Front band ???

[GP100man]

On SWC or even a wadcutter does a wider front band help hold it straighter or is able to endure the forcing cone better ???

In particular the 357 magnum boolits , as it seems all I have that`s wider on the front bands is more accurate even with me driving !!

[captaint]

GP100man - A very general statement to be sure, but I would think that your "assumption" is correct. A wider front band SHOLD help with the boolit slamming into the cone, stability wise. enjoy Mike

[EDK]

Elmer Keith had some pretty definite ideas about front band width on his boolit designs. Also on diameter. He got pretty upset with LYMAN for altering his designs over the years...raised hell about rounded versus square grease grooves too!

IF you can recover your boolits, notice the difference in the groove that the rifling makes in the front band versus the rear. It may be wider.

:redneck: :cbpour:

[Lefty SRH]

How does greese groove shape affect the bullet? Personally I prefer the square grooves but the reason is the lube seems to stay in there better.

[Char-Gar]

The grease grooves on a real Keith design are not perfectly square (90 degree angles). They have a slight angle to them. Without that the bullets would be quite difficult to drop from the mold.

Keith felt the original design of his bullet, held more lube than the later change made by Lyman. At that time, he started recommending folks buy Hensley and Gibbs molds, because they retained the original design of his grease grooves.

I have fired many of the original design with square grooves and the later rounded grooves and I can't see any clear difference between the two in terms of accuracy, leading or anything else that matters. But, that said, I still prefer the orginal square grooves, just because Elmer said it was better. :-)

[bigboredad]

as far as front drive band goes look at it this way race cars have a pretty wide tire for better traction so to me it would stand to reason that a wide front drive band would help keep bullet skid down and help grab the rifleing much like a race car going into a corner? that may be a bad comparison but it made sense to me.

Grease grooves I think a much more important topic is what are you putting in them there grease grooves. lee has the shallowest grease grooves of any mold I've used yet when i use good lube it has never been a problem. That is my eperience if yours differs from mine I'd love to hear cause i want to learn as much about this as I can and sharing info beats the hel out of wasting time. good luck

[TomAM]

Boolits perform best when they don't have to jump through a void before reaching the full support and guidance of gun metal. Your chamber is larger diameter than your loaded round, so that it can be loaded easily. The portion in front of the chamber is then funneled down from about .378" diameter in front of the case mouth to about .358", with the funnel being about 1/8" long. The further the boolit has to tumble and squish it's way along before entering the cylinder's throat, the more deformed it is. The throat does NOT re-align the boolit, it re-shapes the now crooked boolit, with a base which is no longer square with the axis. Any support that the chamber's throat gives to guide the boolit must happen upon chambering, before the hammer drops. A wider front band reduces the jump.

[Char-Gar]

Keith designed his bullets with the wide top driving band to center in the throat and get the bullet started straight. At least that is what he wrote.

[Dale53]

I am a fan of Elmer's. When I started casting bullets and reloading my only teacher was Elmer's little blue book (at hand as I write this) "Sixgun Cartridges and Loads". I followed Elmer's advice and had good to excellent results right out of the box.

His wide front band was, as Char-Gar states, to align the bullet with the throat and reduce bullet jump to the thoat.
When Elmer designed his bullets, bullet lube was pretty basic. In fact, until E.H. Harrison did his serious work for the American Rifleman on cast bullets, we had no really good bullet lube. It worked but was not nearly so good as the Harrison lube (NRA 50/50 lube). Now that we have good lube (NRA 50/50 and dirivatives - I use Lars Carnauba Red) we can get by with a lesser amount of lube.

However, flat bottomed lube grooves still have some advantages even tho' we don't really need the capacity now (unless we are shooting black powder, then the capacity is MORE than welcome).

FWIW
Dale53

[GP100man]

Thanks for the input fellers !!

This has been ramblin in the back of my cranial cavity since I discovered the differences on the 357446 , the 1 with the wider front band shoots the best at any pressure .

