8mm"06 .324 barrel

[shooting on a shoestring]

I bought a used 323470, gas checks and two H&I dies .323 and .325. Last night I cast up a batch of water quenched wheel weight 323470s. The boolits measured spot on .323 this morning. I thought I remembered the slugging the barrel a couple of years back and thinking it was .324. I slugged it this morning and yep its .324.

I'm currently soaking the copper fouling out of the barrel and thinking about loading some starting loads with 2400 and go ahead and shoot some .323s in my .324 bore. Or, I could chuck the .323s back in the pot and recast instead of lubing and gas checking. If I recast, I could try to get that 0.001 with alloy content, or simply "beagleing" a little.

Any thoughts or predictions on leading with 2400 and .323s in a .324 bore?

[felix]

You won't be happy! ... felix

[shooting on a shoestring]

Felix...that was fast.

I guess I should bite the boolit and go get busy. To quote my great uncle "If a jobs worth doing, its worth doing the hard way."

I'll go pour myself a hot one.

[sundog]

I'm with Felix. Recycle and beagle your mould this time. Then run them thru the .325 die. In fact, if they work to any degree of satisfaction, you may even want to lap out the .325 die to .326.

You may not get any leading with what you have now, but you won't get any performance either.

[shooting on a shoestring]

Well I added a foot of leadfree solder(95% tin 5%antimony) to about a pound of WW to boost my tin content. The result was an increase in diameter of about half thousandth. I then added about a pound of linotype to the mix. The result was an increase of about another half thousandth. I cast roughly 45 boolits measuring .3238. I'm going to load them.

This will be my first venture in cast in this rifle. I'll start slow with 2400.

I really want to stick to straight WW, so I'll either need to do some "Beagling" or look for a fatter mould. The fatter mould sounds the best to me right now. I think I recall MidSouth having a fat Lee in stock around 200 grains. I'll look into that.

[Hackleback]

Lee makes a 205gr .329 mould that is for the 8x56R Hungarian you might want to check out.

[NVcurmudgeon]

Shoestring, I have done quite a bit of bumping up SLIGHTLY undersized boolits by leaning gently on the lubrisizer handle when the boolit is bottomed. Bet you could size your 323 boolits in the 325 die and gain something. I wouldn't try it with hard cast boolits, or if the boolits are way undersize. Also, if you can beat the boolit fit problem you don't need quenching in the 8mm up to 1800-2000 fps. I started with C.E. Harris' universal milsurp load of 16.0 X 2400 and finally settled on 19.0.

[Larry Gibson]

Size and lube the bullets in the .325 H die. The GC will be sized to that diameter and effectively seal the bore at the base of the bullet. The bullets aren't that much undersize so they should shoot well with normal cast loads in the 1600-1900 fps range.

Larry Gibson

[wonderwolf]

Felix...that was fast.

I guess I should bite the boolit and go get busy. To quote my great uncle "If a jobs worth doing, its worth doing the hard way."

I'll go pour myself a hot one.


I really like that :Fire:

[shooting on a shoestring]

I was suprised to see my freshly cast .3248 boolits being slightly sized by my .325 H&I die. The finished product is spot on .325. I wonder if cast boolits can "grow" like cerrosafe on sitting for a couple of hours? Whatever the cause, I think I have boolits 0.001" bigger than my groove diameter and I think its time to try them this weekend.

[shooting on a shoestring]

I got my first range results with 323470 GC and 8mm'06 today. Boolits were roughly 50/50 WW/Lino with a bit of lead free solder (95% tin, 5% antimony), water quenched, gas checked, Felix WFL, 0.3245 to 0.325 in my 0.324 bore.

20 grs 2400, velocities 1660 to 1690, 2.75" @ 100 yds (5 shots), 6.625" @ 200 yds (5 shots).

25 grs 2400, velocities 1978 to 1984, 2.0" & 2.625" @ 100 yds (5 shots).

45.0 gr 4895, velocities 2227 to 2235, 3.25 & 3.625 (3 shot groups) @ 100 yds, 9.5" @ 200 yds (5 shot group).

Over all, good enough place to start. I think I'll use 2400 and run a series of seating depths and see if that makes much difference. Then I'll expand to a few more powders.

I've got to neck up some more '06 cases. Mine are mostly mil surp from the 1950s, so they will need have their necks annealed first, then primer pockets de-crimped, trimmed to length and fire formed. It may take a couple of weeks.