350 Legend and Cast Boolits

[colonelhogan44]

I guess that pre-supposes that your subsonic round nose is going to flatten or to upset in some fashion at those very low speeds --- maybe you can tell us what you mean so we can understand it. The way the current Blackout works in 30 cal right now is to swap ends making a huge swipe cavity due to a lack of stability.

The Blackout boys like their high BC so they can keep more impact energy over more subsonic flying distance --- the fact the bullet always tumbles when it hits meat is just icing on their cake.

Lastly, the construction method of the cavities limits the mold to more traditional flat based bullet shapes, like this one.

253323

What I mean is that ballistic coefficient as published is not linear. For example, a very pointy bullet that has say a high BC of 0.6 at high velocities will have a much lower real BC at subsonic velocities. Subsonic drag is mostly caused by turbulence at the base. See this page: https://www.grc.nasa.gov/www/k-12/airplane/shaped.html.

Supersonic drag is all about controlling/eliminating shockwaves. It's totally different, and as such bullets that are stellar performers at 2500fps might not be optimal at 850. Check out this page for a more bullet specific explanation: http://www.corbins.com/subsonic.htm

[P Flados]

With swaged bullets, the round nose hollow point seems to make sense.

With cast subs, a flat meplat is probably a better choice given that expansion is not likely to be reliable. The loner mold I made had a smaller meplat to help with feeding smoothly in the mag and going into the chamber. The profile behind the meplat was also selected with consideration for allowing rounds to stack right in the double stack p-mags.

A little larger on the meplat and a little more rounded on the ogive should do all of the above and yet allow a little more weight for the same length. However, seating said boolit to Max COAL may not work out due to the short throat unless you include a short nose rider transition from ogive to full diameter shank.

My 200s can probably be reshaped some to make some dummy ammo to work through the choices.

Once you get your nose profile, you make a reamer to match. Then you adjust cut depth to get different weights.

[Oldfeller]

P Flados,

Please don't change your mold, it is just about perfect the way it is.

I can grind multiple versions of a nose form (sequentially, starting with the largest) into a single drill bit about in 4 times as much elapsed time as it takes to post this once I move the bench grinder up to the work room.

Sink a hole to the proposed depth in a block of wood using the depth stop (mocking up the as cast volume) then zero the wooden block's weight then cast hot WW lead into it and you can rough check the bullet's weight before cutting any aluminum.

[P Flados]

I feel the existing molds are OK as is for their purpose.

I was really discussing potential profile changes for you and / or others.

Good luck with the drill grinding. I tried and did not like the results.

FYI, the reamer that I used for the loaner is no longer as it was. I updated it just a little to make a nose punch with a little bigger and sharper meplat. I went out to the shop and could not find it.

Not a big deal, I could fab up a similar one and mail it to you if you want. Material cost would be negligible (W1 drill rod, $7.16 for 3'). I am pretty sure it could be shipped cheap in a padded envelope.

[Oldfeller]

I wrap a piece of cut typewriter paper snugly around the drill bit, about 5-10 layers deep going all the way to the end of the bit and run the drill in reverse while concentrating on getting a light force, nice and smooth slow contour grind. The paper tells me how far back I am grinding on the ogive and what kind of blend I am getting, which is a good thing to know.

As a flute comes back around into the grinding stone the leading "back edge" of the flute catches more grind force than the trailing "front cutting edge", with my fingers and the rolled paper acting like shock absorbers and providing a "bump absorbing suspension" to the intermittent grinding load. The drill bit spiral effect also helps even out the grind force a good bit.

I.E. Using this trick I can grind a small cutting relief into the thing automatically and naturally by just using a good steady elbow resting slow hand grinding technique.

Then I hand stone "side stroke hone" the back 90 degree side of the cutting edge of the nose profile (following the flute contour side) to get rid of the raised burr edge and to get full cutting sharpness on the nose profile using some Gesswein mold maker stones that I have.

I use lots of lube and low cutting force while going back down the existing aluminum hole (just below 9mm hole) that had I pre-drilled, the modified head form is the only cutting depth that the finish bit really has to do. I leave the work holding assembly locked and fixed between pre-drill and finish drill, so I get very minimal bit changeover marks.

I would also like to try raw cutting a hole in a piece of waste stock just to see how well the bit can do it without playing "swap the bit" with the pre-drill, but I suspect not using a pilot hole will mean a larger (somewhat uncontrolled) finished hole.

[Oldfeller]

I added a warning to the info upthread about the rib trimming tooling --- the 5.56 PMAG as trimmed will load a full rack of my 5.56 conversion cases with an appropriately narrow nosed bullet BUT IT WILL NOT LOAD MORE THAN 10 STOCK WINCHESTER 350 LEGEND CASES WITH THE SAME BULLET AT THE SAME OAL WITHOUT BUILDING UP A BINDING ACTION.

This binding issue exists separately apart from bullet nose forms and such, this particular binding is due apparently to the larger diameter head of the stock Winchester Legend case head causing a resistance build up as the doubled-up round stack gets longer and longer.

My recommendation at this stage is to simply WAIT until aluminum or steel 30 round magazines come out built specifically for the 350 Legend.

I have somewhere close to 800 cases that I had converted from 5.56 that will work OK with the converted PMAGs, so my money and effort on the rib trimming tooling aren't totally wasted --- but yours might be if you aren't careful.


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


In the future, when this becomes an issue with not enough 5.56 converted cases left, I will develop some sort of sanding apparatus to sand the inside the magazine. This will likely be based upon foam or "sponge" sanding blocks which can be bought on Amazon in fine grits and in smaller thicknesses. Some 3M spray adhesive on a wooden mounting paddle and you can build up the thickness you need in that stackup by picking your material for the paddle.

I might drive the thing off the 3/8" stroke of a variable speed jigsaw or the 1" stroke of a variable speed cutsaw to speed the internal sanding paddle removal rate up some ......

[Oldfeller]

253458

A day for making chips ......



253461

Doing the finishing machining steps




253463

Admiring the stream catching cones and how they flow lead from one to another




253460

Applying a fine finish




253459

And from the chips and sanding dust rises something pretty ......




Functionally, the design of the heavy sprue plate will require no outside clamping force as it swings smoothly (with set screw stabilized "carefully tuned" pin resistance) and it weighs enough to stay flat during casting. As the first sprue jells it applies clamping force to hold the sprue plate down tightly for the next 3 cavities, ditto for each cavity as it jells and the slight contraction pulls down on the plate.

Casting order will be from the pivot pin (left hand) cavity going along the line to the handle (right hand) cavity, with me planning on cutting the sprue with a gloved hand when the puddle last puddle hardens. Bullet ejection from the cavities depends on the smooth bullet form and the use of a wet rag to make a steam cloud on each cast, shrinking the bullets for easy release.

The cavity next to the pin required an offset sprue hole and the cone itself is offset some even to that offset sprue hole, simply to get it all into the limited space that is provided.


:twisted:

..................... all three sprue plates are done and sanded and back in the LEE boxes .......................


Do you think this 4-up mold might jest tend to get a little bit on the warm side while in use ???

[bikerbeans]

I have 2 cavity lee molds that get hot too quick. I can't make myself use the wet rag trick so I just take a break and let the mold cool off. Nice work by the way, I wish I had that talent.

BB

[Oldfeller]

253500 253501

I bought me a 5 pack of 9mm bits, figuring I'd mess up a few of them. I forgot there is lots of extra length that comes with each one, so minor screw ups become "try overs" and nothing gets scrapped.

Yes, I have a form for .200 long nose meplat and a form for a full streamline HBC jobbie. I have a block of scrap gummy aluminum alloy to try the bits out on --- like LEE's special alloy, all soft and gummy. The meplat form cuts gummy aluminum much better than the streamline form, but that minor failure becomes a "try try again" until I can figure out the trick completely ......

[tomme boy]

If you have room, attach a plate of alum on each side of the bottom to pull heat out of the mold.

[Oldfeller]

I have 2 cavity lee molds that get hot too quick. I can't make myself use the wet rag trick so I just take a break and let the mold cool off. Nice work by the way, I wish I had that talent.

BB


Bikerbeans,

Think of it in your imagination that you are "boolit casting in a Steam Punk world" with big puffs of live steam coming from your steam heated mold ......

[cwlongshot]

How are these bullets shooting? I received mine from BB yesterday. (THANK YOU!) Ill powder coat then size later today.

Merry Christmas guys!

CW

[kenton]

I would suspect that your pointed form drill didn't cut well because the web has no chisel edge so it is not cutting but just smashing material out of the way. You might be able to try to split point the drill or it might be easier to make just the web into a D bit cutter with the edge aligned with one of the flutes.

253533253535253534

[Oldfeller]

Kenton,

In as much as you say, you are correct. D forms are single edge "scrapers" which are the least effective form of the cutting edges. Sharp edges at proper the proper angle for the material being cut with the proper cutting relief cut better because they can form chips, but such things are hard to come by in "impromptu tooling".

I will give you an example, a ball end cutter (round end end mill) never cuts well in plunge cuts because it cannot form chips, just fine scrapings.

I will remove the bulk of cavity material with drill bits (making chips) and only use scraper types to impart the final form to the bullet end.

[cwlongshot]

253576


This is the shorter 180g.

Good looking bullet guys!!

Merry Christmas

CW

[P Flados]

CW, Glad to see them purty rounds. Hopefully they will work for you. I am eager to see some results.

Old Feller, Some of my D Reamers have not cut as good as I liked. These were mostly reamers for making sizer dies etc. On the other hand, the D Reamers I made for the 357AR and other similar shaped bullets have actually cut pretty good. As I recall, I drill at 3/16" or so pilot hole and ran the reamer in pretty fast with frequent pull backs to clear chips and re-lubricate. And yes they were decent thickness "chips" instead of real thin shavings.

I did find the D Reamer I used to make the 357AR loaner mold. See post 214 for the original profile. I later made the meplat flatter and wider, 0.180", see below:

253601 253602

[Oldfeller]

Question for the day ......

How big do you cut the cavities (in diameter) to hit close to 355"-.356" once your WW castings cool?


Like most things here, conflicting info is available.

To make it "doable" I figured I would have to cut to the low side and if cutter run out didn't run me OS then I could lap up to a desired finished "as cast" size as I have that pretty much got mold lapping down to a science.

But ...... the "design to cast size" question still exists -- mostly unanswered.

Tom Meyers answered it with a whole bunch of complex calculations, which just leads me to believe doing it empirically off my lead and my pot might be the best method for me to pursue.

P Flados did it while shooting for .358" off the cutter he shows above and he got a tapered range of +2 to +4 on the mold I borrowed.

REALLY, boys and girls ----- it ain't that easy to make molds ......


PF, what does that cutter mic out at, BTW .....

[P Flados]

The reamer is just a smidgen under 0.355". I think it is good for cutting holes no more than 0.0005" over the reamer size.

I did lap the shanks of both cavities on the loner mold to open things up and get boolits suitable for the 0.358" barrels used on the 357ARs.