The more I think I know the more I find out I don`t ,most of the time anyways

[Char-Gar]

The accuracy difference between Elmer Keith"s bullet (358429) and Phil Sharpe:s bullet (357446) has been a lively topic of discussion for several generations now. Elmer has a few choice words about Sharpe's bullet and Sharpe himself. Keith refered to him as "little Phil Sharpe". They were two very different people. Sharpe the thin short elegant Easterner and Keith the thick build, not so elegant Westerner. Their bullet designs competed head on, as well as the men competed head on, to be the resident expert on such things. Nobody said either man was short on ego. They were both wheel horses of their day, and we all own both of the a debt of gratitude for the contributions they made, which we enjoy today.

I have used both bullets extensively over the years and my gut tells me the Keith bullet has a smidge of an advantage in accuracy, but gives ground in flexibility of use due to it's longer length and greater weight.

[runfiverun]

there were many different lube long before col harrisons magic invention.
kieth had a couple of different lubes.
and the scheutzen shooters were also very interested in lube making, i recall elmer mentioning a lube made from parrafin-b-wax and vaseline that was worked up in the 30's.
the old nra formula was quite similar also at 50 b-wax/and 50 parrafin.
col harris was trying many different ingredients in his lubes which are still used today ceresin,b-wax,lanolin,oils etc...
then suddenly testing quit and the 50-50 formula became his main ware on the boardwalk.
i alway's wondered how that developed there is no background story i can find, just a high toned AAAAAAaaawhwhwhwhhh,and a stick of lube held in cupped hands appeared.
then wrote about constantly for 30 years.

[Char-Gar]

there were many different lube long before col harrisons magic invention.
kieth had a couple of different lubes.
and the scheutzen shooters were also very interested in lube making, i recall elmer mentioning a lube made from parrafin-b-wax and vaseline that was worked up in the 30's.
the old nra formula was quite similar also at 50 b-wax/and 50 parrafin.
col harris was trying many different ingredients in his lubes which are still used today ceresin,b-wax,lanolin,oils etc...
then suddenly testing quit and the 50-50 formula became his main ware on the boardwalk.
i alway's wondered how that developed there is no background story i can find, just a high toned AAAAAAaaawhwhwhwhhh,and a stick of lube held in cupped hands appeared.
then wrote about constantly for 30 years.

I am glad you brought that up, and it is very true. Good lube did not begin with NRA 50-50. Folks have been mixing and playing with lubes for generations before and often with lots of sucess.

The NRA 50-50 has proven to be a good general use lube, but it has it's drawbacks and limitations like all other lubes. Folks have been trying to find the magic lube ever since somebody poured the first bullet with lube grooves in it. I don't suspect we will every find the pot of gold at the end of that rainbow. As we produce new substances that might be used in lube, the hunt will still be on.

[Dale53]

Correction here (please bear with me). NRA original 50/50 lube is 50% pure natural beeswax and 50% Alox 2138f. Alox 2138f is no longer supplied by the manufacturer but can be duplicated using another product by the same manufacturer.

E.H. Harrison ran months of tests on both lube and general cast bullet experiments and published the results in the American Rifleman. I had a long talk with Bruce Hodgdon, back in the day, and he mentioned that Harrison took up every weekend of Hodgdon's for months doing extensive tests including pressure testing. They were very good friends, apparently.

At the time I was making my own lube (NRA 50/50) there were a number of decent lubes around. However, many lubes highly touted by their users haven't made the test of competition like the NRA's 50/50. I was a scheuetzen shooter for several years and observed, in National Competition that there were a number of very good lubes being used but also a number of borderline lubes used by some "big names". Everything is not what it seems, eh-h?

FWIW
Dale53

[Char-Gar]

The Fouling Shot came a few days ago with the results of 31 Cast Bullet Association matches accross the country in a number of classes of rifles.

There were 233 shooters, of which 11 used some form of NRA 50-50 lube.

So it would appear the boys who shoot for groups are not all in accord that NRA 50-50 is the way to go. The list of lubes these guys use would be staggering to put together and I don't think anything useful would be gained from doing so, as there is no clear consensus. The search goes on!

[Bigslug]

My brain needs more experience before it's fully "down" with Elmer's full-width driving band theory. But at this early stage in my revolver casting development, I'm a little dubious.

