New brass test in my .44

[44man]

I found a bunch of new, unfired .44 brass in my box so decided to do a test and sort brass. I shot 50 yd's and any that went high or low were put in different piles. I didn't realize the high hits were making two separate groups and put them in the same lot. Anyway I had four separate groups. A nice group high, one a little lower, one centered and another just a little low right.
I used my 330 gr WLNGC boolit with 21 gr's of 296, Fed. 150 primer.
The first five were in way less then 1/2" and the center group just got larger until 30 rounds were in 1-1/4".
The low right group was three touching to start and went to 7/8".
Now I have to cast more boolits and see if the brass that hit high, etc, continues to hit the same place.
The gun is a SBH with almost 58,000 rounds through it.
I will also reload the 30 rounds to see if they stay centered.
But 30 rounds through 1-1/4" at 50 yd's is super any way you look at it.
I will post after more work.

[bisleyfan41]

Awesome shooting! Iron sights, I assume? Maybe I just need to shoot my SBHH 54000 more rounds and it'll shoot like that. She has only seen 4000 rounds or so, so far. Excellent!

[44man]

No, a scope for testing but it will be changed out to the red dot for hunting. My 71 year old eyes don't take kindly to open sights any more.

[jack19512]

[QUOTE=44man;371362
But 30 rounds through 1-1/4" at 50 yd's is super any way you look at it. [/QUOTE]







I would be happy if that were me and my 44 at 25 yards and 6 rounds. :)

[timkelley]

I'm with Jack.:-D

[missionary5155]

THis is a GREAT idea... I never thought of it ! I have tested cylinders against each other using 6 different targets.... I have gone the weight route with same brand and lot brass in the same cylinder.... But this looks interesting also. I am interested to find out why some are shooting high. I would not be surprised to see a weight difference.. primer pocket misalignment or size difference.
Oh the joys of digging deeper. :-D

[44man]

I used one chamber and the brass was all weighed.
It is just a difference in neck tension changing the velocity. I didn't chrono this time though. I just wanted to sort the brass.
I am anxous to shoot the good ones at 200 yd's.

[Bass Ackward]

I used one chamber and the brass was all weighed.
It is just a difference in neck tension changing the velocity. I didn't chrono this time though. I just wanted to sort the brass.
I am anxous to shoot the good ones at 200 yd's.


Could be. Would be interesting to see chrono'd results. To get that kind of movement, velocity would have to be a couple hundread fps, so it will show up. I have had primer do this as well. And grip change over long strings. Only the chrono will eliminate that possibility.

Much harder to seperate the brass / primer combo. And you could even add a third in temperature. I have seen old type ball powder react more or less based upon temp to those two items also. If it is hot and you are running high pressures, the effect tends to be worse in the summer. If you are running lower pressure loads, the effect is worse in the winter. The key is what the average temp was when you developed your loads.

Want another variable? How much of temps effect is lube? The closer you run to borderline top or bottom for your lube / hardness combination, the worse all this will be. :grin:

[44man]

Yep, Bass, it all has an effect however those that you mention should change POI for all the brass shot at that time frame. Picking out the more consistant brass should just move the whole group if conditions are different.
It was about 80* and I shot 5 at a time slow, checked the target each shot with the scope and walked down to look. Whitworth was also shooting so we had to change his targets. I tried to stay consistant through the whole process.
In the past when I was measuring the seating pressure to put in boolits, there WAS a difference in velocity between loose and tight fitting boolits. I didn't feel a need to measure that again plus the chrono is such a pain to set up. [smilie=1:
This was the first time I tried this with new brass and was surprised by the variation. I didn't measure anything but I could feel slight changes in handle pressure to seat.
It sure makes a difference with slow powders. Going to a faster powder will remove a lot of the variation but then accuracy fall off might make it impossible to sort. Just need to use the most accurate load for a boolit. I know this load will go under 1/2" at 50 when everything matches, I didn't want to shoot a 2" load to sort.
Anyway I have more work to do with this batch of brass. It is Rem, by the way.
Keep ya all posted.

[cbrick]

Very interesting 44man, looking forward to more results.

Here's another variable you could test with new brass. Don't size it, length trim, uniform the primer pocket and flash hole, bell very slightly and don't use an expander die either. Load exectly as you would otherwise and shoot some groups with this virgin brass.

Be interesting to see if you get the same results I do with virgin brass prepped this way. "Might" see a difference at 50 yards but I'll bet you do see the difference when you shoot it scoped at 200 yards.

Rick

[44man]

Cbrick, no case tension now that they have been fired, I need to size. My chambers are generous to say the least. I have no more new ones to test either.
Fired cases from this gun will not even try to enter any other .44! :drinks: