Larry Gibson
12-29-2007, 06:35 PM
Few years back I got one of the Shilen short chambered 26" barrels for small ring Mausers from Brownell's chambered in .35 Remington. I put it on a cut down M91 Argentine Mauser that I'd also picked up for next to nothing. The short chamber looked kind of interesting so I just shortened a FL die and made up some cases. Worked fine and seemed to shoot ok but I never could get acceptable accuracy out of the 358315 200 gr bullet above 1500 fps or so. Shot really well with several .38/357 cast bullets.
Then I'd picked up 300 new cases and didn't feel like reforming them. Got a deal on a .35 Rem reamer here (Preacher I think?) and finally got around to actually finish reaming the chamber. I'd also made a deal here on a RCBS 35-200-FN mould. I had high hopes that bullet would shoot well. As a matter of fact that RCBS bullet shoots very well indeed! I got a good load worked up using the RCBS bullet cast of 6/4 WW/linotype alloy. Bullets drop at .359 so I use a .360 H die to seat GC and lube. The WW Super cases are NS'd in a Redding NS die and CCI 34 primers used. Milsurp 4895 is used and 37 gr gives 100% loading density. Velocity is 2125 fps out of the 26" barrel. I got out yesterday to put a zero on the rifle with this load.
The day was a cold (38 degrees), damp rainy day with a blustery wind blowing. I set up a 50 yard pistol target at 100 yards as the 8" bull gives me a little better aiming target with iron sights on darker days. Turns out the elevation was right on and the windage only off by 1 moa. Group on the left is first 5 out of clean barrel then I moved the Lyman sight 4 clicks right and fired the second group. The groups seem to indicate the barrel is stringing the shots but it isn't. I attribute that to the changing light conditions. I fired two other groups and they were round. The conditions had worsened for those last two groups. Five shots were with the regular bullet and five were with the bullet HP'd .225". The groups seemed to overlap but hard to tell. Further testing in better conditions will tell any POI difference with the HP bullets. The RCBS bullet looks very promising right now.
Larry Gibson
Then I'd picked up 300 new cases and didn't feel like reforming them. Got a deal on a .35 Rem reamer here (Preacher I think?) and finally got around to actually finish reaming the chamber. I'd also made a deal here on a RCBS 35-200-FN mould. I had high hopes that bullet would shoot well. As a matter of fact that RCBS bullet shoots very well indeed! I got a good load worked up using the RCBS bullet cast of 6/4 WW/linotype alloy. Bullets drop at .359 so I use a .360 H die to seat GC and lube. The WW Super cases are NS'd in a Redding NS die and CCI 34 primers used. Milsurp 4895 is used and 37 gr gives 100% loading density. Velocity is 2125 fps out of the 26" barrel. I got out yesterday to put a zero on the rifle with this load.
The day was a cold (38 degrees), damp rainy day with a blustery wind blowing. I set up a 50 yard pistol target at 100 yards as the 8" bull gives me a little better aiming target with iron sights on darker days. Turns out the elevation was right on and the windage only off by 1 moa. Group on the left is first 5 out of clean barrel then I moved the Lyman sight 4 clicks right and fired the second group. The groups seem to indicate the barrel is stringing the shots but it isn't. I attribute that to the changing light conditions. I fired two other groups and they were round. The conditions had worsened for those last two groups. Five shots were with the regular bullet and five were with the bullet HP'd .225". The groups seemed to overlap but hard to tell. Further testing in better conditions will tell any POI difference with the HP bullets. The RCBS bullet looks very promising right now.
Larry Gibson