Jim
08-30-2012, 03:41 PM
Several months ago, I was given an old Ideal 462560 mold. I got all excited 'cause I had a beeg boolit to shoot in mah gun. I ran a bunch and found out the 'as cast' is .453. Well, dang.
I got to thinkin' about that today and the light came on. I looked at the profiles of several cartridge drawings and found that somewhere in the middle of the body of a .308 case, the diameters run from .473 down to .454. If I could figure out how to shove one of these boolits into a .308 F/L die, it might bump it up and then I could size it back down in a .459 push through die.
I set up my hillbilly lathe, a drill motor in a vise. I put a 5/16 hex bolt in the drill, turned it on and got after the hex head with a side grinder. After I got it rounded, I took off with a file enough that the rounded head would drop all the way into a .308 F/L die. I cut the excess of the threaded shank off with a hack 'em up saw, cleaned it up and ran in the house like a little girl with a new dolly.
It works! Ya' gotta do a little adjusting on the depth of the die, but pushin' the boolit in with the ram from a .452 sizer die bulges the boolit just enough that it's fatter than it should be. Ya' run it back through a .459 die and there ya' have it. It even bulges the gas check shank out, so it goes from a GC to a PB.
http://floydpics.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/dscn1117-e1346354538306.jpg
I got to thinkin' about that today and the light came on. I looked at the profiles of several cartridge drawings and found that somewhere in the middle of the body of a .308 case, the diameters run from .473 down to .454. If I could figure out how to shove one of these boolits into a .308 F/L die, it might bump it up and then I could size it back down in a .459 push through die.
I set up my hillbilly lathe, a drill motor in a vise. I put a 5/16 hex bolt in the drill, turned it on and got after the hex head with a side grinder. After I got it rounded, I took off with a file enough that the rounded head would drop all the way into a .308 F/L die. I cut the excess of the threaded shank off with a hack 'em up saw, cleaned it up and ran in the house like a little girl with a new dolly.
It works! Ya' gotta do a little adjusting on the depth of the die, but pushin' the boolit in with the ram from a .452 sizer die bulges the boolit just enough that it's fatter than it should be. Ya' run it back through a .459 die and there ya' have it. It even bulges the gas check shank out, so it goes from a GC to a PB.
http://floydpics.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/dscn1117-e1346354538306.jpg