For the 350L, the target OD just prior to sizing should probably be 0.3565" to 0.3570". So dropping around 0.3555" to 0.3560" should be good. However, starting small allows lapping, starting big is hard to "fix". I would target a mold ID of 0.3550" - 0.3560" to start with. I would not worry about the difference between mold ID and boolit OD.

Again the plan should be cut, cast, coat, measure and lap as needed.

[Oldfeller]

Good info, delivered quickly -- that is the very best kind !!!!

[Oldfeller]

My new order of diamond coated abrasives came in and they do cut the hard cobalt HSS like it is mild steel and they are easy to use -- achieving that impossible "good chip cutting relief" is now DONE.

My meplat now measures .195" and that is about right to me. I also narrowed and lengthened the nose a bit too, to take magazine binding out of the picture.

253835

Issue is now the form is too long now for a shorter bullet -- only 200 grains and up need apply. Ditto for the HPC bullet form -- something around 250 grains minimum would be about right for that bullet form.

Both of these have about 50% unsupported bullet nose lengths, and as such won't shoot well in a PC coated, cast soft WW bullet.


:groner:


Oh well, I learned how to do it and I can make me a bullet form cutter now going from elongated flat tip to HBC forms ---- but I can see that good accuracy lives with the short truncated cones and the round/flat tipped bullets which act to minimize those unsupported out of harmonic balance bullet noses.

There is a reason that the traditional round nose is a popular 35 Whelen cast rifle bullet form. It maximizes both accuracy and bullet weight in the shorter bullet forms. There is also a reason that 35 caliber jacketed and plated pistol bullets are generally all round/flat styles -- they have to be short enough to go inside revolver cylinders and still be heavy enough to work well while swinging a meplat.

[cwlongshot]

I shot a handful of the “community” bullet in 180g but only using my accuracy load of 20.3g 4198.

Kinda suked. :groner:

253864

But same load with a Saeco 396 does this:

253865

These are 100y Groups.

Need to do some more testing!! Fun begins!

CW

[bikerbeans]

I shot a handful of the “community” bullet in 180g but only using my accuracy load of 20.3g 4198.

Kinda suked. :groner:

253864

But same load with a Saeco 396 does this:

253865

These are 100y Groups.

Need to do some more testing!! Fun begins!

CW

You can always blame the poor group on the fellow that cast those boolits.:mrgreen::mrgreen:

BB

[P Flados]

Or the dummy that came up with mold in the first place.

On the other hand this is hopefully just a "non-optimum" combination in some form. With my 357AR I had some really bad groups, but eventually found loads that were pretty consistently less than 2 MOA.

My biggest frustration early on was when I would get a group with 3 touching at 50 yards, one an inch away and one several inches away. Some of this was probably gun related, some may have been brass problems (formed from range pickup 223), some may have been loading problems (cobbled together dies and tooling), and finally there is the other ever present variable (me, the shooter).

It would be easy for me to look at the CW group and note that two hit very close together at close to the same POI as his accuracy load. So with two "good" shots and two "bad" shots, what caused the problems with the bad ones.

FYI, have you determined the COL that puts the boolit in contact with the rifling? How does this compare to the max that will run through your magazine.

[cwlongshot]

I have discovered shooting my cast nearly exclusively now for a couple years that they do nit at all respond like jacketed... MUCH more Black/White. Take that load above. 19 & 21g shot three inch groups @50. My “target is 1” or less @ 50 and 3” or less at 100 BUT ROUND groups. I dont wanna see flyers to make a large group. (Who does right) Flyers are usually ME, either poor shooting or a bad miss culled bullet.

This IS NOT AT ALL DISCOURAGING!! Just what I had happen on the very first loading. No blame cast anywhere! ;)

CW

CW

[tomme boy]

The problem is the bullet is entering into the throat crooked.

[Oldfeller]

253939

This is a truncated cone form that is all "as ground" clean angles. It CUTS cleanly.

Meplat flat nose is .250" diameter. Height of cone is .250" Raw cut diameter of the body portion right now is .354"

I suspect it will fly pretty well in a balanced mode. Weight will depend on cut depth --- at .850" max depth over the pins in the LEE blocks I have now we are talking somewhere around slightly over 210 grains ????? meatball estimate ?????



253940

Enough with dubious meatball weight estimates, time to drill a series of depths and pour some molten WW lead into them ......

[Oldfeller]

253941

OK, it is a bit crude but better than a raw guess, in any case.

1/4" deep = 120 grains

1/2" deep = 140 grains

3/4" deep = 180 grains

1" deep = 210 grains

Took the 1" slug and cut it down to .850" long (max cavity depth in current LEE blocks) and it weighed 203 grains.

[Texas by God]

277 posts for 3 pics of groups on paper! That has to be a record. Thank you P Flados and CW for keeping it real.

[Oldfeller]

277 posts for 3 pics of groups on paper! That has to be a record.


253942



That's right, Texas --- none of it is real but just the 3 groups shot on paper.

Boy, I really missed my audience, didn't I?


:guntootsmiley:


The pic is a maximum LEE four up block filling 175 grain bullet weight that is approaching the profile of the P Flados Little 'un. This bullet would only get good rifling support for slightly more than half the length of the bullet and as such it would not be supremely accurate due to getting easily cocked in the throat, etc.

However, it packs a .190" meplat and looks like it would have a very good BC for the 175 grain weight that it packs. Being a slim nose design, it could live mostly outside the case, which is not true for the truncated cone version shown right before this one.

But over in Texas, it would be considered "unreal" and not worth considering.

[Phlier]

Boy, I really missed my audience, didn't I?

Well, since one side of the audience showed up, the other side might as well, too. ;)

I've read every post. Loved every minute of it. Just don't have anything useful to add to the conversation, so haven't said a word.

But I've learned more in this particular CB thread than I've learned in quite a while. And it's much appreciated by us guys that just hang in the background, reading everything, but without having anything meaningful to contribute.

My wife will have you to blame for yet another gun purchase... can't wait to put together an AR Legend. :)

Very much appreciated, OldFeller.

[P Flados]

can't wait to put together an AR Legend.

Having a similar AR (357AR), the 350L is certainly a new option for those that are really into the platform.

However, if you want the best chance at a 350L cast boolit weapon, those entry level bolt guns seem to be doing awfully good.

[Texas by God]

Oldfeller- I apologize if I stepped on your toes even though you weren't mentioned at all. I have followed this thread as it floated down the river. I simply remarked that I was glad to see some results. Happy New Year.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G930A using Tapatalk

[mehavey]

277 posts for 3 pics of groups on paper! That has to be a record.
Oh come on.....

https://i.postimg.cc/c4dPdmQk/350-Legend-SAECO-352-pig-sm.jpg

:kidding::bigsmyl2:

[BrutalAB]

Just finished reading all 15 pages. My bear creek arsenal upper gets delivered tomorrow. My dies probably on saturday. I plan to get loads using my noe version of the rcbs 180 sil and lee 200 rf.
Got new starline brass.
I powder coat.
First powder to test is aa 1680.

Oldfeller, did you shoot either of these two boolits before you altered your barrel?

[Oldfeller]

Brutal,

Yes I shot it before and after but only using the LEE 200 grain rifle bullets and my original crop of pistol bullets.

There were no major "instantly noticeable" degradation effects on accuracy after making the throat .200" longer at the same .357" diameter. This would not be true if you increased the throat diameter any at all, or had made changes longer than the .200 increase in depth.

My PC coated 200 grain LEE lead rifle bullets still hit throat's end and pick up good rifling marks before the butt end of the bullet even exits the case. This is not true with the longer noses on the more aerodynamic bullet shapes like the P Flados Little 'un.

Do not increase your throat's diameter, simply size your bullets to .3565" by using a LEE .356" push through sizer and you can extract them from the lengthened throat when unloading them (most of the time). Realize that paint irregularities on your PC bullets may still cause you to have to get out your barrel inserted "tapping rod" on occasion.

You will never make a .358" 35 Remington out of the Legend, so don't even try to go there. You can shoot a lead .358" bullet by putting the entire bullet down into the case, but forget about hanging one out into the throat -- it ain't happening.

Learn to love what works well with your gun. Do that, and be happy with what you got.





Why you do not want to get involved in this Winchester 350 Legend mess right now ----

Brass is problematical .... You can only buy it cheap as range brass from Graff & Sons. Full Length resizing dies are only sporadically available from LEE (small custom runs). Chamber throats in Ruger guns are "somewhat strange" to the Winchester/SAMMI standard and in general throat lengths vary a bit between brands.

Larger capacity Legend magazines are only just now starting to become available. The first ones are quite expensive and are somewhat rare right now.

YOU CAN'T MODIFY OLD PMAGS AND YOU CAN'T MODIFY 5.56 MILSURP BRASS. Well, you can if you are crazy --- but it doesn't work flaw free, that's for sure.

You are signing up for endless consecutive levels of mild frustration if you use the AR platform for your Legend. You will be constrained by this and followed by that, followed up by the other .... until you finally make up a mix of stuff that will run out an entire magazine full in banging style -- then you just quit fighting it and just do what you discovered works whenever you want to shoot the gun using "banging style".

...... mostly you just shoot it with its 10 round CMMG magazine that came with the gun.

[Oldfeller]

254108

OK, attempts to sand the internal surfaces of the converted 5.56 PMAGs so they would digest stock Legend brass from Winchester without building up a "stack up resistance" at 10+ rounds failed miserably. The sanding worked OK and blended in all the machining residue marks, but the sanding uncovered a new set of ribs to deal with.

New learning --- there are very short (small width) RIBS that you cannot readily even see on the case head side of the 5.56 PMAG that are your culprit. Removal of these tiny ribs by sanding isn't going to happen, the PMAG material is too tough to simply sand them away. All you can do is round them off and blunt them a little.

All my cutsaw driven sanding did was make the tiny blended ribs stand out from the rest of the shiny plastic by covering them with sanding marks.


[smilie=b: She's a biatch, boys

[cwlongshot]

254110

My magazine alterations haven't been as insurmountable as ol fellers. I started with MISSION FIRST brand magazines. (Cause thats what a lil shop I stopped in had in stock.) Plus they matched the stock. [smilie=f:

Single issue after sanding ribs smooth was last round feeding. Tommyboy suggested the mag spring. I suspected same. Testing by stretching it leaves a odd looking mag before loading. But feeds and functions 100% Now. READ 100% FUNCTION.

254111

254112

CW

[BrutalAB]

I had no plans to lap my barrel or anything.
I have a 358 and 357 sizer, do you suggest i go ahead and order a 356?
Originally i was going to modify one of my 30 or 40 round mags, but i have realized thats probably more of a headache than its worth. Ill just wait until they are availiable.

[cwlongshot]

Problem with attempting modification of larger then ten round mags is getting inside to remove (COMPLETELY) polish and smooth the insides. My recommendation stick with 10 round. Later BUY higher cap as they become available.

YES ABSOLUTELY, you must have a way to size to .356.

CW

[BrutalAB]

Thank ya, ordering a noe set now. I like being able to save time on this project.

