MakeMineA10mm
07-04-2011, 04:43 PM
My father and I acquired a Krag rifle this last Winter from a fellow member of the site. (Absolutely wonderful meeting him and his wife, btw, just wish we'd had more time and warmer weather to shoot a few rounds...)
Anyway, had a busy last 6-7 months, but I did manage to get some brass and find the dies I'd bought from someone else here another time. Well, as sometimes happens, life has caught up with us. Dad has been diagnosed with stage 4 (advanced) pancreatic cancer. We've been working on the bucket list (pretty succesfully - we're lucky as this usually painful cancer has not been that bothersome with pain for him yet), and a main shooting request is that I take him out for some fun with his beloved Broomhandle Mauser. I'm also going to surprise him with some M-1 Carbine shooting (another favorite of his) & the Krag. Already had the carbine and broomhandle ammo covered, so today I went down to the reloading room with the Krag, and that's where it got tough.
I had a supply of Saeco 315s already GCed (but not lubed or sized), and I'd FL sized, primed, and neck-expanded the cases. I charged the cases with 16.0grs of 2400 and hand-lubed the boolits without sizing them. I put an unlubed & unsized boolit in the chamber and pressed against it with a pencil while inserting the cleaning rod from the muzzle. Marked the rod. Took the boolit out and put the bolt back in and closed it, shoved the rod down, and marked it again. Got a C.O.A.L. of 3.805". Went back to the loading bench, seated a bullet to that OAL and then locked down the seating die. Went back to the rifle, and got quite a lesson...
Inserted the round and tried to close the bolt. No go. About the rear 3/8" of the case could still be seen. Hmmmmm. Pulled the round out and inspected. Could see marks at the juncture of the ogive and side-body of the boolit. O.K. I need to go a little deeper, but how was I off 3/8" with my COAL measurement? Tried incrementally seating the bullet deeper, but go no where. Finally, with the bullet seated so deep, it looked like a 30-carbine nose sticking out the front of that long case, the bullet dropped down into the case into the powder charge... Uh oh...
Stupidly got mad and pulled the bullet, and, yes, you guessed it, left the GC down inside the powder chamber of the case... Looked the boolit over carefully and saw a distinct line that measured about .296-.270" around the nose of the boolit. Thought maybe I got a 6.5mm barrel? (Highly doubtful, as the member here whom I bought it from was shooting nice groups with 30-caliber boolits...) So, I dig out a piece of OO Buckshot, lube it, and drive it into the throat of the barrel. Drive it back out and measure. Averages around .315". Not bad. My boolits run about .314 at the base, so should be a perfect fit with not binding. Still very confused and getting worried about that .270" line around the nose...
Head-scratching time. Looked at the case, and now a lightbulb comes on, very dimly. There are some bright shiney longitudinal striations along the case neck where it was expanded. (I used a Lyman M-die to expand only the forward 2/3 of the neck, so there would be a "shelf" created by the tighter area of the neck, so boolits wouldn't get seated too deep/fall into the powder charge.) I took the empty case and threw it in the chamber. It stuck out that same 3/8". Closed the bolt and with a very minimal effort, was able to close the bolt all the way. OK, brass is "springy" and it probably had enough give to let me close the bolt, as long as there was no bullet in the way. Took the piece of brass back out and measured it. In the expanded area, it was running around .344". (Lightbulb!)
I've only been shooting rifle boolits recently (started last summer, still a noob), and I've been able to shoot both my '03 Springfields without sizing the Saeco 315s at all. Just pour 'em, GC 'em, and hand lube 'em, and they're ready to seat in the case. Never had chambering problems in those 30-06es. (For those who don't know, the Saeco 315 is a tapered boolit. At the base band, mine measures about .314" and the bands get decreasingly smaller as you move towards the nose of the boolit.) I've always been able to seat them out as long as I could (getting the OAL measurement as described above) and using the M-die to get the brass to accept the rather wide-bodied boolits. Not with this Krag...
