electra

[flounderman]

I have a cva electra, 50 cal, 1 in 28. got the lee real 320 mold. first bullets were too hard and the last ones are better. The electra is unvented and the bullet compresses air when you try to shove it down the barrel. takes a while to get it to seat. had one pop out of the barrel after I thought it was ok. read the post about venting and it might be an idea for an electra. Does anybody have a 1 in 28 50 caliber and what works best in it?

[johnson1942]

newton is working on that ask him.

[Nobade]

Why not use bore diameter bullets? That way they have room around them for air to escape. I shoot nothing but paper patched boolits at or under bore diameter in all my inlines and am very happy with their performance.

[RhodeHunter]

I was puzzled why the air could not escape until I googled the Electra and found out it has the electronic breech plug. I can see that would cause a problem when loading a REAL.

I have the CVA Optima, a 1-in-28", .50-cal, and only have one hunting season under my belt, using the REAL, 320 grain. I cannot go over 60 gr of loose Pyrodex RS or I will have flyers, but the 60 still packs a punch and no boolit drop out to 100 yards either.

You could size the REAL down with a luber/sizer. They're always selling those in the swappin' section. If you do this, you might want to try a felt wad between the powder and the REAL. It helped my accuracy.

Or you could do like Nobade says and look for smaller boolit.

I don't know about venting; that recent post is the first I've ever heard of it.

[MarkW]

I have an Electra too, and also use the 320 Gr REAL bullets.

The first batch I really over-lubed, using 2 coats of liquid alox and then put them in a bag with some johnson paste wax.

As mentioned, these guns are really sealed! If you push the bullet down and let go of the ramrod, it can push the bullet back up the barrel a foot or so!

How I dealt with the problem of too-tight bullets is to score a line in the bullet with a knife, in line to the axis of the bullet and through the driving bands. That worked pretty well giving excellent groups but every 5th or so bullet would be a flyer anywhere from 2 to 5 inches. Other than that all the other bullets would touch at 50 yards.

The next batch of bullets I cast up just got one light coat of liquid alox and they seat just fine in my gun and I only shot 6 so far, but there were no flyers.

I use 90 grains of pyrodex RS. 100 grains was giving me around 1520 fps according to the chrono, and 90 gave me between 1440-1490 fps so I'm keeping that for the time being. 80 grains gave me 1200 fps, quite a bit of a drop in velocity.

It is too close to deer season for any more fiddling around, but I am planning on turning a sizer for it next year. Here are the the measurements I get:

Slugs are cast using pure ingot lead (ingots are stamped).

As cast, the foremost band measures .515"

When slugged through the barrel, measurements are .498 and .507 for the land/grooves.

With pure lead and 90 grains of powder, bullets recovered show signs of obturation at the base, so I am going to start with a sizer of .050 and see how that affects both loading and accuracy.

One last variable I haven't dealt with yet is I have a hard time casting flawless bullets so I might add some solder to the next batch of lead. If that hardens it up enough to prevent sealing to where accuracy is affected then I'll work on that as well.

Anyway, hope this helps someone! If I still have trouble with balky bullets I have also thought about getting a minie mold and sizing that down so they load super easy but I am optimistic on the REAL bullets still.

[newton]

I like the heavy boolits in the 1:28 twist. I saw an electra for sale and highly considered buying it for the sheer fun of trying it out.

The boolit I have worked up so far would probably fair well in this situation. Its a 515 grain, knurled boolit, with liquid alox only for the lube.

If I had the gun then I could see how sizing it just a thousandth or more smaller than the groove diameter would allow it to leak a little air past while seating. I like the knurling on them because it gives so much boolit to bore contact, yet is flexible enough to load easier than any other boolit I have tried including the REAL's.

The REAL seems to be a very hard boolit to cast perfect. I have cast a lot of them for others and always with pure lead. The best way to do it is run the lead as hot as possible. But I really think there are better boolits for shooting in the fast twist guns, unless 50 or so yards is your normal shooting distance and your not looking for tight groups.