My idea for mag was to take a metal mag, make a ring brace or two, one for near the bottom and one for just below the mag well, and then drill out the ribs. Dunno how well this would work, but i have a few mags that i bought a few years ago still with the 4$ price sticker on them. So i figured i wouldnt be out much if i destroyed one in the process.
But i do have some 10 round cmmg on their way in, ordered those when i got to around page 7 or so. (I really do appreciate all the knowledge and time saving ive got from this thread)

Ive sent emails to magpul and duramag telling them i want 30 and 40 round mags. Magpul responded by saying no plans to at this time.

[P Flados]

Brutal,

For cast, I would recommend you try your 0.357" sizer, but also try a 0.356". Some sizers run ± 0.0002" or so.

If you size down jacketed, people seem to have much better luck going down to 0.356".

With my side rib removed Magpul magazine, the meplat on my Lee 200 was too big for optimum feeding when loaded to magazine length. My gun was also prone to beating up the nose on the Lee 200. Some have said they got the boolit to work, but I am not sure what mags they used or what their COL was.

Good luck with your boolits. Hopefully you will have better luck with the CMMG mags than I had with my modified 223 mag. Do let us know how things work out.

[tomme boy]

Lee 200 works fine in mine. I don't have the length right now but it is seated so the front drive band is even with the case mouth. Sized 0.356". I am using C Products and Ruger mags. I tried the Wilson mag but it does not work in my gun. The mag bulges out and it will not even go into the gun. I just use that in my 556 guns now.

[BrutalAB]

I know im way behind yall, but i havent seen too many pics of ammo comparison around between 350 legend and 223

254192

Got a dummy round loaded up and tested, its the noe version of the rcbs 180 sil sized to 357. Passed the plunk test so I loaded from an unmodified mag and chambered fine. Of course it was only one round i knew I wouldn't get more than that, just wanted to test the ramp and such.
I still needed to get that 356 sizer cause dad has a 9mm pistol that hates 357 boolits.
Plus i got 360 and 361 bushings to size down all these boolits that are 363 after powder coating. My sizing press couldnt handle a long arm for extra leverage. Already broke one lee c frame attempting to do that.

254193
Its a side charger, so manual charging wont be as annoying.

[Oldfeller]

BrutalAB,

For you and folks coming late to the party I have edited this entire thread (all 15 pages of it) adding in some DON'T DO THIS advice in purple text that should stop you from spending money on tooling you don't need and from following pathways that lead to dead ends.

This is NOT a thread for low understanding beginners ....

when you first read it the disclaimers and warnings at the front should have been listened to and you should not be here at the end of this thread requiring re-edits from me to be done here at the end to protect you from following dead pathways. And yes, about half the pathways go NOWHERE useful, but that is the price of learning from scratch.

Some of this stuff is dangerous. Some of what you have posted indicates you are a very young reloader.

Remembering my own youth, you are not going to pay attention to jack sh__t that people like me say to you in reasonable attempts to protect you. Instead you will spend a bunch of unnecessary money and wind up bleeding somehow.

Being of Grandfather age now, I feel very strongly that you need to be protected from some of the dangerous stuff that goes far beyond your current level of comprehension.

I wish youth could listen a little better to age, but it never has.

Yes, this all sounds like fun to you, but no, it is really some inherently frustrating and potentially dangerous stuff. If you start copying the loads and powders we talk about or start modifying your gun in the manners we discuss YOU ARE TREADING ON DANGEROUS TURF and you lack the knowledge and experience to walk there safely.

Hate to rain on the parade, but I think some of it may be needed here.

[BrutalAB]

You are correct oldfeller, i am relatively young at both reloading and age.
As such I had and still have no plans to modify any part of my rifle. Unless magazines count, which i scrapped that idea when i realized how much trouble yall were having.
Which is why i started emailing mag manufacturers telling them I want to buy a product they are not making yet.


I do not consider any of my purchases thus far to be wasted. As the only thing I have bought that is 350 legend specific is brass, dies, and aa 1680 powder. And im pretty certain i will need all of those.

I dont even consider the .356 sizing bushing to be a waste since it should make my 9mm for my dad function better. The larger ones are because i have a lyman wad cutter that drops at .362 or something ridiculous that i want to be able to use in 38 special. Thats the boolit that broke my press about 4 or 5 years ago.

I tested that one round in an un modified mag because my cmmg 10 rounders have not been delivered yet.

Dunno where i gave the idea that i was going to proceed with any of the more advanced stuff.

Also being a young man, i have significantly less time to do anything related to reloading and shooting. I wont even be able to shoot a round of anything until there is sunlight after 530 pm.

[Oldfeller]

Just being somewhat protective like your own grandpa would be, but trying not to get all excessive about it.

Google rotator cuff injuries and surgical methods (some right gory stuff on YouTube if you want to look at it) . Both P Flados and I have had such and I STRONGLY recommend you not going there while cranking away at reloading presses that require way too much force to do excessive re-sizings, etc.

You start this chain of shoulder failure while you are young and immortal by doing overly stressful stuff ..... and it comes home to roost when you are old and start losing your main muscle muscle tone and mass.

If you feel sore after doing a session of heavy resizing, then you are doing this sort of damage to yourself.

For example, enough "equipment stress" to bust up a cheap aluminum LEE reloading press is certainly enough shoulder stress to do it to you ........

[BrutalAB]

So you are saying that my idea to size those boolits down in increments of .001 to .002 at a time is a good idea right?

. And i am familiar with repeated movement injuries. One of arms have had tendonitis, far less serious i know, but i learned to listen to my body after that and do things in ways that are more friendly to the body now.
I was unable to hold/carry my kid for about 2 months, it was painful to even grab something as heavy as a t shirt.

[cwlongshot]

Speaking cast now. Bullets size hard for a few reasons.

1) HARD alloy
2) Oversized / Wrong size
With PC you also have the disadvantage of no lube. What I do is size my bullets as soon as I am able after coating. (This keeps them as soft as they are gonna be) I also lube intermittently using Imperial sizing wax. ALWAYS ALWAYS, lubing first few they a NOE push thru. Lee is more forgiving and less lube is needed. This is because the Lee using a very thin band to size bulelt and the NOE uses a 1/2 wide band.
Sizing more than .003 - .005 is about as much as Ill do in a single Pass. But again this changes with bullets hardness. The Harder it is less you can comfortably size. Its also an amount that you may just check that you have correct mold for your use. If you know your pushing things size wise. YES size in steps.

Good luck and dont be afraid to ask questions. If worried PM someone most guys will be happy to help.

CW

[Oldfeller]

So you are saying that my idea to size those boolits down in increments of .001 to .002 at a time is a good idea right?


Using LEE push through sizers, .004" is about as much as you want to do on a PC bullet at a single step. Commonly, things more than that get sized twice, once as raw lead and once as a coated bullet.

The strength of your press determines how much you can size which can be somewhat more (but more than .004" generally requires shoulder protection in the form of a longer lever arm).

A trick I plan to check into this spring is to bulk tumble the pre-final-sized powder coated cast bullets with some hexagonal boron nitride powder to act as a final sizing lubricant and (since it will still be there pushed into the surface of the powder coating) a firing lubricant and a barrel conditioner.

I am not sure if this has been done lately or not.

[Oldfeller]

254409______ This slug weighs 181 grains

The curent truncated cone tooling seems to cut the cone in a somewhat odd fashion. This "expansion" of the tip end of the cone has happened to some degree on all recent trial cuts. It seems to be an expression of the curved cutting paths and vibratory run out and it is likely to show up in finished cast boolit cavities made from this tooling.

I dummy cut some soft gummy aluminum and got some chatter marks in the finished cut down at the bottom flat face of the cone. A shorter cone seems to work better for keeping the chatter marks relatively smaller, generally speaking. Still, I think the truncated cone form will not be "as consistent" from one cavity to the next so I am still looking for the best cutter form for the 350 Legend bullet.

The "round flat" tooling is slow boating its way from Hong Kong at the moment, so the next form candidate is about 20 days away and counting down.

Run out and deflection expressing itself in the round flat tooling would not likely be nearly as strong as the deflection that can be so clearly seen in the truncated cone forms. Also, the round flat tooling will "self-center itself" all the way up to the flat meplat, so the round flat form tooling may enable a more stable consistent bullet form cavity to cavity as well.

The picture shows a .260" meplat on the truncated cone form. .280" is about as much meplat as the truncated cone can do, but round flats can commonly go up to .300" diameter meplats, such sized meplats are already found on the LEE round flat pistol bullets and these meplats are very effective on deer out of revolvers, so likely even more effective out of the 350 Legend when pushing some extra weight and speed.

[Oldfeller]

254495

So what has taken your mind off your molds and made you slow down your progress ????

Time has come to sprout and grow some tomato trays for the next growing season and to plan out the garden .......


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


Wife has requested that we grow green beans (snap beans) and baby lima butter beans and squash --- but they have to grow on a trellis so she can stand on the ground to pick them. No bending over, no ladders.

It is a challenge, or so she says ......

[lar45]

I use a Lee Classic Cast press to resize jacketed bullets. Speer .375" 235s to .368" for my 9.3x57 Mauser. I use Imperial sizing die wax and go down in 2 steps with the NOE sizers. When I tried going down in one step I bent the hollow handle on the Lee press, so I got a handle from a Dillon 550 on Ebay and use it instead. It's a near perfect fit and hasn't given a bit of trouble. I've since sized Speer .458" 350s down to .452" in a .451" sizer in one pass with Imperial sizing wax for my 450 Bushmaster and it seems to work great. Just use lots of lube. The first bullet through the die might want to stick, so back the die out a little bit, crank the handle all the way down to get the bullet part way through the die, then turn the die in a couple of turns and push it through some more until it pops out the top. The die should be lubed now and hopefully will only take one quick pull of the handle to size the bullets. Remember lots of lube! Have the press mounted on a heavy sturdy bench also so you don't tip the bench over accidentally. My bench is 2'x8' and is made of 2x10s and a couple of layers of 3/4" plywood. I have a shelf under the bench that is loaded with cast boolits to help keep it steady...

[rcav8r]

Just found this thread, after I ordered a Stoner pistol length upper, lee dies, CMMG mag, and 100 winchester cases. Still need bullets though!
Won't have time to read the entire thread til the weekend, so go easy on me, but has anyone tried various other light cast pistol bullets in this, sized, gas checked, such as a 158gr 38 special bullet sized to .356? Gas checked AND powdercoated?
ETA: The .357 bullets I have on hand are SWC, not RN, so reason for my question.

[Oldfeller]

248416

Still waiting on a new full length case sizing die from LEE, so I worked on casting and powder coating a set of bullets instead.

Not intending for much very long range shooting, but instead desiring good nose mushrooming as a primary concern, I air dropped the bullets and intentionally ran the powder coat curing temperature over 325 degrees for 20 minutes, giving me a softer bullet that would upset in a feral pig or in a jug or three of water.

Powder coat is Easton Ford Light Blue and one coat yielded good coverage and flow as Ford Light Blue is wont to do. Learned from the taller gas check bullet that gravity flow is enough to overfill the gas check shank, so any future lots will be gas checked seated & not sized and then powder coated over the gas check and then sized once as a whole assembly.