I may be somewhat off base in my thinking, but the thing is, with the possible exception of the engineering masterpieces of Freedom Arms, you can't count on the chamber to align perfectly to the barrel at the moment of ignition. Hold the trigger to the rear on your Smith or Ruger after the hammer has fallen and try to wiggle the cylinder. Odds are, you'll have a little play.

My first thought is that a little taper to the boolit might help deal with this slight misalignment. The system at work in my .455 Webley MKVI and .38/200 MKIV seems engineered to do just that - a long, gently-tapering boolit nose to help guide a loose-tolerance, built-for-mud revolver into proper alignment. In the case of the .455, the base is hollow, which might even help keep things square at the rear while this is going on.

My second thought is that the full diameter of the boolit is going to get to the forcing cone at some point, and the revolver has no way of knowing (or, I suspect, caring) if that full diameter is at the leading edge of the first driving band, or a small distance back. If the barrel/cylinder alignment is slightly off, that leading bit of the full diameter is going to get slightly smooshed whether it has a taper in front of it or not - - and I suspect more smooshed if the taper isn't there.

Possibly this matters more in the case of a shorter, lighter boolit (i.e. full wadcutters), that spend more time in the no-man's-land between leaving the brass and hitting the forcing cone. I'm thinking that longer shank boolits have more support for a longer period of time, and that these issues would matter less for them, and the bases would tend to remain square to the bore regardless of what's going on up at the front band. In the case of a non-revolver, best accuracy results are usually achieved by seating the projectile so that it's fairly close to the lands, reducing the chance of the bullet getting "off plumb". In a revolver, you can't do this, so the only ways to maintain alignment are to hire machine shop Jedi Masters (Freedom Arms) or to use the bullet's shape to your advantage (tapered nose and/or long body)

As they say, it's all theory until you drop the hammer, and Elmer certainly did a lot more of this than I have or ever will. But unless there's some bit of internal ballistic drama that I'm missing in the above ramble, I'm thinking that his success was more due to careful measurement of the gun, and equally careful construction and assembly of the ammo than the leading edge of the boolits. Note also that Elmer was known as a heavy-for-caliber shooter, and his longer boolits may have helped him out.

[bigboredad]

well you certainly have put more thought into this than would. For me and guys this is just my experience and what has worked for me. that the more bearing surface you bullet has to the barrel the more accurate it will be.

[Char-Gar]

[QUOTE=Bigslug;1869863]My brain needs more experience before it's fully "down" with Elmer's full-width driving band theory. But at this early stage in my revolver casting development, I'm a little dubious."

We have had three or four generations of shooters shooting Keith designed bullets. These years have taught us that for everything Elmer was wrong about, there were about 99 things he was right about.

In the end, the theory doesn't mean jack it is the facts that only matter. The bullets shoot like a house-a-fire and kill game like the hammer of Thor when put in the right spot. I don't really know what more a fellow can expect or want.

[EDK]

Some of the younger shooters need to obtain and read copies of SIXGUNS and HELL, I WAS THERE...as well as others of Uncle Elmer's books and his various magazine articles. He received a lot of queries and replied with his manual typewriter over the years. He definitely would have been a high volume poster here and other places....and almost as popular as some of our guys with people who consider themselves Elmer's heirs on some other web sites. (It is unfortunate that there are always elitists or wanna-bes in any sport or activity.)

Elmer lived out in wild country UNTIL late in life...and his writing and guiding career had finally taken off. He ranched, trapped, guided, etc...whatever it took to make a living. He probably killed more game than many of us will ever see. As a result, his designs were "what worked" on game animals, etc. rather than a design worked out on paper.

:redneck: :cbpour: :guntootsmiley:

[Dale53]

I was a teen ager back in the Fifties. I started with no one to guide me and was encouraged by a father who was a real "gunny" but had no reloading experience. He bought me Elmer's little blue book, "Sixgun Cartridges and Loads" (which, incidentally, is lying by me as we "talk"). I followed Elmer's prescriptions and had excellent results casting my own bullets, reloading and shooting handguns. Later, I became competitive with smallbore, handguns, and big bore as well as muzzle loaders. I learned a heck of a lot over the next sixty years. One thing that stuck with me, is that today, Elmer Keith is still CURRENT!

