Taking checks for the 7mm Soup Can

[Oldfeller]

The 7mm Soup Can is a modern high speed "soup can" design intended to load up & down inside the case neck to correctly throat fit a 7mm-08, 7mm Reminton Magnum, 7x57 Remington Classic (modern throat), 7mm TCU, 7mm BR Reminton, 7mm IHSA, 284 Winchester, 7mm Winchester Short Magnum, 7x64, 7mm Express/280 Reminton, 7 Rem Short Ultra Mag, 7 Rem Ultra Mag, 7mm Shooting Times Westerner and 7-30 Waters.

It will not correctly best fit a 7mm Weatherby Magum nor a Paul Mauser standard throated 7x57 M93/M95 Mauser because of the enlarged diameter and much longer throats on those guns.

Bullet weight is estimated in the neighborhood of 120 grains in wheel weight metal. It has a CBI theoretical 9 1/2 twist fps ceiling of 3,400 fps so it should be able to be shot in the mid to upper 20s fps speed range before it loses accuracy.

It is a 7mm adaptation of the LEE 30 Soup Can, a bullet which has a long history of great success in many 30 caliber guns over a wide range of speeds. Because of the good mix of caliber, weight and speed this bullet can fill the roles of low cost plinker, varmint and small eastern deer bullet.

The cost for a six cavity LEE mold is $56.

Please PM me for a mailing address or if you have questions on fit-up to your particular use.

Oldfeller

[Oldfeller]

7mm Soup Can checks rec'd to date:

28311
97754
37179
20111
71479

We keep comparing these mold orders to nice slow old riverboats and pokey old steam trains and such, as they only come by very very rarely, they pull up to the dock for a short period of time, huff and puff a bit and then they are GONE.

They always blow the whistle though, and yell "All Aboard!!!" so as to give fair warning to all concerned.

Yet slow or fast, they always leave somebody behind -- and there are always a few late cowboys riding their ponies off the dock trying to make a running leap from the saddle to "make it to the boat" before it gets gone.

(me, I always feel real bad about them ponies ....)

Now, unlike some other mold Honchos, I have been known to cheat a little bit if I had a personal interest in getting on to the bullet itself. Remember the 444 Terminator bullet, that iddy biddy 370 grain bullet that I built a wildcat case for?

Quick one, huh?

Let's see, that bullet took like 4 weeks from concept drawing to cut molds? Didn't require 25 orders, made it to the front of the line in jig time (LEE had delivered the molds in just 21 working days as I remember).

Buckshot always berates me after the fact for moving too damn fast again -- it's a personal fault, I do admit it. Still, I gave fair warning on that one that I was bolting on a JATO unit and that sucker was kicking into high gear.

(some folks just don't understand JATO units, they are them big assed rocket motors what you use when you want that overloaded cargo plane to get on up off the tarmak and FLY like right now !!!!)

================== JATO WARNING =================

BTW, anybody got any last minute suggestions on the bullet itself? Check the drawing, the body bands grew a thou to .267" +/-0.001 and the nose grew to .284" +0.000/-0.001"..... (hee hee)

......no, really, check the tolerancing out, it is really about the same thing on the nose but the tolerancing itself more in line with "customer expectations" in how it states things, that's all.

T'ain't smoke & mirrors -- its just plain smoke (applied to various orifices).


================== JATO WARNING =================

Comments, suggestions, post them or PM them -- but if you are considering, consider considering somewhat quicker. I'm getting ansy .....

================== JATO WARNING =================

[Oldfeller]

Yes, like last time I will cast off each mold and yes, that means I can cherry-pick molds for you within the range of variation that is seen on the molds that we actually get.

Lee molds will vary at least .003" (two for size and one for roundness) no matter what you put on the drawing -- you want small, medium or large?

Keep a mind on your nose diameter - it is the most critical item to the fit up of a modern 7mm rifle.

It is possible to ask Doug to play games with an overall tooling offset number -- same form but all features to get bigger by say .002" (same tolerance spans apply) -- he can do that for us if he is in a good mood.

Who wants to super-size their order for 49 cents extra?

================ JATO WARNING ===================

Seriously, I will NOT be select lapping any cavities nor will I be opening up any sizing dies -- you want me to put that nice sizer die lapper fellow out of business? Cherry-picking takes enough time, believe me.


Oldfeller

[Oldfeller]

Last day for communicating a real interest (mailing a check) is Oct. 31st

The fuse on the JATO unit is lit at this time .......

Whooop!!! Whooop!!!

T minus three days and counting .....

[old goat]

Oldfeller......You have a PM


...old goat

[Oldfeller]

What does SUPERSIZE mean?

It means I ask Doug to lie to his CNC lathe about the location of his boring bar tip. "Tooling Offset" is the correct term and it is used to recover from a slight dulling of the cutting edge and is used all the time by good CNC machinists.

What happens if Doug punches in a tooling offset of .001"? The entire form of the Soup Can moves out .001" -- effectively increasing all items .002" in diameter.

Yes, this means the Paul Mauser 7x57 people CAN have a short bullet mold for their guns too -- 45 2.1 is busy thinking out the perfect offset & resulting diameter for this sort of activity.

(I'll get him to pick it, as there are considerations to that particular fit up that he understands a lot better than I do since I got no Mauser 7x57 gun to look at any more).

I am getting a spate of PMs and promises of checks, but the friggin' fuse is still burning.


============ JATO WARNING ===============


T-2 and counting

Oldfeller

[45 2.1]

The mauser 95 throats are long and big. The nose on this won't touch anything in there much, get the driving bands up to 0.289" +0.001" & -0.0005" and it should fit.

[felix]

When are we going to meet someone who knows EDM equipment? Possibly then we won't have to worry about tolerances, at least among the cavities in one mold? ... felix

[felix]

Looks like a 14 twist would shoot this boolit just fine. ... felix

[Oldfeller]

Felix, in that previous Morganite job I had I was looking at a small CNC mill that could do accurate mold work in a very hard graphite crucible material using a diamond grinding point. That was in my personal reaction to "not being able to get what you want" from standard boring bar machining processes from LEE.

Now let's contrast LEE & Mountain Mold aluminum molds for a second -- OK, cost is a major differential, but Mountain Mold has premium alignment features on his mold blocks and a "hard" mold face surface, he hits his cut numbers on the frikn' nose and I CAN'T FIND A PARTING LINE ON MY MM BULLETS AT ALL. Plus they DO NOT SHIFT after some use due to knurling wear on face surfaces or sine edge features like a LEE does ....

LEE has issues with tolerancing both from a machining mind-set and a knurling face surfaces / block alignment mold feature basis.

I've posted the latest pictures of my lap tuning job on a LEE 7mm bore rider nose where I moved the nose out to .280"-.282" diameter. What I didn't say too much about is I over-did it a bit and I had to reset the LEE blocks and try try again, twice.

RESET A LEE MOLD ???? To reset a LEE aluminum single or double cavity mold block up to a thousandth of an inch simply lightly crush the blocks in a vise (pin side down in the jaws) flattening the knurl surfaces a bit and seating the sine forms into each other a bit. I've done this up to .001" on purpose .... multiple times to the same single cavity mold very recently as a matter of fact.

You actually do this closure/shrink over time naturally with protracted LEE mold use anyway, why do you think I always save my final finishing lap still mounted on the fine screw threaded shank? It is to tune the molds up ongoing when they 1) throw a burr on an edge or 2) go a little off-round or shrink a bit on me.

I'm not sure you could reset a large LEE six cavity mold very much -- lots of kurl surface there and the knurl height isn't as pronounced as on their single and double cavity molds. Mountain Molds likely won't reset at all in a vise (not that they need it anyway).

==========================================

45 2.1 is saying he wants to up the diameter (on his one mold only) .002" using a .001" offset with all the negative tolerance risk being assigned to "being too small".

Now -- up front and honest -- if Doug screws up the offset thing and doubles it accidentally are the resulting mold driving bands that are .291" going to be a show stopper to you very few super-sizer guys?

I bring it up because things like that have happened before (rarely, but they have happened). To put it in perspective, my stock LEE 7mm mold had driver bands at .289" when it was brand new and it has lapped driver bands at .290" right now and I have no issues sizing it at all (.286 sizer diameter).

=======================================

SUPERSIZED means driver bands between .289" and .291" -- it means a nose diameter between .286" and .288" (not that this nose diameter means anything to a Paul Mauser throat anyway)

=======================================

Speak your peace boys,

... that piece of sputtering cannon fuse is getting shorter and shorter.


T-2 days and counting


Oldfeller

[bdoyle]

While I don't personally run edm machines I am responsible for our edm department and the making of all the electrodes. You have power settings to consider, orbits and electrode wear. Are you rotating the electrode? Not as straight forward as turning or milling. If you turned the electrode, used it much like a regular milling cutter, had a rough and finish for each cavity, it should be consistant. Copper or copper impregnated graphite for the electrode would last better but increase machining difficulty. Nice fine finishes require fancy power and long burn times.

Brian

[felix]

Brian, I hear ya'. I personally don't care if a boolit is rough (pimple) looking out of the mold provided the dimensions are correct as measured using standard tools. Naturally, we have to assume the hills and dales of the pimples are nothinig more than just plain visables to the naked eye. ... felix

[Oldfeller]

Felix, EDM is "machine time" expensive work that generally only gets done to hardened die steels. Softer steel gets machined with high speed spindle 3 axis CNC machines and coated carbide cutters. It would cost too much to do if you were paying for it.

Oldfeller

[Junior1942]

The mauser 95 throats are long and big. The nose on this won't touch anything in there much, get the driving bands up to 0.289" +0.001" & -0.0005" and it should fit.Mine's for a T-C 7mmTCU, not a Mauser. If you increase the diameters, then count me out of the deal. Left as is, I'm in the deal.

[Oldfeller]

============= JATO WARNING =================

If you have any 7mm shooting buddies or have another list you post on where they shoot some 7mm bullets you need to go ahead and tell these fine folks about the mold before this upcoming Monday night comes and goes.

That would be a real Halloween Trick or Treat to play on your friends, waiting and telling them about the mold run a day or so after the shuttle had lifted off and it was too durn late.

It would be about like me telling Jr. about the old full length 7x57 barrel I had lying around that I threw away about a week before he started struggling to finding one.

You don't want to be mean to YOUR buddies like that, do you?

Oldfeller

[Oldfeller]

No Jr -- the orginal run of molds will be per print -- only the last one or two will be off-set for 45 2.1 and Buckshot (if he ever gets around to sending in a check). Yours will be pretty much want you wanted (LEE permitting).

When the molds come in I will tell the group what we have for variation and let folks speak for which molds suit their uses the best (no point in not sending the individual molds to the best homes having actually cast off them and knowing what they are).

Sorry about the 7x57 barrel, it had about 3/4ths of the original rifling height and was relatively pit free inside (outside was kinda ratty though). Since I had no gun to put it on I treated it like unwanted pipe I guess.

Oldfeller

[StarMetal]

Jr

Do you have the Lee 135 gr 7mm mould? Have you tried that bullet?

Joe

[Junior1942]

Nope, I don't have the Lee 135 gr 7mm mold. I do have the RCBS 145 and 165 gr molds, however. Both work ok, just ok, with bullets I cast about 25 years ago. But soon as I shoot these 1,500 or so jacketed "Blem" bullets I have, I plan to cast a new batch of both and try again.

Oldfellow, I'm glad you threw away that barrel. Cause after I hacksawed off the rusted-out end of mine it turned into one heck of a fine shooter.

[StarMetal]

Jr,

Sent me your addy in a pm and I'll ship you some of those Lee 7mm's.

Joe

[BlueMoon]

I am interested in the 7mm soupcan. If it's made to shoot in 7mms with short necks, that's what I need. My Ly. 287346-135grn mold doesn't do just right with my 7-08. And I have a Saeco 145 grn fn that's kinda long. The 130grn Lee is the one that fits but I don't like the way the boolit looks and it's single cavity.

Bill

[Oldfeller]

Bill, the fine upstanding fellow who is Honcho for this mold deal owns a 7mm-08 Savage and I strongly suspect this bullet fits short necked cases like the 7mm-08 real good. You would want to order the "to-print" version as shown in the drawing at the topmost post, not the supersized version you hear us talking about later on.

Supersize is only really for one person (yeah, that's you Bob, Buckshot still hasn't written his check so its "Only You ..... who wants the super-size")

Now, Starmetal Joe says "Everybody try out the LEE bore riding nose standard bullet in your 7mm-08 or 7mmTCU or other short throated gun" so there are other options for your shooting pleasure.

Problem is, this custom mold run lifts off in two days and is GONE.

So, sometimes you just gotta jump on the boat or else get left on the dock. If you think the bullet doesn't work for you, sell it on the list later like everybody else does if they can't make a particular bullet work for them.

There are always a few folks pineing away for our done and gone bullet molds, even the strange ones like the 6.5 Cruise Missile (or even the Pammy Pellet). So, if you don't like it, sell it.

Heck, we've seen people hawking our molds on Ebay for 3-4 times what we sold them for (don't you love an opportunistic entreprenure/capitalist?)

Oldfeller

[Slowpoke]

[QUOTE=Oldfeller]
I've posted the latest pictures of my lap tuning job on a LEE 7mm bore rider nose where I moved the nose out to .280"-.282" diameter. What I didn't say too much about is I over-did it a bit and I had to reset the LEE blocks and try try again, twice.

Oldfeller

How about if we enroll you in mold lapping 101

The next time you feel the need to lap a nose on a Lee mold try turning the Lap by hand. Its easy to gain a .001 in 15 minutes and if you go slow you never have to worry about going to far. Just color the part you want to lap with a marker this way you can see your progress as you go. By the time you clean up the marker color you will find if you stop and cast a couple you will have gained real close to a .001., also try using a small tap in place of the trusty screw and turn it with a tee handle tap wrench, better feel or feed back this way. Keep the block faces clean of lead or lap compound, its easy every few turns just open the mold and wipe with a rag.

Good luck you mold abuser

[Oldfeller]

Slowpoke, you turn the lap by hand, removing a thou in just a few minutes -- now exactly how do you go about doing this? Can you talk us through the finer details of this method? Sounds interesting.

Supposed you wanted to go up 4-5 thousandths? What would the steps be like for that?

Oldfeller

[45 2.1]

Supersize is only really for one person (yeah, that's you Bob, Buckshot still hasn't written his check so its "Only You ..... who wants the super-size")
Oldfeller

Thats ok by me. Some of you will be sorry later.

[StarMetal]

Oldfeller,

And think, you wanted me to Honcho this mould sale...har har har har, boy I'm glad I didn't touch it.

Joe

[Oldfeller]

They sure is a friendly bunch of fellers, ain't they? Wait until LEE screws something up and they get all pissed off about it, then it really gets to be fun.

Naw, 45 2.1 is simply saying Doug is going to screw up and cut the bands undersized as he has had some real difficulties with LEE messing up like that on his recent mold runs. He is waiting to say a big "I done told you so" cause he knows Doug keeps this big ol' pot of linotype metal to do all his mis-fitting with.

Being Honcho or designer sometimes gets to be a bit much .... that's why only a certain few loonies will do it repeatedly.

(then they get all bold and start ordering custom runs of RIFLES no less ....)

<g>

Sheet fiar boys, when ain't we had trouble with LEE screwing up on mold runs? I remember ONE (1) flaw free mold run where everything worked out absolutely flawlessly. I heard of a couple of others, but I only personally Honcho'd one.

I've honcho's runs where every single mold needed at least minor tuning .....100 molds (it don't get much more fun than that).

I've designered mold runs where the Honcho and the group ran off into the weeds buck stark naked all holding hands (after voting twice to go do so) and they all took MY money off with them.

Still, Joe -- seriously.

Isn't it your turn now?

VENIT HORA "THE HOUR HAS COME"

[StarMetal]

Nope, it's not Joe's turn. Joe doesn't buy any of these custom moulds. To tell you the truth I'm getting bored with my guns. I surely don't need moulds for guns I don't shoot that much anymore. I thought, or my wife convinced me to think I was a gun and reloading fanatic. She almost had me believing it till I come on this forum. Boy I'm no ways near a fanatic about guns and reloading as lot of fellows here. No thanks, I'm not honchoing any mould deals, I have enough troubles as it is without having to have the moulds to do. I honestly can't see how you fellows can afford to buy all these moulds. I mean I have eyes and I see who signs up for them and boy you all have run quite a records worth of moulds in the past year. I'm glad you fellows are spread out across the U.S. and other countries of the world because I'm afraid if you all were concentrated in one area that you would throw the Earth off balance with all that casting alloy sitting around.

I think I'll just sit back and watch like Scrounger, I don't think he's bought or honchoed any mould deals either.

Joe

[Oldfeller]

Slowpoke,

For your Lapping 101 course homework, I got you a theoretical type problem for you to work out.

Theoretically let's say LEE had deflection issues with a new ultra long very thin boring bar rig and you had a lot of 100 molds that were off by down .004" to up .003" on two critical dimensions, but the two dimensions were off in different directions on each cavity by some variable amount (some plus, some minus). This cavity has the nose small and the bands small, next has nose big, bands small, next has nose small, bands big.