Some would say "Why bother" with the gas check since this larger heavier slug won't exceed 2200 fps out of my 16' barrel gun and it would be the two smaller ones would hit the higher inaccurate speeds if any of them managed to reach up to those higher speeds.

So far no list member has volunteered to send me some as cast strings of 3 triple aught buckshot off a LEE mold for me to play with coating and loading, as I don't have a spare $60 to buy an eighteen banger mold as a "doubtful experiment".

So, no Evil AR experimental loads, sorry ....... :evil: rats


Short answer is YES. You will find this (along with pictures) on page one of the 15 pages of stuff.

[mehavey]

For what it's worth;

I just got back from the range tonight/heavy dusk with the CMMG upper and the loads I've settled as standard jacketed/cast combo.

100 Yds/Using WINCHESTER* Cases/Standard Expander/Norma-200 in both cases as max performance/fill/burn:

SPEER 180FP HotCor Sized .357" Norma-200/29.5gr/2.26 OAL/ QL:46,000psi/ALOX/2,081fps
https://i.postimg.cc/PJHCSnX3/350-Legend-Speer180-FP-Norma-200-021520.jpg0.72"

SAECO #352-240gr/Lym#2/ Sized .358"/Norma-200/24.3gr/2.26 OAL/QL:40,000psi/ALOX/1,721fpsfewer
https://i.postimg.cc/sXM2KDC4/350-Legend-SAECO-352-240-Norma-200-021520.jpg[/url]0.93"
(ps: spotless bore)


pps: I've (re)discovered the secret in "crimping" as well.
Use the sizing die as final step--> mouth 0.378(+). It align/sets both jacketed and cast up beautifully/at the mouth / and totally reliable feed with cast. Quite frankly I've getting very comfortable w/ the cartridge and the AR action as currently set up. I might get surpised but I'll yell (literally) if/when I do.



* This is a serious case manufacture issue as the thinner Starline case "floor" can get you into all sorts of trouble with a not-quiiiiiiite-fully-rotated AR bolt when feeding cast.
https://thefiringline.com/forums/showpost.php?p=6767337&postcount=205

[Oldfeller]

+1 on using the full length sizer die as your post assembly taper crimp die.

I have not seen anything work more repeatably or better than the full length case sizing die you already have. You control the insertion amount to yield no smaller than .377" measured right at the mouth knowing that if you do go smaller you are actually crushing the case into the bullet and crushing the lead bullet accordingly.

It will crimp a jacketed round or a cast (PC round) flawlessly and it will stay where you set it during an entire reloading run.

By definition, the case mouth always stands proud to the bullet enough to positively stop the insertion of the finished round in the manner that the 350 Legend is designed to work. Overcrimping is made "hard to do accidentally" which is a good thing.

[Oldfeller]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGDHZjKsP9U


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGDHZjKsP9U

Expect some additional folks to be checking out the Legend because they saw it on Hickok45's channel.

[rcav8r]

Just now finished the thread.
The way I'd do a PC bullet mold is to machine the 2 halves separate in a CNC mill. Downside is that there's always the chance they may not be perfectly aligned.
I just don't have the experience to make a custom cutter of any kind like that a bullet shape.

[Oldfeller]

254900

Funny, none of the cutters look "bullet formed" at all. They look more like odd drill bits with one single carefully defined cutting edge and the other edge on the other side carefully relieved so it does not cut in all on the fine feeds ......

The one on the left is a round-flat form with a .300" diameter meplat.

The one on the right is a hand modified truncated cone with a 270" meplat.

Both forms have enough edge curvature at the loading end and are small enough to make it into the chamber.

Also funny, if we were shooting just for accuracy, I'd bet my dollar on the big bruiser of a bullet to have a smaller group size. Simply less chance of loading it off center and spinning it off center going through the throat and up the barrel. Plus the larger mass will tend to make the cheap ball powder behave more consistently.

Plus, the amount of bullet OD that isn't directly bore and land supported practically isn't there at all as a % of total bullet length ...... and the curve at the loading edge is actually bigger on the bigger bullet, so less chance of a stoppage jam on the large one as well.

It is brutal ugly boolit though, functional as heck inside 200 yards -- but brutal ugly just to look at it.

But if I were looking down the barrel of my AR at a charging frothing tusker boar pig or an angry sow bear protecting cubs, brutal ugly is EXACTLY what I would be wanting it to be .....

A bullet length of .750" would park the weight of either of them between 180 and 200 grains, weights which a Legend can drive up to 1750 fps (the optimum wide meplat cast bullet speed range).


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

254901 4 varieties of red tomato, ranging from 1 pound to 3+ pounds in size.
I want even the "little runt tomatoes" I grow to be worth the trouble picking .....

[Oldfeller]

Playing around with numbers on the brutal ugly as it can go "too heavy" within what the mold blocks will allow to be cut depth-wise.

weight grains 170
length in mm 17.9
weight per mm 9.50

play w/ lengths
how long 18 19 20
what weight 170.95 180.45 189.94

18mm makes ~170 grains
19mm makes ~180 grains
20mm makes ~190 grains
21mm makes ~200 grains



255022

Mocked up slugs can also be used for early feeding tests, once again a sensible reality check that can save a lot of time and effort being wasted on stuff that just ain't a gonna work out for you .....

Note that .240" of the .300 total throat depth is being used by this trial mock up, and because of the throat extension that was done the maximum brutal ugly assembled length that the converted PMAG magazines can handle will indeed auto-load. The assembled round will slide into the chamber and throat after taking a very mild (wide thin smile impact damage) on the front edge of the bullet as it cocks up out of the magazine and bounces off the forcing cone and the chamber wall.

Obviously, this bullet CAN be run forward far enough to INTENTIONALLY CAUSE feeding/chambering issues, it is after all "brutally ugly" in all its intentions. The fact it can be auto-loaded at all is somewhat of a miracle in itself .....

The wide area had very mild "flattened lip" damage to the nose edge which indicates the round is entering the chamber mildly cocked in an up/down fashion and the bullet itself is bearing the brunt of the "straighten up and align right" loading action. The bullet is getting slowly pushed back into the case by these impacts as well -- another symptom of the same loading conflict.

Mock ups do lack the PC thickness build up, so they aren't by any means "definitive" be all or end all tests, but just a reasonable excuse to proceed on to the next step. The very minor "smile" impact damage to the very edge of the brutal ugly would not be so noticeable (nor as large) on a properly powder coated bullet as powder coating is harder and tougher than air dropped WW lead.

Soft cast WW metal does tend to expand in water jug tests to a small degree (mostly seen in rounds going a bit faster than what the Legend will readily do with the full weight slugs) --- however in existing 350 Legend water jug and gel tests cast WW slugs don't seem to do much expanding and they just bore on through the jugs giving whatever meplat splash action the bullet form provides on the first 3 jugs with less damage to the later jugs.

Brutal ugly was built off this knowledge, within 200 yards it is intended to go all the way through a game animal leaving a blood trail from both of the splash expanded holes. Careful placement of the hole in the neck or intentionally breaking the front shoulders is desirable for not having to track or chase the game animal through the bush.



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



There is a lot of information about truncated cone nose forms in the 350 Legend as well as lots of data off the LEE 200 grain .358 bullet. I feel these forms can be trusted off historical data and will run group sizes between 1-2" based on other folks published work.

I also feel that 50-50 plumbers lead and WW alloy is the most appropriate alloy for the truncated nose form (and the LEE 200) as they need a little help expansion wise.

Brutal ugly is intended to be shot in air dropped WW alloy at full Legend speeds and will simply do the job "as is".

[Oldfeller]

255131

Having already done the first level feeding tests on the Brutal Ugly bullet, let's roll over to the Truncated Cone nose form and load them both up in the same magazine alternating who goes first each time to spread out the right-left effects and BANG THE SNOT OUT OF THEM WITH 10+ SLAM CHAMBERINGS just to see which one survives with relatively less damage.

I am curious for the results, anyway. Remember, Brutal Ugly starts as a .300" diameter meplat and the Truncated Cone starts as a .270" diameter meplat.

Both of these meplats will measure smaller after the nose abuse that is headed their way ......

[cwlongshot]

I hope that they feed for ya. But I gotta say I’m not holdin much hope.

CW

[rcav8r]

I just checked a bunch of the Winchester brass I ordered. Seems to run 1.703 to 1.705 long.
From what I've been seeing, it sounds like 296 powder might be the better one for this cartridge?

Sent from my Moto G (5) Plus using Tapatalk

[P Flados]

rca,

Did you size before measuring. Length of "as fired" will be shorter than "as sized".

WW 296 is middle of the pack for this round. I worry just a little about ignition with 296/H110 given that you can not apply a heavy crimp (a standard recommendation for this powder). Going with a hot primer is a good idea.

[rcav8r]

These lengths are out of the bag measurements.
I want to find a general purpose powder, since I may wind up using both jacketed and lead. Right now I want to find out if my Lee 158gr SWC'S will load smoothly. Need to make some dummy rounds.

Any other suggestions as to powder?

Sent from my Moto G (5) Plus using Tapatalk

[tomme boy]

Stick with the Win or Hornady factory brass. Been a few reports of Starline brass blowing out from the web being too far to the rear leaving an unsupported case wall. Brass has been completely blown out to looking like a belted mag when it comes out. Hornady and Win brass the web is still in the chamber while the Starline is not.

I'm about to let this one go. Been seeing way too many things with the manufacturers just putting out garbage and letting everyone else do their research for them.

[Oldfeller]

Observe the data. What we as a group have measured early on says the 350 Legend is a relatively robust round that can withstand a lot of variation in OAL from the factory, not that this is a good thing mind you, but the Winchester brass seems to survive it fairly well.

The newer batches of Winchester range brass have more primer pocket crimped rounds in them now (approaching 100%) the pocket stamping depth on the Winchester once fired stuff from Graf & Sons is getting military firm and deep. This once fired brass is starting to get smaller length variations after being once fired -- Winchester is getting their act together a little bit better while Starline is still in their learning curve.

I also note that Midsouth and several others are selling once fired brass to the public now, so there are other suppliers out there selling the once fired brass fairly cheaply.

More evidence of chamber mouth unsupported bulging showing up with Starline is showing up again, this sort of bulging action was noted by me in a very mild form on Winchester once fired because Winchester brass is simply much thicker in the web area than Starline in the first place.

[FLINTNFIRE]

Keep up the information I enjoy reading and following , Have not shot a 350 legend yet , picked a upper and some mags up and a couple boxes of winchester loads , they are a lot more standard length then the bags of once fired I got from grafs , have the dies , just do not have a mold yet , still in the research mode , but am leaning to a mold from mountain molds on their software design . Anyway enjoying this thread and your work.

[Oldfeller]

HOW TO RATE THREADS go to the very top of this page and look in the gray margin on the right hand side right below the page numbers where it says "Rate Thread"

It's funny, apparently the only one person who knows how to rate a thread on this board gave this thread a one star rating, so I doubt many people are going to read it.

And please do rate the thread, only getting one customer response is sort of futile if the worth of a thread is determined by one review.


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


255169

The nose form that took by far the most damage on the meplat edge was the Brutal Ugly --- but it loaded properly every time with zero failures to feed and chamber. This is significant because it means you got a choice between some minor non-important meplat edge damage and repeated stoppages due to failure to feed and chamber .....

By the looks of things, Brutal Ugly is just plain flying along when the edge of the meplat slams into the feeding ramp with the other edge of the meplat bouncing off the other edge of the feeding ramp cone/chamber wall resulting in an impact blunted meplat edge and a matching "smile form" that shows up on the cylindrical side of the protruding bullet (directly opposite to the meplat edge damage) .....

The Truncated Cone took very mild damage only at the change over line between cylinder form and cone form --- I was surprised to find that edge impacts to the meplat nose were very very slight to non-existent. Truncated Cone also had a 10% failure to feed and chamber correctly (see line across the nose) and an even higher incidence of failure to chamber completely when using my made from 5.56 brass.

I will redo the truncated cone tests using Winchester brass to see if it makes that anything much of a difference.

I suspect the mildly rebated case head in the 5.56 reformed brass is affecting the magazine pick up in some magazines as the case head rim diameter of the rebated case is also .010" smaller than the Winchester brass rim diameter.


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


Testing in all the types of magazines (I have 3 of them) the truncated cone nose shape works the best in Winchester brass (has the least amount of loading damage to the bullet itself).

Success vs error (all kinds) actually favors the Brutal Ugly as it only got jammed up once due to a magazine feeding error / operator error that originated from a truncated cone round with the Brutal Ugly being the next round in line in the magazine.

The truncated cone nose form originated 2-3x more major bind errors over time. Just counting the depth and length of case scratches, lead gouges and case dents the Brutal Ugly feeds the best of the lot (in Winchester brass) followed by truncated cone (again using Winchester brass) and lagged behind by a good bit by the truncated cone using reformed 5.56 brass.

5.56 reformed brass sux, in other words.

At the end of the day, the meplat size on Brutal Ugly was reduced by dozens of repeated loading cone edge dents to be about the same size as the meplat on the truncated cone, but this was after dozens and dozens of slam loadings.


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


New theory that needs checking in your gun ---- truncated cone bullet forms do slightly better if loaded relatively deeper into a Winchester case.

New learning tends to say that the changeover line between the nose form and the bullet body form is what should be used to set up the OAL of the loaded cartridge. The main body diameter is what has to fight to get into the chamber through the throat/ramp cone, the nose is simply what gets in the way of that action.

[P Flados]

Any other suggestions as to powder?

Here is a list in order of burn rate with my thoughts. Note that I am probably biased against powders that are high $/lb, and that I have actually used only a few in my guns (a 357AR and several 357 Max guns). I have however, read a lot of stuff including the incredibly long but incredibly disorganized stuff from the Facebook 350L groups.

2400 is probably one of the fastest powders getting any use. The only load data I have seen for this powder is from a chart circulating on Facebook.

Lil gun is seeing quite a bit of use and has enough load data. Some think this powder is great, some worry about it. I am more in the second camp.

W296 / H110 has what looks to be an ideal burn rate and plenty of of load data. The only concerns noted have been the inability for a heavy roll crimp. It is getting quite a bit of use, and I do not recall much in the way of reported issues.

Alliant MP-330 is probably just as good or better than W296 / H110, but it has next to no 350L or 357Max data and the powder is not included with Quick load. If this one had more data they would sell a lot more of it

IMR 4227 is slower (and less dense) than optimum and has some but not much load data. It is a very safe powder, but will not give top velocities.

AA 5744 load data for 357Max has less velocity than AA 1680 below. I have not heard of it getting much use.

AA 1680 is a little slower than IMR 4227, but seems to works better than IMR 4227 because you can pack quite a bit more into the case. No published 350L data, but people use the vendor's 357Max data as a starting point and work up. Being just slightly slower than optimum, it does not give away too much in velocity for hunting loads. It is probably a good choice for a reduced risk of the pressure problems that seem to occasionally crop up with the more optimum burn rate powders. It also get use by folks for things like trying to get ARs to cycle on subsonic loads.

CFE Black is even slower than IMR 4227 and has some but not much load data. It will not give as much velocity as IMR 4227.

[Oldfeller]

What is next? I have two tools coming from China, the first one will be used as a simple round nose bullet form. I will take wooden block castings from that tooling and try to understand pure round nose loading issues better before going to the next step.

Round nose tool cast forms can get turned into round flat meplat slugs on my lathe for testing, with various sized
cut to true meplats so as to see the best size to avoid loading issues and loading damage.

This avoids the sin of "going too far" on the can't go back tooling changes, a sin I have committed twice now.

These simple round nose forms can also be machined into hollow points so I can understand the loading characteristics of those hollow point forms.

A simple view of things long term says I could make up a whole bunch of simple powder coated round nose forms into loaded rounds, then build a simple aluminum round tool to slip over the assembled bullet and quickly drill machine the PC'd bullet make the final hollow point bullet form, or else maybe use the old RCBS lubricizer to top punch size a shallow hollow point into a bunch of the PC'd bullets before loading them.

Accuracy destroying balance errors may well enter into these somewhat crude hollow point methods. not good

I suspect any form of post PC machining could hurt accuracy, so some "totally captive" die steel based nose forming machining that takes place at the actual final sizing operation might be better for keeping as much "on center and perfectly balanced" accuracy as possible. As would starting out with the simplest, best most "accuracy stable" cast bullet form that is found out of all the testing.

In the function of the LEE push through die there is a limited length tight zone that does all the sizing, so if I made up a pusher spud that goes into the ram that just happened to push the bullet into the sizing die and leave it on purpose in that tight zone (to park the unmachined undamaged PC'd bullet right at that perfect constriction zone) then I could then come in from the top with an aluminum bushed drill driven conical tool that could cut some very on-center very consistent depth hollow point forms into that captive, on-center bullet. Then I would swap out the short spud that is on the press ram and then finish the sizing stroke and ejecting the bullet by pushing it only from the bottom.

Machining tool would look a lot like this (less the shouldered aluminum rod it is inserted into, of course).

255329
Run out in this cutter would simply make a balanced, on-center very slightly larger diameter hollow point cavity.

Not many hunting bullets are actually needed, so some mild gyrations to make them are OK by me.

[P Flados]

With PC, it is very practical to do final sizing and reshaping of boolits after PC is applied. Back in March of 2018, I made a post describing something I called "No Jacket Swaging (NJS)". The post is copied below.

I have been using it a lot since then. All of my 357AR 180s and 200s are sized and slightly reshaped with a single pass base first NJS.

255432

I use NJS on my Lee tumble lube 158 RNs that drop at 0.356". With a single pass base first NJS I get improved shape boolits and the size is increased to 0.359"

255431

I just finished loading a batch of 30 cal "long nose" Lee 150s. I used a nose first single pass NJS to size down the nose to 0.299", lengthen the nose (eliminate the bands on both sides of the crimp groove) and size the remaining two bands to 0.311"


Text from March 2018 post:

My current ongoing experiment includes "something entirely new" (where there is really little or nothing "new").

I am currently making my own low tech, soft steel dies that allow No Jacket Swaging (NJS).

With PC, a boolit can be made NJS style as follows:

- A no lube groove mold is used to drop boolits fast & easy.
- Neither the mold nor boolits need to be perfect.
- PC is applied (I use ASBB HF red) on the as cast boolit.
- The boolit is then formed to the final shape with one or more swaging passes.
- Swaging passes are pushing the boolit up into the die and then back out the way they went in instead of the push through process.
- One pass will be base first to get perfect, uniform, crisp, full circumference edge on the base.
- The base first pass can also increase or reduce the boolit diameter and do minor re-shaping of the nose at the same time.
- A second pass can be nose first to get a nose rider section that is just the right final OD and is perfectly concentric with the base.
- My current nose first die allows me to take a boolit that is 0.309" with no nose rider portion and "add" my desired 0.299" nose as the last step.

[Oldfeller]

What do you use for a swaging press?

[P Flados]

Since there are no jackets involves and re-shaping is minor, my old Lee manual turret works fine. It take less effort than re-sizing 44 mag cases.

255480255481

[mehavey]

FWIW:

https://i.postimg.cc/BvmysqqS/350-Legend-ACC36-180-LG-Norma-200-sm.jpg

[Oldfeller]

Garden is in now, all the various plants are in place and the tape based drip irrigation system automatically waters all of them. Harvesting the garden is now the wife's job, walking around with her wicker basket picking stuff while not having to bend over to do it.

Gardens are a lot of spring time work, so I put all the gun stuff on the back burner for a while. I also needed to work through a considerable amount of disgust with the caliber in that you have to build so much from scratch, not being able to just go buy so much of what you need to pursue the caliber in the finer details.

[smilie=b:

So, I acknowledge my enthusiasm isn't what it used to be and that chasing this rifle and this caliber has dropped down in my ranking of best ways to spend my leisure hours.

But I am still interested in finishing cutting the mold blocks and seeing how consistently they cast the same slug out of four cavities .......

Will it work out or will it just turn into another 350 Legend hairball ????

Only one way to find out, really. We shall see, one step at a time.

[Dapaki]

Well, Oldfeller, thanks to your dogged determination on this thread, I too purchased a 350LGD upper from BCA and have been enjoying it a lot for the past few months, casting LEE boolits, PC, loading and now using surplus powders to duplex affordable loads for them has been a joy!

Once you find time and are ready to cut mold blocks, I sure would be interested in your findings. Be well.

[mehavey]

"... duplex...loads...." Please elaborate.

[Dapaki]

Please elaborate.

I'll be posting the thread tomorrow but It's all about using cheap, slow military pulled powder in the LGD.

[Oldfeller]

Duplex loads start with a "too slow for the case / caliber base powder, generally a mil-surp pull down 50 cal or 20mm cannon powder. You put some faster powder under it to boost case pressure to get the slow stuff to burn completely. Generally, I use a pull down 5.56 powder for this booster job.

Key word is cheap as these wind up being very low pressure case filling loads that just barely stop leaving tons of trash around behind them.

And yes, they are potentially DANGEROUS to do and generally are only marginally safe in the hands of duplex masters, of which there are many on this board (most of whom won't even admit publicly to doing it any more).

As a matter of fact, even a single post on duplexing by me quickly becomes a controversy "hair-ball" with people both pro and con banging at my e-mail box with their "informative opinions" and simply reminding me why I took a short vacation from the list recently in the first place.

BTW, this is a bolt action rifle game for a newbie, newbies filling up an autoloader's gas system up with trash is NOT RECOMMENDED.

Nobody who isn't an old Shooters level experienced experimenter needs to be messing around with this stuff. And since I have heard from so many of you already today, just let it drop into silence again.

No, I have no intention of posting duplex loadings for anything -- although I seem to remember a right dandy one for 30-06, IMR 5010 and BLC-2 that only works out well for cast bullets over 192 grains. I hid behind a tree when I fired the first one of those off using a long string going to the trigger, if that gives you any thought of why I seem to think such things are "potentially dangerous" --- potentially they are.

[mehavey]

Having played the 10% duplex game -- ONLY in BP/very LARGE cases (45-3¼)/Very STRONG Falling-Block actions --
I wouldn't even dream of doing (much less see the need for) it in modern smokeless loadings

[FLINTNFIRE]

Well to some of us we can get a load that meets our needs much cheaper or by using what we have on hand , and it is nice to be able to make do with whats on shelf in times where stuff is short or price is high , to each their own .

[Oldfeller]

260982

For those who were asking, it is an "automatic" garden now that it is built. Water and fertilizer come through the drip tape and all veggies are pole types who will grow up the mesh and run along the netting stretched over the top of the entire thing. My wife is short enough to walk into the tunnels and pick peas and beans on the sides and hanging down from the cross stretched netting without bending over and hurting her back.

I grow sugar snap peas (foreground), string beans, yardlong beans, King of the Garden pole lima beans, tomatoes and yellow zuccini and okra. 100 tomato plants go around the fence boundary so I have lots of big sandwich slicer 'maters and the excess get ground, drained and cooked into red spaghetti sauce.

What I don't have --- no weeds, no weeding, no watering and I don't have to mess with it now except to put an occasional sack of Miracle Grow into the fertilizer injector system.

[thraxx]

260982

For those who were asking, it is an "automatic" garden now that it is built. Water and fertilizer come through the drip tape and all veggies are pole types who will grow up the mesh and run along the netting stretched over the top of the entire thing. My wife is short enough to walk into the tunnels and pick peas and beans on the sides and hanging down from the cross stretched netting without bending over and hurting her back.

I grow sugar snap peas (foreground), string beans, yardlong beans, King of the Garden pole lima beans, tomatoes and yellow zuccini and okra. 100 tomato plants go around the fence boundary so I have lots of big sandwich slicer 'maters and the excess get ground, drained and cooked into red spaghetti sauce.

What I don't have --- no weeds, no weeding, no watering and I don't have to mess with it now except to put an occasional sack of Miracle Grow into the fertilizer injector system.

^^ this guy has gardening figured out. :D

[Dapaki]

Duplex loads start with a "too slow for the case / caliber base powder, generally a mil-surp pull down 50 cal or 20mm cannon powder. You put some faster powder under it to boost case pressure to get the slow stuff to burn completely. Generally, I use a pull down 5.56 powder for this booster job.

Key word is cheap as these wind up being very low pressure case filling loads that just barely stop leaving tons of trash around behind them.

And yes, they are potentially DANGEROUS to do and generally are only marginally safe in the hands of duplex masters, of which there are many on this board (most of whom won't even admit publicly to doing it any more).

As a matter of fact, even a single post on duplexing by me quickly becomes a controversy "hair-ball" with people both pro and con banging at my e-mail box with their "informative opinions" and simply reminding me why I took a short vacation from the list recently in the first place.

BTW, this is a bolt action rifle game for a newbie, newbies filling up an autoloader's gas system up with trash is NOT RECOMMENDED.

Nobody who isn't an old Shooters level experienced experimenter needs to be messing around with this stuff. And since I have heard from so many of you already today, just let it drop into silence again.

No, I have no intention of posting duplex loadings for anything -- although I seem to remember a right dandy one for 30-06, IMR 5010 and BLC-2 that only works out well for cast bullets over 192 grains. I hid behind a tree when I fired the first one of those off using a long string going to the trigger, if that gives you any thought of why I seem to think such things are "potentially dangerous" --- potentially they are.

Not sure why all the alarm bells and such, I have completed my 350LGD workups SAFELY and am just now working on the thread post.

The term "Potentially Dangerous" applies to everything we do including casting and reloading, duplexing is no more 'dangerous' than reloading in general when you consider all the pitfalls that are involved with energetic materials. It's ALWAYS the best to help those who seek knowledge rather than dissuade the attempt since it rarely if ever produces a halt to the process but simply drives them underground to try their hypothesis without guidance.

[mehavey]

...duplexing is no more 'dangerous' than reloading in general.... Given there is no published data of any kind for Duplex loads -- that I'm aware of, what are your
procedures/tools/measuring devices for determining resultant pressure characteristics/curves ?

[Oldfeller]

Procedures = be cautious, timid and cowardly around anything home brewed. Remember the blown primers you got from playing with 7mm Remington Magnum loads with similar powders, remember all the internet talk talk of pressure induced speeds (the faster powder sets the first part of the powder pressure curve and the slower powder elevates things up from there keeping full pressure up and rising longer than you are used to seeing).

Exterior temperature is a variable to pay attention to. Powder position counts, so keep the loads oriented the same and make them tight enough to not get settled or migrated.

Write all the variables down in your load book. When it goes south, you will want enough records of the episode to try to figure out what did it, what caused this particular indigestion.

Castpics originally had some relatively safe duplex loads in it -- what happened that caused them to get them removed?

I know this current list is rife with some really ancient disagreements, and there are some current list norms against talking about certain topics, but if this is the last bastion of advanced cast boolit learning it sure seems like some things seem to be getting edited away over time.

[Oldfeller]

I have been watching the new 350 Legend video feeds on YouTube about multiple water jug tests and the very few gel block expansion tests of cast 350 Legend slugs.

My synopsis runs like this ...... 185 to 205 grain cast lead boolets will easily penetrate 16" of ballistics gel because they never really expand (and they are never really recovered either --- they go thataway right out the back of the backstop).

The gel test guy finally put a thick paperback book in front of the two gel blocks and a steel cookie pan between the two long blocks of 10% ballistic gelatin just to get some sort of hint about what is going on with the cast lead slugs ...... yep, them cast lead slugs that seem to breeze right on through the whole lot of it and ARE NOT EVER RECOVERED.

Added to this confusion are the repeated water jug tests of cast lead slugs that will penetrate at least 5 gallon jugs of water (normalized between 3 different tester people who use different ranges to shoot at) with me also noting in passing that the flat meplat equipped bullets do indeed seem to tend to veer off after the 4th jug and always exit out the sides of the string of jugs before they actually get stopped ----- yep, them devious & tricky cast slugs that have yet to be stopped cold and retained for analysis in any reliable fashion (unless they get carefully pre-expanded by the use of thick paperback books and/or steel cookie sheets).

(So, quick like a bunny rabbit, go run up and tape this thick paperback and this thick steel cookie sheet to the side of that deer over there so I can go shoot him effectively)

This new info has been rattling around inside my head for the last month or so as I had already figured I would need a flat meplat tipped bullet, but now I see that those flat meplat tipped bullets still DO NOT EXPAND effectively quickly enough and most of the 350 Legend's large impact power will still get wasted out on the dirt of the hillside on the far side of the game animal.

:twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted:

This leads to some errant thoughts about using things like this three bladed bodkin point to split the tip form of a powder coated cast bullet to enforce some very real very major VERY LARGE expansion and some amount of explosive fragmentation instantly upon initial impact ........

To do the trick you could take the long nosed bullet form of the P Flados Big 'Un and jack it open with this nitride hardened steel 3 blade bodkin arrowhead based tool, then resize it back down to get your diameter and bullet concentricity corrected back to correct caliber size again (collapsing the splits back together again in essence).

Realize that you can hurt your accuracy by inducing "unbalanced issues" so try to minimize these effects by using the balanced 3 flute piercing tool very carefully in a die controlled pierce & expansion followed by a carefully balanced repacking (resizing) of the expanded tip form into something akin to a round nose form with a residual deep "tri-round" hollow point splitting that leaves enough intact lead and solid polymer coating on the outer skin surface to keep the bullet flying round and intact until meat impact takes place.

The petals then split and fly open, expand outwards and bending over into the fully expanded form, occasionally breaking free to be secondary wound channels if bullet velocity remains high enough to do so.


262266


https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01M5I2EOP/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

[cwlongshot]

Adam makes entertaining videos. But he self Proclaims little knowledge of what he does.
He was impressed with the penetration of the various 170g Jacketed until I imfprmed the reason for the penetration was because little Expansion was occurring and that bullet Mostly penciled thru. It was NOT a desirable thing on a Whitetail.

He doesn't hand load.

CW

[P Flados]

Before powder coat, it is my impression that decent performance from a rifle frequently required harder alloys. Most of this ammo had little hope for significant expansion.

Somehow or another a lot of game got harvested anyway.

Accuracy that enabled good shot placement may have had something to do with successful use of deep penetrating (negligible expansion) ammo.

[tomme boy]

But how many were lost because the bullets did not expand at all? The only bullets that are working good are the poly tipped and the all copper custom bullets.

[cwlongshot]

I have shot Hornady 165's and 170's into wet pack.

The 170's only marginally expanded at 2200 fps. IMHO they need closer to 2500. Beyond attainable in the Legend.

The 165 is much better and more typical of the FTX. It expanded pretty well almost 1/2 its length and almost doubling it's diameter. Also
Fired @ 2200 fps.

My cast RD 190's cast at 15 BHN mushroomed the nose but nearly left the 30" box.

CW

[Oldfeller]

.
:coffeecom

:twisted:__:twisted:__:twisted:__:twisted:

Following on with the errant thoughts, a LEE push through .356" sizer (throws out .3565" powder coated bullets) has some useful features. The resizing portion of the hardened steel die is way down at the bottom of the thing, next to your press ram. There is a heck of a long hole on top of this action, which is machined to a known, regular size.

Yep, the rest of it is a machined, fully hardened .469" bored column that is 2.12" deep. This provides a useful feature for the powder coated bullet tip splitter as proposed.

Spin the bodkin point in your mini lathe and carefully grind the flutes down to a slip fit to the long .469" free bore at the top of the LEE push through resizing die. A dremel would work for the short strokes of this grinding, but a 41/2" grinder would do for the rough removal work. Final slip fitting could be done with a fine diamond file ......

For folks with larger more capable lathes, firmly thread mounting the bodkin point into a half inch piece of steel stock followed by lathing and grinding the assembly dead true to .469" would be nice, but that would be completely beyond what I can do with my equipment. This piece of steel stock need to have a carefully known shoulder cut into it where it reduces down to .469". More on this shoulder later ......

Following along with the "keep it simple" philosophy, push your bullet into the sizing portion of the .3565" functional sizing die using a custom pusher that parks it in 3-D space using the full ram extension of your LEE Classic (or other very robust press) at a fixed distance that is then fine tuned by simply screwing the die body in and out. This fine tunes and controls how far the bullet nose form sticks out of the sizing restriction and makes the bullet impale itself onto the bodkin point to the same user selected depth every time, controlled by the .469" bodkin shaft diameter and shoulder.

A good shoulder stopping point could be just short of the bodkin blades hitting the hard die steel of the LEE push through sizer ...... you can dial in any penetration short of this point at will by adjusting the entire die body in the press using the mounting threads.

So, during piercing the bodkin point and steel holder assembly gets pushed up by the intruding bullet tip and the bodkin shouldered shaft assembly rides up freely until the press ram toggles to the locked condition. A knee pushed up against the push handle will be plenty enough to hold the press locked in the full up position while a small ball peen hammer taps in the heavily oiled bodkin point assembly until the bodkin shoulder assembly seats on the top of the LEE push through die.