I measured the base band, and again got the .314" I was expecting. Now measured across the non-crimped Hornady GC and got... .318"... (Ouch!). Now, I'm getting it. The seating die won't squeeze the neck walls like a size die will, so when I'm seating my .318" GC and .314" base-band boolit, there's not enough give so the brass can't spring down and go into the chamber. I've either got to neck-turn the brass or size the boolits down. Since I don't have a 30-cal mandrel for the neck turner, I didn't even bother doing the math to see if I could turn the brass down enough... I just decided to finally size these Saeco boolits and see what would happen.
Got out the box of sizer dies from my Lyman 450 to look for the rifle dies. (I've been using it all these years with just the pistol dies and just faintly remembered having the rifle dies.) Found a .309" die and rolled my eyes and said, "this is going to stink shooting .309" boolits down a .315" throat and probably a .311 to .312 bore (never drove that buckshot on through to see what the bore diameter was... OOPs). Then, I thought, well, let's look at all the dies... Got to digging and lord-have-mercy, there's a .311" H&I die! :)
Ran 25 boolits through the sizer and then seated one. Found that with this sizing stuff, I'm going to need a smaller M-die, as the boolits basically fell through the expanded area of the neck and "landed" on the shelf that's 2/3 of the way down the neck. Well, that's what I put it there for..... Ran the round through the seating die anyway, just to get them all to the same depth and to take the bell-mouth off the mouth of the case. Walked over to the Krag. Slid the cartridge into the chamber. Pushed the bolt to where it had stopped before, and then, with very little effort, got it to close all the way with basically no resistence!! Extracted just fine. Made four more rounds and tried them through the magazine and they feed slick as snot!
So, I'm quite happy I have functional ammunition, but now I'm a little dubious about their accuracy. I guess I'll find out in the next couple weeks whenever dad has a good-enough day to make it to the range. If anyone would care to speculate or give me some advice on a better work-around, I'm all ears. My only other thought would be to ream out the neck area so it would accept a loaded round with a fatter neck, but I'd want to do a chamber cast and do several throat and bore measurements before I go that drastic.
Anyway, had a busy last 6-7 months, but I did manage to get some brass and find the dies I'd bought from someone else here another time. Well, as sometimes happens, life has caught up with us. Dad has been diagnosed with stage 4 (advanced) pancreatic cancer. We've been working on the bucket list (pretty succesfully - we're lucky as this usually painful cancer has not been that bothersome with pain for him yet), and a main shooting request is that I take him out for some fun with his beloved Broomhandle Mauser. I'm also going to surprise him with some M-1 Carbine shooting (another favorite of his) & the Krag. Already had the carbine and broomhandle ammo covered, so today I went down to the reloading room with the Krag, and that's where it got tough.
I had a supply of Saeco 315s already GCed (but not lubed or sized), and I'd FL sized, primed, and neck-expanded the cases. I charged the cases with 16.0grs of 2400 and hand-lubed the boolits without sizing them. I put an unlubed & unsized boolit in the chamber and pressed against it with a pencil while inserting the cleaning rod from the muzzle. Marked the rod. Took the boolit out and put the bolt back in and closed it, shoved the rod down, and marked it again. Got a C.O.A.L. of 3.805". Went back to the loading bench, seated a bullet to that OAL and then locked down the seating die. Went back to the rifle, and got quite a lesson...
Inserted the round and tried to close the bolt. No go. About the rear 3/8" of the case could still be seen. Hmmmmm. Pulled the round out and inspected. Could see marks at the juncture of the ogive and side-body of the boolit. O.K. I need to go a little deeper, but how was I off 3/8" with my COAL measurement? Tried incrementally seating the bullet deeper, but go no where. Finally, with the bullet seated so deep, it looked like a 30-carbine nose sticking out the front of that long case, the bullet dropped down into the case into the powder charge... Uh oh...