100 single cavity LEE long rifle mold blocks with a cavity that is 1.250" deep. How do you correct them? Your goal is to fix all noses and first bands to the set design parameters and fix all sized driver bands to either a set design parameter or an oversized parameter.

You got 100 people counting on you and you got Christmas/New Years vacation as a time frame to work within. Your goal is to have all your customers shooting this slug to less than a minute of angle -- all of them -- everybody but you has to be able to shoot it like balls' o fire for accuracy -- and that accuracy is dependent on correct bullet fit which sure as **** ain't there right now.

What would you do?

Oldfeller

[Slowpoke]

Slowpoke, you turn the lap by hand, removing a thou in just a few minutes -- now exactly how do you go about doing this? Can you talk us through the finer details of this method? Sounds interesting.

Supposed you wanted to go up 4-5 thousandths? What would the steps be like for that?

Oldfeller

It's basic

Do everything the same as if you were using a drill motor, just substitute the Tap for a screw and arm power for the drill motor for turning the lap.

One lap bullet will get you a .001 easy, maybe a little over if you use a hard bullet for your lap. At some point if you are going big you are going to have to stop and cast another lap bullet.

Remove any part line on your lap bullet before you start, place a small amount of lap compound in the area you intend to lap in the mold, be sure and color that area before hand
I use LBT Bore lap compound.

Set Lap in cavity with tap installed ease the mold handles shut while you start to turn the lap, make a couple rotations in both directions stop and open mold remove any lead or compound from the faces, proceed as before and repeat as necessary, maybe add a little more compound from time to time , keep a close eye on where you put the marker color, if one side is starting to shine up before the other then concentrate on the other side till it starts to even out.

Lee molds are soft , 15 minutes from the time you place the lap in the mold you can have .001 increase in nose diameter turning it by hand. I have done it many times.

I ruined several molds by turning with a drill motor, things happen to fast for my skill level.

This method came from Steve Hurst, I tried it and it works.

Iron molds are a horse of a differant color you can count on spending close to 45 minutes for each .001, but hey when you are done you have a custom mold at the price of a factory and a little time. I spent six hours one rainy saturday enlarging the nose on a Saeco 316 from .299 to .303.

If you need a demonstration my time is cheap, have bullet mold will travel.

Good luck

[Slowpoke]

Slowpoke,

For your Lapping 101 course homework, I got you a theoretical type problem for you to work out.

Theoretically let's say LEE had deflection issues with a new ultra long very thin boring bar rig and you had a lot of 100 molds that were off by down .004" to up .003" on two critical dimensions, but the two dimensions were off in different directions on each cavity by some variable amount (some plus, some minus). This cavity has the nose small and the bands small, next has nose big, bands small, next has nose small, bands big.

100 single cavity LEE long rifle mold blocks with a cavity that is 1.250" deep. How do you correct them? Your goal is to fix all noses and first bands to the set design parameters and fix all sized driver bands to either a set design parameter or an oversized parameter.

You got 100 people counting on you and you got Christmas/New Years vacation as a time frame to work within. Your goal is to have all your customers shooting this slug to less than a minute of angle -- all of them -- everybody but you has to be able to shoot it like balls' o fire for accuracy -- and that accuracy is dependent on correct bullet fit which sure as **** ain't there right now.

What would you do?

Oldfeller

Thats simple. I would type up directions for mold lapping 101 and put them in ea box with a note that says get busy, or send back to LEE your choice.

Good luck

[Oldfeller]

Steve Hurst's free lapping paste in the cavity method has two problems -- the main one is the cavity begins to go out of round with the parting line axis growing larger than the 90-degree-from-the-parting-line axis the more you lap and this ovality gets agravated the more often you have to recast a new (off round) lap to keep on going on up in size. Removing the parting line from your laps helps, but the ovality is still there and it keeps on growing with each new bare lap,

Next issue is you can't keep the loose lapping compound located just in the nose area, it freely migrates down into the band areas and starts enlarging other things as well. Even though you did wipe it off AFTER you noticed it the first time the grit got embedded in the turning slug before you opened it up and wiped it off that first time.

================ Lapping 301 ================

The answer to these issues is to take a little fire-lapping technology and add it to your mold lapping technology.