It is my hope that the gear oil on the tri-form bodkin point (helped by whatever polishing is needed on that tip to allow for ready retraction) will allow a ready vertical retraction of the tri-form bodkin's tip piercing point. A small flat screwdriver "jacking point" can be Dremel'd into this mild steel bodkin shaft assembly stopping shoulder which will provide more than enough leverage retraction action on a stubborn insertion.

Now, for the sake of best balance rotate the piercing bodkin assembly and do a last tap or two in each of the three possible cutting blade orientation positions. This would not take long to do off a polished and oiled bodkin tip and hopefully this step normalizes all balance issues with the pierced tip form into the bullet mass. It also tends to correct by normalizing out any running clearance slop conditions or out of round conditions or blade to blade thickness variation effects that still remain in your homemade tooling.

Now change the pusher to the longer stock LEE pusher (they snap in and out the ram just that easy) and push the bullet the rest of the way on through the die. So now you got yourselves a bunch of opened up tulip forms to inspect for internal casting voids and other internal flaws (you know you are gonna want to look at them, jest because you always wanted to know about those internal casting voids all along).

Final repacking of the bulged jacked open tulip tip assemblies will take place during a resizing pass through this same die, but a first pass through a rough repacker reformer die may well be needed. Butt first push through off a pin form hitting the bottom of the split tip is the technically correct way to do this, but I suspect just going nose first using a shallow angle aluminum cone form that ends in a .360" hole would be plenty good enough for the initial repacking.

The "starting throat" of the LEE push through sizer will accept up to .360" (and some extra in small change after polishing) and the LEE .3565" push through die will pack it all back down to final .3565" size in the final sizing restriction portion.

Once again, theoretically during that final resizing pass in the .3565" push through zone will result in all of the mating surfaces of the balanced split form get forcefully remarried (with an oiled surface remaining on each of them).

This idea has the advantage of being cheap and easy to do using the standard LEE push through die features.

[Oldfeller]

.
:coffeecom

:twisted:__:twisted:__:twisted:__:twisted:


I ordered the rod stock and the bodkin points and I have begun considering the various tool post grinding mounts that others have invented that are shown out on the net. Bodkin points are coming in from China and will be 1-2 months getting here, so there is no hurry.

Also, I am firming up on my cavity form choice once I have the tip splitter built and once I have tried it out on my stocks of P Flados bullet forms.

Best repacking consistency would come from the simple ball end mill round nose form as they would get squeezed back together tightly right up to start of the radius, which means maximum consistency in the finished ready to shoot bullet.

I already know the round nose form feeds well in my gun and since I don't have to mess with large hollow points or large flat meplats it simplifies the feeding issues a good bit.

A set of splits that go just a little tiny bit past the end of the round nose and just a tiny way down the length of the body would be both "feeding strong" and most likely able to withstand the spin factors involved. Such split forms would extend into the body center by over a quarter inch of additional center penetration.

You can rough estimate the initial MAXIMUM TEMPORARY BLOSSOM expansion form by .355" + 2x the tip penetration distance into the powder coated bullet. "Folded over" post erosion expansion will likely be closer to .355" + 1x the tip penetration distance into the powder coated bullet. If the petals do come off completely, then you will wind up with .355" plus a slight rounding mushroom effect and you will pick up 3 new damage pathways from the flying spinning petals.

Note: if the tips pop open in the air due to spin forces you will clearly see this action on the target holes, if so you just powder coat the tightly closed forms one more time and final size them again, with the extra layer of poly coating acting as additional retaining jacket to hold the slugs together during firing and flight.

[Oldfeller]

262550

How goes the automatic garden? Pretty good, wife is harvesting sugar snap peas, green beans and the very first of the squash.

We have a TON of butter bean blossoms and tomato blossoms, so I spray them weekly with calcium spray so the blossoms will set into little goodies and the fruit to food will get expedited.

She just now realized that although the garden is relatively small, it means a lot of daily work for her.

[Oldfeller]

262625 It is not obvious in the picture but the dremel mount is trapped and positively located by the two heights of the tool post slide it is attached to.

Quick update:

The rod stock and the dremel mount (made from a roll bar light mount no less) are here and the dremel grinder tool post mount is done now and it turned out better than "crudely cobbled together" which many of such things actually are.

I took my lathe chuck apart and cleaned it up good and oiled up the jaw gears, the internal drive gears and large jaw driver worm gear after trash removal and original machining burr removals. Put it all back together and r/o measures .002" which is "better than good enough" for a 3 jaw mini-lathe chuck.

Grind job on the lathe chuck jaws has been postponed for now as "not really needed".

Also, what I did realize is that my tool post compound slide adjustments had simply vibrated looser and looser over time all the way to the point of being sloppy, so to hold the tool post grinder stone in 3-D space a good bit more reliably on an interrupted grind job I spent the 40 minutes tuning the compound slides back to "relatively stiff" again.

Well, I am equipped for the 3 blade bodkin points to show up any month now ........ :lol:

[Dapaki]

Oldfeller, is that a 9X19? Mine went out of spec this spring with a good 0.0100" r/o so I had to re-cut them to bring them to 0.001" r/o once again.

Is the grinder what you are using to true up the chuck jaws? If so, why not just capture a solid section of drill stock in the deepest flat on the jaw set and use a boring bar to center the jaws? It's fast and accurate.

[dverna]

This has been an interesting read....

A lot of work and experimentation that will help others on a similar quest.

I would never make the journey as I have so little patience and talent yet I can appreciate those qualities in others.

[Oldfeller]

My lathe is a 7x10, I wish it was a 9x19 .....

Viewing several person's YouTubes of their truing efforts, most of these wind up worse off after cutting because the jaws are so loosely held by the chuck body that gripping round stock at the back end of the jaw simply rocks each jaw assembly in the body recesses and INCREASES NET TIR r/o after you are done with the grinding or boring bar.

When simply removing dirt and trash can take you from .016" down to .002" you are simply shooting craps with a jaw grinding or a jaw cutting operation. Too much slop room exists in the chuck for this trash to build up inside the chuck body to this degree, and this same jaw movement while clamping at the back of the jaw is guaranteed as well.

Main planned use of the tool post grinder is to fine fit the bodkin point into the LEE push through sizer long deep top hole.

In the case of the bodkin tip splitter, I will simply chuck my .625" rod stock, and without un-chucking it end drill and tap the threads to mount the bodkin tip then lathe turn the length controlled reduced portion of the .469" shaft --- all on the same center off the same chuck up using a live center in the drilled & tapped hole.

Even in a short turning length, spring back in the chuck, the bed, the carriage and deflection in the stock itself will give a slight diameter change (getting tighter towards the chuck jaws) even when using a live center to support the initial drill and tapped hole..

While leaving the original chuck up still intact, use JB Weld to coat the threads of the bodkin point then tighten it firmly, then coat the butt end of the shaft and the start of the bodkin form with the bulk of the remaining JB Weld batch. Let it cure for 48hrs.

Carefully scratch mark the excess bodkin blade portions then remove all the excess blade material with a hand held grinder, stopping a little short of the line that was marked. Then put the dremel mount on the tool post, turn on the dremel and remove the remainder of the blade steel to do a tight slip fit in the .3565" sizing die .469" top hole.

I am tempted to use a sanding loop of very fine grit wet or dry cloth backed paper to co-finish both the shaft and the bodkin blades during final slip fitting to the hardened die steel ....... this sanding loop method will remove very little material rather slowly while any r/o in ether piece of the two part shaft tends to get normalized to some degree.

[Michael J. Spangler]

Well I just had my first go round with 350 Legend in an AR.
Loaded some Lee 358-200 with CFEBLK and some with Win 296.
I was impressed with the velocities. Running 1800+ from a 16.5” barrel.

However I couldn’t hit the target board ��

My educated guess is that the alloy was too soft. Though it works well for my 357 magnum loads this is a little hotter round.

So I’m going to use some richer alloy and water drop it. I did really like shooting it though. I think this will be my new favorite AR cartridge

What alloy are you all using?

[tomme boy]

Did you gas check it?

[Michael J. Spangler]

No. It was hi tek coated.
I know that won’t give me the best accuracy but compared to my 357 ammo this was terrible. I run 358156 in the magnum without checks with much better results than this. Again I’m think alloy is the issue.

[mehavey]

See https://thefiringline.com/forums/showpost.php?p=6772223&postcount=57

The 358-200 was designed for use with a gas check -- which also serves to give you a clean/uniform base upon muzzle exit.)
(Don't leave home w/o it) [smilie=s:

[Michael J. Spangler]

See https://thefiringline.com/forums/showpost.php?p=6772223&postcount=57

The 358-200 was designed for use with a gas check -- which also serves to give you a clean/uniform base upon muzzle exit.)
(Don't leave home w/o it) [smilie=s:

Ok so let’s say I have a plain base 200. What alloy would you use? I hate gas checks.

[Dapaki]

COWW works for me.

[Michael J. Spangler]

COWW works for me.

Do you water drop at all?

I’m trying to stop with the 200 grain bullet as I feel I might as well use the most weight possible. This helps keep velocity down to acceptable for fast speeds and still give me the most energy at those speeds.

[mehavey]

IF you actually have a plain-base L358-200, then Lyman#2 w/ the barest/thinnest ALOX coating
will still work out best (~2,000fps out of 16" using a gas check)

But if you're actually shooting the Lee w/ the rebated gas-check shank naked/exposed then I suggest
gas cutting is still going to rain on the parade -- no matter what alloy/coating.

[Michael J. Spangler]

IF you actually have a plain-base L358-200, then Lyman#2 w/ the barest/thinnest ALOX coating
will still work out best (~2,000fps out of 16" using a gas check)

But if you're actually shooting the Lee w/ the gas-check shank naked/exposed then I suggest
gas cutting is still going to rain on the parade -- no matter what alloy/coating.

I’m going to ream out the gas check shank. I’m not worried about gas cutting. Hi-Tek basically makes the bullet into a plated bullet. I’ve shot GC bullets without GC and with coating with decent results. I’m thinking it’s the alloy. I do have some more with this softer alloy. I will gas check them and shoot them to see how they work. I could be wrong. I’ve been wrong before.

[mehavey]

Clean/sharp-edged/uniform base will buy you quite a bit of improvement.
And I've never gone higher than Lyman #2 in anything from high-speed (2,500fps) 223, to larger (2,000 fps) 30 caliber.

[tomme boy]

Hitec does not stand up as well as powder coat does to speed. And you just saw that. Put a check on it and stop trying to get around basic cast shooting practices.

[Michael J. Spangler]

Hitec does not stand up as well as powder coat does to speed. And you just saw that. Put a check on it and stop trying to get around basic cast shooting practices.

I’ll get rid of the rifle before I play with checks.

This is the first I’ve heard of hi-tek not handling anything as good as powder coating. Other than maybe not having the color variations.

