subsonic
09-28-2011, 10:05 PM
This will be the second revolver I have firelapped.
I learned a few things on the 686. With it, I used some mystery ball powder and had problems in two areas. First, I had more stuck boolits than I wanted. That mystery ball powder was some sort of fast shotgun powder made by winchester (St. Marks). It had problems when I tipped the muzzle down to shoot into my bucket of sand. I chose to use up some magnum primers and I think they contributed to my stuck boolit greif. I also had trouble with boolits pulling when seated into fired cases. If I seated them deep into the taper of the case wall to hold them, then the cases bulged and wouldn't fit in the chamber. I definitely learned some stuff...
I made up 6 for the .45 colt and shot them to test for sticking using the load tek4260 was using on his brass framed parts gun. 3gr of trailboss (.7 lee dipper) behind a lee 452-255rf seated nose down, flush with the case, that I cast from ACWW and did not size. Which brings me to another thing I just learned. When rolling the boolits between two plates to "charge" them with lapping compound, don't push too hard or roll for too long or you can crush the boolits. I mashed one until the crimp groove was gone! That was my "clue" that I was doing something wrong. I settled on 30 rolls back and forth between the plates, pushing down only with my fingertips, not my palms. I am not sure I'm getting enough lap compound imbedded in the boolits, but if I crush them undersized, they won't cut at all.
I learned a few things on the 686. With it, I used some mystery ball powder and had problems in two areas. First, I had more stuck boolits than I wanted. That mystery ball powder was some sort of fast shotgun powder made by winchester (St. Marks). It had problems when I tipped the muzzle down to shoot into my bucket of sand. I chose to use up some magnum primers and I think they contributed to my stuck boolit greif. I also had trouble with boolits pulling when seated into fired cases. If I seated them deep into the taper of the case wall to hold them, then the cases bulged and wouldn't fit in the chamber. I definitely learned some stuff...
I made up 6 for the .45 colt and shot them to test for sticking using the load tek4260 was using on his brass framed parts gun. 3gr of trailboss (.7 lee dipper) behind a lee 452-255rf seated nose down, flush with the case, that I cast from ACWW and did not size. Which brings me to another thing I just learned. When rolling the boolits between two plates to "charge" them with lapping compound, don't push too hard or roll for too long or you can crush the boolits. I mashed one until the crimp groove was gone! That was my "clue" that I was doing something wrong. I settled on 30 rolls back and forth between the plates, pushing down only with my fingertips, not my palms. I am not sure I'm getting enough lap compound imbedded in the boolits, but if I crush them undersized, they won't cut at all.