Make up your lap slug as normal, then take it to your steel fire-lapping embedding plates. Roll embed a coarse grit into the desired surface until that surface is just about solid wall to wall embedded grit. Notice that the part of the lap bullet that you wall-to-wall grit embedded has increased its diameter significantly. You just made yourself up a hard aluminum oxide porcupine with a lead core.

Now go to a clean set of steel rolling plates and re-roll your embedded grit portion (bare steel, no additional grit) until you reduce the diameter until it measures the exactly the size you want your lap job to be. Notice how round everything is? This is a natural function of the rolling action. The lead core might not be perfectly round but the cutting tips of the aluminum oxide porcupine ARE perfectly round, done naturally by the rolling action.

Now, take your lap bullet and spin it with your drill and SAND/FILE off all the areas you don't want to have lapping action from. You may need to leave the bottoms of some lube grooves to act as aligment zones (bearing journal surfaces) and I generally leave the nose tip form as the front outside bearing journal. I always clean off the gas check shank 100% and the first driver or crush band 100% as they don't need to be growing any as you lap (two critical fit-up areas).

Ok, you got a very hard, very round, precisely sized lap portion that is really quite wear durable. You got selected outboard bearing surfaces and inside bearing surfaces to spin this affair upon and your critical surfaces that you don't want to change have been removed from the equation.

Your first lap should leave at least .002" for your medium & final finish laps to work up to -- this is because when you first try to close the mold on an oversized cutting lap it DOES cut an oblong inital cut that is larger in line with the parting line.

Think about how the oversized first coarse lap sits up on the edges of a single cavity half as if you had just rested it there ...... Your finished laps have to gently recover this natural oblong cutting action from the first lap.

So, you got made-up durable rough laps, medium laps and finished laps. If you lubricate the cutting action with lots of liquid dishwashing soap they will last a long long time before you have to stop and re-grit roll them and resize them. They will only affect the areas you want affected. They will cut fast then they will stop cutting and spin free on your selected inboard and outboard bearing zones. The liquid dishwashing soap keeps every thing CLEAN, cool and lubricated. Just run hot water over the cavities occasionally to see how things are going. (liquid dishwashing soap is so much better than oil or grease, it is a slick lubricating CLEANER after all)

Here is a magic trick -- the rough lap can actually "raise" a surface a little bit by raising a forest of heavy scratch marks for your medium and fine laps to roll partially back down. You can grow an undersized surface a little bit.

You can also intentionally "close down" or reduce an oversized bullet diameter on a LEE single cavity mold by clamping it up on the pin half in a smooth jaw machinist vise, crushing the kurling down and seating the sine forms into each other a little bit. You can dial one down by over a thousandth if you have to. Of course, you want to do this before you final lap it. If you screw up a rough lap, you can close it down to recover it before you go to the final lap.

Final lap has two real functions -- regain some better cavity roundness and reset the parting line to a nice fine line, not a big old nasty free lapping grit type parting line. Clamping forces are decreased and run time is increased on a finished lap engagement. Grit can be smaller too.

==============================================

You can't give up -- you made a promise LEE didn't keep (but you made it).

Honchos who quit on their group or cop-out and run aren't worth beans.

Oldfeller

[Slowpoke]

[QUOTE=Oldfeller]Steve Hursts free lapping paste in the cavity method has two problems -- the main one is the cavity begins to go out of round with the parting line axis growing quickly larger than the 90-degree-from-the-parting-line axis the more you lap and this ovality gets agravated the more often you have to recast a new (off round) lap to keep on going on up in size. Removing the parting line from your laps helps, but the ovality is still there and it keeps on growing with each new bare lap,

Next issue is you can't keep the loose lapping compound located just in the nose area, it freely migrates down into the band areas and starts enlarging other things as well. Even though you did wipe it off AFTER you noticed it the first time the grit got embedded in the turning slug before you opened it up and wiped it off that first time.<


Try it, in theory it may work as you describe, but in the real world it just isn't so, if you turn it by hand and monitor your progress the only way things are going to go bad is if you let it, I have done noses, gas check shanks and individual bands and it works as advertised,never needed to do a whole bullet yet and I have never ended up with an out of round bullet or to big of a nose or gas check shank. I do know when I have used a drill motor with rolled on lap and loose I have never been happy with my results.

If you are happy your way, Peace Brother I am happy for you.

Good luck

[Oldfeller]

Slowpoke, your points about your slow hand lapping are very valid and I am not doubting that you can make it work for you in just the manner that you describe.