He's been called everything but what he was (by the ignorant), but was an extremely experienced
cowboy (as in REAL), hunter, guide, and all around shooter (runner up in the Wimbleton at Camp Perry, as an example). I was privaledged to meet him a couple of times and wish I could have known him better. He was a MAN and then some...

FWIW
Dale53

[44man]

I have played with the semi wad cutter forever and Elmer is correct with guidance in the throats. No more needs said about that.
However any revolver needs PERFECT alignment to the cone and few have that, even very expensive guns. I seen several too tight that wore the side of the cone and rifling down to destruction in few shots because the cylinder could not align when shot. The cylinder play is there for a reason.
The problem with the semi wad cutter is the shoulder and the smaller then bore nose. You have to depend on the little shoulder to pull the cylinder but soft boolits just get it wiped off so you have a bad start. It only takes a few thousandths off center.
I found I could cut groups by 2/3's making the boolit harder, 28 to 30 BHN.
The best is to make the nose pull the cylinder instead. The LBT style and RNFP will both increase accuracy even with softer boolits.
Line boring is not perfect either. A jig is screwed into the frame to start the bores in the cylinder but then the cylinder is removed to finish the boring and reversed to chamber from the other end. Then a barrel is screwed in and it might not have a centered bore. The cylinder is fit tight to give you a good feeling about quality but it can be a false feeling. Many, many steps that all need perfection to .00001" or it adds up. Personally, I will not own a line bored gun.
The most accurate revolver has some wiggle and uses a boolit to align the cylinder.
I do not shoot Keith boolits when I want superior accuracy to rival a rifle. I do NOT want super tight cylinder lockup.

[MikeS]

44man, I'm curious, I've never noticed line boring as a selling point on a gun. How exactly are you going to know what method was used to make any particular revolver? Do you call the factories and ask them their manufacturing methods? And just because a particular method MIGHT make a gun that's out of alignment, I'm willing to bet if it happened too often the company would change how they do it.

[MtGun44]

Elmer's reason for the wide front band is to have it's front corner nearly or actually in contact with
the cone of transition from the chamber to the throat, aligning the front of the boolit with
the throat more closely before launch. In addition, the band is intended to be strong so that it can
engage the rifling well as it enters the barrel.

As to the comment about slop in the cylinder at point of firing - Colt's of the Police Positive
through Python action type have no or extremely little side to side slop - they are designed
to have the bolt and hand in opposition with no slop. S&W designs are set up with a
bit of intentional slop. A real expert (with a roomful of pistol trophies) shooter and
pistolsmith has told me that this slop is a requirement for best accuracy since it is
effectively impossible to align all the cyl holes with the barrel precisely. Better to not even
try too hard, let the boolit do the final alignment as it exits the cylinder.

Colts get a hammering if there is any misalignment, S&Ws do no. I am of the opinion
that this is why many/most Colt revolvers need timing repairs dramatically sooner than
S&Ws.

Bill

[Bigslug]

44man, it sounds like we're kinda-sorta on the same sheet of music.

Since my first post on this thread, I've cast up my first batch of 358429's from a new production Lyman mold. I've been playing with these and my GP100.

This mold is one of the "blasphemous" departures from Elmer's original design in that the front band of this boolit is .354" while the two rear bands are .358". The full length of all three driving bands is about .45" long, while the two rear bands are about .30" long. Some various fit checks in my gun:

Inserting the boolit into the muzzle: The front band stops on the crown. This tells me that the front band is going to be hitting forcing cone before rifling.

Inserting the boolit into the front of the cylinder: The front band drops easily inside, but it's a snug slip-fit (no play). The .358" bands do not fit at all and will require the force of gunpowder to make the trip.

Inserting the boolit nose-forward into the barrel from the rear: There is approximately .173" of the rear of the boolit remaining visible outside the barrel. It is clear that the entire .11" rear driving band will still be locked well inside the cylinder at the point that the front band contacts the barrel's forcing cone.

Inserting the boolit into the barrel from the rear in a "loaded backwards" orientation: There is approximately .22" of driving band surface remaining visible outside the barrel.

