New boolits for the 375

[Nobade]

Being frustrated at not having a proper mould for my White .366 bore rifle, (.375 in the grooves) I finally broke down and made one. It is a nose pour design, and casts a .358", 370 grain missile that patches up to .365" so it is a perfect slip fit in the bore. Now if the weather would cooperate I can go out and see how they fly!

When I was making the cutter, I was thinking the barrel was a 1:14 twist so I made the boolit appropriately. But then I remembered it was 1:12, so they could have been longer but this seems sufficient anyhow.

-Nobade

6227562274

[idahoron]

They look great! Ron

[johnson1942]

i like the fact you are more concerned about the length instead of the weight of the bullet. it will probably drive tacks and be a long range bullet also. do you dry wrap your bullets? lately i have found my dry wrappped pp bullets for muzzle loaders out do the wet wrapped ones. what is your experience with this? keep us all in the loop

[longbow]

Not so much interested in the boolits as the mould!

I make cylindrical pushout moulds very similar to yours.

Curious how you made yours nose pour ~ I use a steel insert and handle it with a magnet.

Also, do you have an "ejector" pin or do you just depend on shrinkage and gravity to allow the boolit to slide out? I use an ejector pin.

Very nice looking mould and boolits! Great work.

Longbow

[Nobade]

i like the fact you are more concerned about the length instead of the weight of the bullet. it will probably drive tacks and be a long range bullet also. do you dry wrap your bullets? lately i have found my dry wrappped pp bullets for muzzle loaders out do the wet wrapped ones. what is your experience with this? keep us all in the loop

I have never gotten dry wrapping to work for me. I wet wrap them (and everything else) and crease the patch around the corner of the base so I get a nice flat base with a spot of lead in the middle. No tails. I tried dry wrapping, but I never could figure out how to hold the end of the patch down without glue or something so I just keep doing it this way.

-Nobade

[Nobade]

Not so much interested in the boolits as the mould!

I make cylindrical pushout moulds very similar to yours.

Curious how you made yours nose pour ~ I use a steel insert and handle it with a magnet.

Also, do you have an "ejector" pin or do you just depend on shrinkage and gravity to allow the boolit to slide out? I use an ejector pin.

Very nice looking mould and boolits! Great work.

Longbow

To make it nose pour, I first made a "D" reamer. Turned it cylindrical and filed in the nose until it looked like what I thought a boolit should look like. Highly scientific, y'know. Then I drilled the sprue hole through the length of the body, and roughed out most of the cavity with a drill somewhat smaller than the finished diameter. Then it was just a matter of running the reamer in until the shoulder touched the bottom of the mould body. A light facing cut on both ends and polishing the cavity with some 800 grit paper and that part was done. The two sprue plates were made from some hot rolled strap I had. I drew them out with a scribe, roughed them out on a vertical bandsaw, and ground them to shape with a pedestal grinder. Lapped them flat with some sand paper on the surface plate. Then it was just a matter of locating the holes and drilling them. One thing I did learn was to make the spacer tube longer. The body got bigger when it heated up but the tube didn't, so the plates started to bind. Maybe .010" longer than the body would work better. It works fine if it's kind of loose but it's not good to be too tight.

There is no ejection pin, I just open the sprue plates and rap the mould on the edge of the wooden box I use to catch the boolits. They drop out with no effort. I suppose if one stuck you could push it out from the top with a toothpick or other piece of wood.

The next time I make a mould, I am going to try making one with a blind cavity and see how that works. A buddy here in town has been doing them that way for some time now and it works for him, so I'll give it a go and see what happens.

-Nobade

[longbow]

Okay, I gotcha!

I make mine similar to the old Ideal style but I use 1 1/2" round bar and mount the sprue plate to the round bar. I normally just use cold rolled steel but have also used bronze. I have not used aluminum because I couldn't find any of the right size locally.

I use an ejector pin which is some cases is just a pin and the cavity is cut with a D bit but base pour so the ejector pin pushes the nose and/or is a part of a hollow pointing system as well as an ejector pin. In other cases, I bore right through and the ejector pin carries the nose form as part of it so by changing the nose form, I get a different boolit from the same mould. Also, it allows for adjusting the nose form up or down so variable weight as well.

The nose pour moulds I make use a nose insert and flat faced ejector so that face becomes the base of the boolit.

I tried without an ejector pin but found that occasionally I got a sticker... then there was trouble with no through hole. Usually, stickers resulted from cutting the sprue before the alloy had fully solidified. Bad juju that!

Nice work and thanks for letting me know your tricks!

Longbow

[Nobade]

I got to shoot some of these yesterday, and I think I am going to have to shorten the mould a touch. It was shooting into right at 2 MOA, but the holes in the target were showing signs of tipping. Just a little grey smudge on one side. I had hoped to be able to load them hotter, but the best accuracy was coming at 45gr. Swiss 1.5F. I did recover one in the dirt behind the taget, and it was the prettiest mushroom you'll ever see. But most importantly the base was perfect, so it looks like my wad stack consisting of a .030" poly wad and a lubed felt wad is working. That also kept the bore scraped and I didn't have to wipe at all through 52 shots. Oh, I did wear out the nipple already. The TC stainless one didn't hold up too well, I sure see why they make platinum lined ones.

-Nobade

[johnson1942]

nobade: quite a while ago i bought a alot of .50 cal felt wads but never used them. was talking on the phone the other day to a international muzzleloader competitor and he said his .45 loves felt wads and doesnt like fiber or poly wads, so i set up a new 100 yard target and shot a few rounds pp bullets out of my 1/23 twist .50. and he was right my gun liked the felt wads behind the bullet better than the fiberwads. i would have never guessed but the proof was alot more tighter consistant groups.i love to learn and improve, keep your posts comming, i read every word. thanks.

[1Shirt]

Keep this thread going with the results as you modify! Very interesting!
1Shirt!

[idahoron]

nobade: quite a while ago i bought a alot of .50 cal felt wads but never used them. was talking on the phone the other day to a international muzzleloader competitor and he said his .45 loves felt wads and doesnt like fiber or poly wads, so i set up a new 100 yard target and shot a few rounds pp bullets out of my 1/23 twist .50. and he was right my gun liked the felt wads behind the bullet better than the fiberwads. i would have never guessed but the proof was alot more tighter consistant groups.i love to learn and improve, keep your posts comming, i read every word. thanks.

I use felt wads that are .62 so they kind of pucker when I put them in. They seal great. Ron

[Green Lizzard]

nobade have you ever used walters wads?

[Nobade]

nobade have you ever used walters wads?

Yes I have, but any more I make wad punches like the ones Fred Cornell makes and are sold through Buffalo Arms. This way I can make cards, felt, poly, cork, or whatever else I want to use. Remember for the price of two bags of Walter's wads you can buy a cutter and make as many as you would ever need.

Oh, I cast up some more boolits last night with the shortened mould. They now weigh 330 grains, hopefully I can shoot them some this weekend if I can find another nipple for this rifle.

-Nobade

[rhbrink]

Nobade how long is that boolit I would like to run the numbers through a ballistic calculater that I have as someday I would like to build a target muzzleloader on a underhammer action. Need to know the twist for sure too. Thanks.

RB

[Nobade]

Nobade how long is that boolit I would like to run the numbers through a ballistic calculater that I have as someday I would like to build a target muzzleloader on a underhammer action. Need to know the twist for sure too. Thanks.

RB

They were 1.4 inches, now they are 1.3 inches. .358" dia. The barrel is a 1:12 twist. Greenhill says it should stabilize a 1.6" boolit but I think the very low velocity is keeping it from doing so. It is a off the shelf Adams & Bennett barrel from Midway, which has quite deep grooves. I think if you could lay your hands on a barrel with shallower grooves it would likely work better. This one doesn't lead any, but I just have a feeling it would shoot better with grooves of maybe .0035" - .004" deep instead of .0045" like this one is.

-Nobade

[rhbrink]

I plugged both boolits in the Don Miller's twist rule and it shows that both will be stable down to 800fps. Maybe too stable it claims that you could get better accuracy by going to a slower twist. So I plugged in a 14 in twist and it also shows them both being stable down to 800 fps also. I would guess that the deep rifling isn't helping you any but keep up the good work and let us know what is happening. Curious minds want to know?

RB:coffee:

[johnson1942]

norbade: according to my experience with the green hill formula your 1.4 bullet should be a perfect 200 yard bullet, poss even shoot better at 200 yards than 100 yards. a bullet like that will yee and yaw some to 200 yards. should settle down at 200 yards. past 300 yards it will poss go bad. the 1.3 long bullet should be a very good mid range distance bullet but it is slightly poss it wont be as tight at 200 yards as the 1.4 bullet. if you want to shoot 1000 yards i would try a 1.24 long bullet as it should reach the target stable. a good thousand yard bullet poss wont shoot as good at short distance as a bullet that shoot good short distances doesnt do long distances well. if your mould is adjustable you may even try a 1.5 long bullet and shoot it at 100 to 200 yards. i bet it would drive tacks a those distances, but again dont go past 300 yards with that one. keep us all in the loop your post is very interesting to us number crunchers. my 620 grain .45 pp bullet wouldnt do a 1000 yards but to 300 yards it shoot so tight its spooky.

[rhbrink]

Well that's what I like something that shoots so tight that it's spooky! I can handle lots of that "spooky". One thing that keeps running through my mind is that when you load a paper patched boolit that is .358 in diameter 1.4 inches long then you light the big fire and it swells up to fit a .375 bore at least comes close to groove diameter minus the paper thickness something has to change. That boolit is no longer 1.4 inches long so that has to have a direct bearing on the twist rate and velocity and stablity and the longer range that you send it the more it effects the boolit. And accuracy somewhere along the way.

Just setting here waiting for about 20" of snow to melt and it sure is taking it's sweet time too.

RB