pmer
07-23-2015, 12:29 AM
I had that barrel come in 6 or 8 weeks ago and finally got some time to play with it. It's a MGM 38-40 WCF 20" inch barrel with a 1-16 twist rate. I'm impressed with the barrel and the G2 Contender is working good, it has accounted for many prairie dogs in South Dakota and Wyoming. Then it is wearing a 17 Mach IV. I'm writing this because I mentioned the 38-40 coming in another thread this spring.
I picked up a Lyman 401043 mold and a .401 sizer die. They weigh 172 grains coated with Harbor Freight red epoxy powder. A Lyman manual was used for 9.0 of grains of Unique and a OAL of 1.592. The boolits came out to be a 12 BHN with COWW, a little tin and some Superhard from Rotometals. I'm new powder coating and they were sprayed standing on their noses with a HF gun and baked at 400 degrees in a Craigslist double oven.
The MGM chamber seems pretty nice and should be easy on brass. The rifling is high for cast, didn't measure the bore. I didn't see any sign of leading at these pressures weather coated or lubed. Accuracy shouldn't be a problem but I need a more precise scope on it to really find out. The 1X red dot scope makes aiming fast and I'm getting around 2" or better groups at 60 yards with this load.
Loaded Round``` Fired Case, Starline brass
neck- .415''``` `` .416-.417''
head- .463''``` `` .466-.467''
The 38-40 WCF always interested me. It reminds me of one of those newer "short and fat" cartridges. And this barrel with its 1 in 16 twist, I think, would lend it self to a longer boolit rather nicely. But even the way it is with this load there is a lot of hunting it can do.
So I wanted to try and catch a boolit with powder on it and rigged this up for that purpose. My guess was that the boolit would stop before it hit the back but it went through all six milk jugs and flattened out. It didn't really expand as far as I could tell by the exit holes in the jugs filled with water. The first two split pretty good then less and less as it traveled through. It hit the milk jug labels and went straight to the back. It weighed 163 grains down from 172 grains and measured .955" expanded. It had some powder on it and I saw the base colored pinkish from the red it used to be. And the brick moved about a inch over, the distance was 50 paces.
145175145176
Well that's it, I hope you had fun reading this. It was fun trying out that boolit stop.
I picked up a Lyman 401043 mold and a .401 sizer die. They weigh 172 grains coated with Harbor Freight red epoxy powder. A Lyman manual was used for 9.0 of grains of Unique and a OAL of 1.592. The boolits came out to be a 12 BHN with COWW, a little tin and some Superhard from Rotometals. I'm new powder coating and they were sprayed standing on their noses with a HF gun and baked at 400 degrees in a Craigslist double oven.
The MGM chamber seems pretty nice and should be easy on brass. The rifling is high for cast, didn't measure the bore. I didn't see any sign of leading at these pressures weather coated or lubed. Accuracy shouldn't be a problem but I need a more precise scope on it to really find out. The 1X red dot scope makes aiming fast and I'm getting around 2" or better groups at 60 yards with this load.
Loaded Round``` Fired Case, Starline brass
neck- .415''``` `` .416-.417''
head- .463''``` `` .466-.467''
The 38-40 WCF always interested me. It reminds me of one of those newer "short and fat" cartridges. And this barrel with its 1 in 16 twist, I think, would lend it self to a longer boolit rather nicely. But even the way it is with this load there is a lot of hunting it can do.
So I wanted to try and catch a boolit with powder on it and rigged this up for that purpose. My guess was that the boolit would stop before it hit the back but it went through all six milk jugs and flattened out. It didn't really expand as far as I could tell by the exit holes in the jugs filled with water. The first two split pretty good then less and less as it traveled through. It hit the milk jug labels and went straight to the back. It weighed 163 grains down from 172 grains and measured .955" expanded. It had some powder on it and I saw the base colored pinkish from the red it used to be. And the brick moved about a inch over, the distance was 50 paces.
145175145176
Well that's it, I hope you had fun reading this. It was fun trying out that boolit stop.