

Of course after the fact, that outcome seems obvious. As do many things we do that don't work out the way we thought they would. I mention this and show the picture to show that the jackets were annealed.

I certainly have thought of boat-tailing my bullets, and I made some boat-tails, (by turning them on the lathe), when I was making the jackets from the bases of the magnum cases. Note the bullet on the right:



BUT, 1) boat-tails have less significance than most people attribute to them, and 2) At the ranges and velocities I shoot at, they are truly insignificant and therefore not worth the effort. TO ME.

Paul

[Huvius]

Using the tubular shoulder section of the brass, does your finished boolit have a flat lead base or does the jacket fold over the base?

[gitano]

It has a fully exposed lead base.

I was talking with Dave Corbin about my concern of leaving a jacket in the bore if I didn't have a "base", and he said "No worries". That is why I moved from using the bases of the cases as jackets, to using the shoulders. Still, I'm a bit of a 'brace and belt' kind of guy so what I do is swage a gas check on the core before I swage the core into the jacket. Of course this doesn't "lock" anything in, but it does increase the resistance between the core and jacket to some degree. Since whatever that "some degree" is it is greater than without the GC, I am confident that I won't leave a jacket in the bore. I haven't so far, and all of the bullets I have recovered have had the jacket and core in the same physical relationship as when they were loaded. HOWEVER, I am shooting these at relatively low pressures: between 25 and 30 thousand PSI. Were I to up that pressure to say 45,000+ in another .50 cal cartridge I shoot, I would have to reconsider the "baseless" jacket.

Paul