Stupidly got mad and pulled the bullet, and, yes, you guessed it, left the GC down inside the powder chamber of the case... Looked the boolit over carefully and saw a distinct line that measured about .296-.270" around the nose of the boolit. Thought maybe I got a 6.5mm barrel? (Highly doubtful, as the member here whom I bought it from was shooting nice groups with 30-caliber boolits...) So, I dig out a piece of OO Buckshot, lube it, and drive it into the throat of the barrel. Drive it back out and measure. Averages around .315". Not bad. My boolits run about .314 at the base, so should be a perfect fit with not binding. Still very confused and getting worried about that .270" line around the nose...
Head-scratching time. Looked at the case, and now a lightbulb comes on, very dimly. There are some bright shiney longitudinal striations along the case neck where it was expanded. (I used a Lyman M-die to expand only the forward 2/3 of the neck, so there would be a "shelf" created by the tighter area of the neck, so boolits wouldn't get seated too deep/fall into the powder charge.) I took the empty case and threw it in the chamber. It stuck out that same 3/8". Closed the bolt and with a very minimal effort, was able to close the bolt all the way. OK, brass is "springy" and it probably had enough give to let me close the bolt, as long as there was no bullet in the way. Took the piece of brass back out and measured it. In the expanded area, it was running around .344". (Lightbulb!)
I've only been shooting rifle boolits recently (started last summer, still a noob), and I've been able to shoot both my '03 Springfields without sizing the Saeco 315s at all. Just pour 'em, GC 'em, and hand lube 'em, and they're ready to seat in the case. Never had chambering problems in those 30-06es. (For those who don't know, the Saeco 315 is a tapered boolit. At the base band, mine measures about .314" and the bands get decreasingly smaller as you move towards the nose of the boolit.) I've always been able to seat them out as long as I could (getting the OAL measurement as described above) and using the M-die to get the brass to accept the rather wide-bodied boolits. Not with this Krag...
I measured the base band, and again got the .314" I was expecting. Now measured across the non-crimped Hornady GC and got... .318"... (Ouch!). Now, I'm getting it. The seating die won't squeeze the neck walls like a size die will, so when I'm seating my .318" GC and .314" base-band boolit, there's not enough give so the brass can't spring down and go into the chamber. I've either got to neck-turn the brass or size the boolits down. Since I don't have a 30-cal mandrel for the neck turner, I didn't even bother doing the math to see if I could turn the brass down enough... I just decided to finally size these Saeco boolits and see what would happen.
Got out the box of sizer dies from my Lyman 450 to look for the rifle dies. (I've been using it all these years with just the pistol dies and just faintly remembered having the rifle dies.) Found a .309" die and rolled my eyes and said, "this is going to stink shooting .309" boolits down a .315" throat and probably a .311 to .312 bore (never drove that buckshot on through to see what the bore diameter was... OOPs). Then, I thought, well, let's look at all the dies... Got to digging and lord-have-mercy, there's a .311" H&I die! :)
Ran 25 boolits through the sizer and then seated one. Found that with this sizing stuff, I'm going to need a smaller M-die, as the boolits basically fell through the expanded area of the neck and "landed" on the shelf that's 2/3 of the way down the neck. Well, that's what I put it there for..... Ran the round through the seating die anyway, just to get them all to the same depth and to take the bell-mouth off the mouth of the case. Walked over to the Krag. Slid the cartridge into the chamber. Pushed the bolt to where it had stopped before, and then, with very little effort, got it to close all the way with basically no resistence!! Extracted just fine. Made four more rounds and tried them through the magazine and they feed slick as snot!
So, I'm quite happy I have functional ammunition, but now I'm a little dubious about their accuracy. I guess I'll find out in the next couple weeks whenever dad has a good-enough day to make it to the range. If anyone would care to speculate or give me some advice on a better work-around, I'm all ears. My only other thought would be to ream out the neck area so it would accept a loaded round with a fatter neck, but I'd want to do a chamber cast and do several throat and bore measurements before I go that drastic.