These last two tell me that Keith's full .358" front driving band would hit my GP100's forcing cone about .047" farther to the rear than the new Lyman design.

There is about .145" from the front of the .354" leading band to the front of the second, .358" band. Soooo. . .the boolit should have about .035" of forward movement between the rear of the boolit clearing the cylinder and the middle driving band hitting the forcing cone. At that point, however, the entire front band will be under compression.

So. . .I'm not seeing what accuracy advantage a .358" front band would offer to this process - at least to this particular boolit design/gun combination. The front band is going to be compressing to bore diameter while the rear band is still under compression from the cylinder.

I'm not saying that Elmer's full bands AREN'T inherently more accurate than various tapered or stepped systems, but I'm not seeing any reason why this might be the case - these observations being made with a modified Keith design. Both styles should center themselves up grievance-free.:-?:confused:

[44man]

44man, I'm curious, I've never noticed line boring as a selling point on a gun. How exactly are you going to know what method was used to make any particular revolver? Do you call the factories and ask them their manufacturing methods? And just because a particular method MIGHT make a gun that's out of alignment, I'm willing to bet if it happened too often the company would change how they do it.
All production revolvers are not line bored. Some but not all custom revolvers are. Freedom is line bored.
It would be OK if some play was allowed in the cylinder.
I don't find a lot of difference in production methods but when you make a cylinder too tight, the alignment just has to be perfect with each chamber. Line boring is not any better then boring all chambers at once nor is it worse. It is the tight lock up that is the problem.
Many judge revolver quality by fit and finish. That increases cost without making the gun shoot better. I have had and shot too many Rugers that shot 1/2" at 50 yards and the BFR's have all been extremely accurate.
The best custom guns I have shot had play in the cylinder. Jack Huntington and Lee Martin guns have play.
It does not take much but if you gripe about a tiny wiggle, you would be wrong.
The problem with the Keith shoulder is you need perfection because the shoulder is not tough enough unless extremely hard to pull the cylinder.
That goes for a full wad cutter. It is the worst.

[Bigslug]

For what it's worth, I just did the same checks with my 358429's on my Smith 640-1. This gun has a shorter forcing cone than the GP:

Boolit inserted into barrel nose-first to contact with forcing cone: .263" of boolit visible behind rear of barrel.

Boolit inserted butt-first to contact with forcing cone: .312" of driving band surfaces visible behind rear of barrel.

So this boolit in gets .049" further down the bore before full diamter hits than would be the case with a full diameter front band. This is close enough to my GP100's .47" that I'd say the difference is only in my measuring.

Eyeballing from the side - at the point the front band is contacting the forcing cone, the rear 50% of the middle driving band has yet to clear the cylinder. The middle band should be well compressed by the time the cylinder gets finished.

Again, if a full diameter leading band IS the feature that makes a boolit more accurate, I'm having a hard time seeing what would be the reason for it.

[44man]

For what it's worth, I just did the same checks with my 358429's on my Smith 640-1. This gun has a shorter forcing cone than the GP:

Boolit inserted into barrel nose-first to contact with forcing cone: .263" of boolit visible behind rear of barrel.

Boolit inserted butt-first to contact with forcing cone: .312" of driving band surfaces visible behind rear of barrel.

So this boolit in gets .049" further down the bore before full diamter hits than would be the case with a full diameter front band. This is close enough to my GP100's .47" that I'd say the difference is only in my measuring.

Eyeballing from the side - at the point the front band is contacting the forcing cone, the rear 50% of the middle driving band has yet to clear the cylinder. The middle band should be well compressed by the time the cylinder gets finished.

Again, if a full diameter leading band IS the feature that makes a boolit more accurate, I'm having a hard time seeing what would be the reason for it.
What I said, it is at the cone where it counts. You can start a boolit perfect in the throats but if the chamber is a few thousandths out of line and the boolit can't pull the cylinder, accuracy is lost and gun wear will be bad. Off center cone and rifling wear will make every boolit enter the bore off center.
Leave the super tight cylinders alone and even a new tighter pin can ruin your gun.
Guys come over and brag how tight their new gun is. "look, my cylinder locks up like a vault." OK, it makes you feel good, that's all.