I do have some reservation about your saying that rolled embedded grit lapping techniques don't work (when 100 list members are shooting cruise missiles that were repaired using those techniques) and when you say that your loose lapping hand techniques won't result in some ovality if you tried to open up a nose .004" using how many recast lap after recast lap after recast lap (which was the case that we were talking about, remember? 7mm LEE nose going from .278" to .282"-283").

Actually, to tell you the truth your comments had reminded me of someone else who knew more about any given item than I did (no matter what that item was). I am afraid I may have reacted the same as I would have if Aladin had popped back out of his bottle and had started his nonsense up again.

You see, Aladin really didn't ever DO anything -- but he was an expert in his own mind on all subjects (even on guns and tools he did not even own nor had ever touched). And as a Honcho, well -- he was the only one that was ever thought to have run off with the money (although he was just sick and was totally innocent of the charge and we all took up for him, too)

My bad, I appologise. You are not Aladin. You have fixed molds in the manner that you just described and it worked fine for you.

I am sure Carpetman and Waksupi would appologise as well had they done the same thing. Both of those gentlemen would understand my reaction though, to you coming in from nowhere and offering to teach me Lapping 101 using Aladin-like phraseology and 'teaching me" techniques that I quit using about 5 years ago.

But Aladin is no more, Waksupi and Carpetman followed him relentlessly from list to list to list expounding his virtues and great skills to the point he evaporated completely. As they did his last re-incarnation as well (what was that name again?).

But we all know Aladin doesn't stay evaporated for long .... so we are always ready to welcome him back and sing his praises anew.

Just a bad circumstance and once again I appologize for my reaction. It was completely unwarranted.

Oldfeller (sleeping on rocks again, sorry)

[Oldfeller]

T=0, Launch time !!!!

I hope everyone has told all their 7mm shooting buddies about the mold and all the people who think they may want one have PM'd or e-mailed me by this time. Tallying up all the promised checks, we are still way short of a mold order at this point in time, but that don't matter -- we got JATO.

The plane is sitting on the tarmak and the wheels are unchocked and the brakes are off. Flaps are down, engine is revved up and she's just short of beginning to roll on those squished flat tires.

Damn but that's one fat heavy overloaded plane ....

Fuse has been smoking and sputtering, slowly burning down the length to get up to the rocket nozzle. Look !! It just went up out of sight -- we can't see the flame any more, just smoke coming from the top of the nozzle cone .....

About 3 of you are just sitting there chewing on your inky pen with your checkbook out and open, saying "can I afford this with Christmas coming?" Sheet fiar boys, don't you get no Santy Claus for your ownself ???

<g>

This waiting sure is hell, ain't it?

Oldfeller

[Tom Myers]

Oldfeller
Check your PM, Better Late than never.
Tom Myers

[Oldfeller]

SSSSwwwooooooooshh ......... !!!!!

She's off !!! I can't believe it, the porky old thing is off the ground and actually flying !!

Counting 6 radial cylinders on each of the four motors on that old plane, we are only firing on 7-8 cylinders out of the 24 right now. But it don't matter -- the old pig is off the ground and is flying on pure JATO power.

Damn but those JATO units sure work good. Lots & lots of power.

(Uh, is the pavement supposed to be smoking like that? Oh ****, look at the dried grass out beyond the end of the run-way -- quick, somebody call the fire department. Huh? What do you mean "What happens when the JATO is exhausted and falls off?" It falls off ???? Uh-oh ..... are there any houses down there?)

I called Doug this afternoon, he remembers the base bullet design from this past spring and expressed no issues with cutting the molds. Pricing he can't talk to -- send drawing and pricing request by e-mail so it can go through systems to see if we can get any discounting.

The e-mail has been sent, generally it takes Pat & the front office 3-4 days to read their e-mail and get back to you. I ain't holding forth any great hopes, but on the other hand it is harder to say "no" to me than some folks. I'll call again tomorrow. And the day after that ....

The old bird is just about out of visual range now, she's way up up in the clouds, running towards the sunset.

Damn, but ain't that a pretty sight.

Oldfeller


PS
Now, for you frantic cowboys who ride up late on the dock, please DO NOT make your poor ponies leap off into the water .....

We will be able to take your order in a graceful fashion since we have potentially 14 open mold slots at this point in time. Just click on my prancing stallion and send me a PM or an e-mail.