This is just an attempt to find a cast friend cartridge and load for an AR so it doesn’t sit neglected all the time. My levers get used every week. The AR is lucky to see a range trip a year and it will stay that way if it has to get gas checks.

I’m sure I can find a 200 grain plain base that will handle 1700 FPS in that 1:16 twist without issues. Next step load some with checks and some hard alloy. In the name of science. Then I can determine if it’s a keeper or not.

[P Flados]

I am another that would get rid of a gun before going to checks.

I ran the Lee 200 with ASBB HF red coating and no checks through my 357AR, and all of my 357 Maximum guns. They shot good in the maximums and shot OK in the AR with manual single feeding. Alloy was range lead water dropped to around 10 bhn.

The Lee 200s did not feed in the AR from the mag worth a darn. The edge of the Meplat was typically catching pretty bad.

The bad feeding was what pushed me into making my own mold. When I first started with my plain base 180 and 200 NLGs, I felt that the customs shot just a little better than the Lee (but they fed a whole lot better). Eventually I worked up a just over 2000 fps load with the custom 200 that is pretty reliable at 2 MOA.

263683

263680

The 180 / 200 loaner mold is back home gathering dust and is available.

[Michael J. Spangler]

I am another that would get rid of a gun before going to checks.

I ran the Lee 200 with ASBB HF red coating and no checks through my 357AR, and all of my 357 Maximum guns. They shot good in the maximums and shot OK in the AR with manual single feeding. Alloy was range lead water dropped to around 10 bhn.

The Lee 200s did not feed in the AR from the mag worth a darn. The edge of the Meplat was typically catching pretty bad.

The bad feeding was what pushed me into making my own mold. When I first started with my plain base 180 and 200 NLGs, I felt that the customs shot just a little better than the Lee (but they fed a whole lot better). Eventually I worked up a just over 2000 fps load with the custom 200 that is pretty reliable at 2 MOA.

263683

263680

The 180 / 200 loaner mold is back home gathering dust and is available.

Nice! What alloy?

[P Flados]

Nice! What alloy?

For the last few years pretty much all my boolits are either range lead (gathered after IHMSA matches at a local private range), or range lead + misc stuff blended to get around 10 bhn water dropped.

My most recent acquisition of lead was a 400# purchase of 6 bhn to 7 bhn boat keel lead. I blended some of it trying to get the hardness up, but I am quickly running out of harder stuff. My source of range lead is either on hold or gone (not sure at the moment).

[mehavey]

I’ll get rid of the rifle before I play with checks....The AR is lucky to see
a range trip a year and it will stay that way if it has to get gas checks.Gosh....


I’m sure I can find a 200 grain plain base that will handle 1700 FPSGood luck.

(what other high-velocity/relatively short-barrel rifles are you loading plain base?)

[Michael J. Spangler]

Gosh....

Good luck.

(what other high-velocity/relatively short-barrel rifles are you loading plain base?)

357 Magnum. Max loads of 2400 (I’ve used H110 too) I have no issues hitting the 10” steel at 300 if I do my part.
This 350 Legend is similar and I don’t think I could hit the that 10” steel reliably at 25 yards.

I know they’re not exactly the same but I think they’re close enough to work something out.

[mehavey]

Let us know.....
I'll be very interested in a successful high-speed (1,900-ish) plain base.

[Michael J. Spangler]

Let us know.....
I'll be very interested in a successful high-speed (1,900-ish) plain base.
I’m not looking for 1900 really. Those loads were faster than what the book had listed. I’m looking to get an honest 1700 with a 200. Basically not too far off from velocity of a 357 with a little higher weight bullet.
I’m hoping I can get there. With the slower twist I can hopefully be under that ugly velocity (rpm) threshold.

[mehavey]

You're going to be hard pressed to exceed the 120,000 RPM threshhold
See http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?395190-350-legend-advice&p=4816659&viewfull=1#post4816659
(1:16 twist)
Both are two (out of three) of my standards in the 350L.
The faster Lee is 90,000 RPM.
Both print ~inch & a quarter

[Michael J. Spangler]

You're going to be hard pressed to exceed the 120,000 RPM threshhold
See http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?395190-350-legend-advice&p=4816659&viewfull=1#post4816659
(1:16 twist)
Both are two (out of three) of my standards in the 350L.
The faster Lee is 90,000 RPM.
Both print ~inch & a quarter

There we go. Good info.
Now let’s see what I can do with a plain base.
Did I mention I hate gas checks?

I would be happy with 4” for plinking if it meant no gas checks.

[Dapaki]

I shoot sub 2" groups at 100 yards with PB PC C358-200-RF LEE boolits with my 350L from BCA. Whats going on with your loads?

263726

[Michael J. Spangler]

I shoot sub 2" groups at 100 yards with PB PC C358-200-RF LEE boolits with my 350L from BCA. Whats going on with your loads?

263726

I think my alloy was too soft. Kind of like what I experience with 9mm. The neck tension sized the bullet down a little. I lost .001”
I can get a larger expander or up the hardness of the alloy. I’ll go for the latter and of it works well like it did for 9mm I’ll stick with it and consider a larger expander for the future or once I’m set up on my Dillon just use my 38 powder funnel with an XL powder die to get the extra height I need.

[Dapaki]

I am just using COWW, the PC seems to make up for many a sin, I see no difference in range lead, COWW or L#2 once powder coated.

[tomme boy]

Good luck is all I say. I tried a few plain base bullets and messed with several alloys. I had to go to a check. And the Lee bullet fed perfect in my AR. You just had to use a 350L mag. You might have to drill out your gas port to get it to cycle at a slower speed you want. Or you are going to need a lightweight BCG and a adjustable gas block to tune it in.

I will advise you to stay away from lilgun and h110 unless you want to wear your gun. 2400 will be safer or 4227. You are going to need to stick with extruded stick powders

[Michael J. Spangler]

I am just using COWW, the PC seems to make up for many a sin, I see no difference in range lead, COWW or L#2 once powder coated.
What powder and what speeds were you running?

Good luck is all I say. I tried a few plain base bullets and messed with several alloys. I had to go to a check. And the Lee bullet fed perfect in my AR. You just had to use a 350L mag. You might have to drill out your gas port to get it to cycle at a slower speed you want. Or you are going to need a lightweight BCG and a adjustable gas block to tune it in.

I will advise you to stay away from lilgun and h110 unless you want to wear your gun. 2400 will be safer or 4227. You are going to need to stick with extruded stick powders

I was thinking of running 2400 but was worried it wouldn’t get me up to speed. I’m going to try it.
I was wondering if the H110 was the issue but I had the same results with CFEBLK which runs at a much lower pressure.

I’ll load more this week and see if the check fixes it or if the harder alloy does.

[Dapaki]

...I will advise you to stay away from lilgun and h110 unless you want to wear your gun. 2400 will be safer or 4227. You are going to need to stick with extruded stick powders

You are going to have to explain this to me, H110 on the forcing cone in a revolver can be an issue but I have seen no issues with it in the 350L.

[Dapaki]

What powder and what speeds were you running?



21gr of H110 under the LEE 200gr boolit. I dont see the chrony data in my book for that load, I am shooting a bit tomorrow so I'll get the data for you then.

[Michael J. Spangler]

21gr of H110 under the LEE 200gr boolit. I dont see the chrony data in my book for that load, I am shooting a bit tomorrow so I'll get the data for you then.

Thank you.

[tomme boy]

I am running 22.3 h110 in mine with the 200 gr lee at 1965fps. 21gr will be right at 1750fps. H110 and lilgun both need a max charge to make them burn right. They both also should never be downloaded.

2400 works well if your gun has enough gas to operate the gun. You will hit pressure at 21gr if I remember right. If you have 5744 it has enough gas to make it work. At least mine did at 17 or 18 grs. This might actually be the powder you use to keep the speed at the 1700 mark or a little lower if you dont want the checks. rl7 is another good one for this

[cwlongshot]

The issues are not from it being a plain base. A PC plain base is gonna be 100% fine for ANYTHING a 350Legend can push to, velocity wise, Period. So dont fret none there. BUT bulet hardness still carrys a factor. Try harder as generally its "better" then softer. Also try slower velocities. Kinda like ya work up a jacked load to best accuracy/top velocity. With a cast its the pressure and the RPM of your particular alloy. Same dance, different tune. ;)

I dont care for a GC but only cause its a extra step and getting More and more costly. What they can do and help with is all good.

I have two bullets that are working great for me. A Saeco 396 180g TC PB and a LEE Ranch Dog 190g GC. Both powder coated. Neither is near jacketed velocity. The 180 is pushed by 4198 and shoots 1.5 ish @ 100 @ 1500 fps. The 190g is going closer
To 1800 fps ish but the powder excapes me just now but its RE7/4227 or 5744. Accuracy is just a lil better then the 180 hovering at 1" @ 100. But same ragged hole at 50. Ruger Bolt.

CW

[Oldfeller]

I tend to agree that a simple powder coated plain base cast boolit running ~1,750 fps~ is a good range to be in.

Problem that I see is not getting much violent initial expansion out of such cast slugs, especially the ones with any "good feeding" nose form on them. Game will still see very moderate (and somewhat rather late) expansion and a lot of bore through holes after expansion stops.

Meplat splash wound channels will be most of what we can get out of the Legend when using cast boolits, unless we can provide for some rapid expansion.

[mehavey]

A PC plain base is gonna be 100% fine for ANYTHING a 350Legend can push to, velocity wiseSo you're saying I can run my 180gr Cast#2/ALOX at 2,100 fps/41,000psi as a plain base ?

[kenton]

So you're saying I can run my 180gr Cast#2/ALOX at 2,100 fps/41,000psi as a plain base ?


Is that boolit powder coated?

[mehavey]

Question was:
Is that boolit powder coated?
in response to . . .

So you're saying I can run my 180gr Cast#2/ALOX at 2,100 fps/41,000psi as a plain base ?

[Oldfeller]

We are discussing plain based powder coated bullets before, or I was, anyway. I have a mold with a gas check shank, but found I can simply powder coat the things and then stand them upright on the GC shank on the cookie sheet and the melted coating flows down the bullet sides to fill up most of the GC shank reduced diameter zone.

So far I see no need to spend the effort putting a check in place, then coating over it.

Folks who still use grease lubes still have all the issues with bullet hardness and lube, etc. etc. and they generally find a GC is a very necessary thing. Once you go over to the pretty colored plastic coated bullets, life gets a little simpler and a little more forgiving ......

[mehavey]

Someone post the 100m+ results/targets of 357 caliber/plain-base bullets:
- 180@2100fps or 200@2,000fps
- Accelerated from a carbine-length barrel
- Any lube/coating
- Any alloy. . .

. . . and lets chat.

[Michael J. Spangler]

Someone post the 100m+ results/targets of 357 caliber/plain-base bullets:
- 180@2100fps or 200@2,000fps
- Accelerated from a carbine-length barrel
- Any lube/coating
- Any alloy. . .

. . . and lets chat.

I don’t have anything to add because when I shoot I shoot at steel at and not paper.
However some of the posts above are claiming about 1750 or 1800 with no issues. Not 2k

Either way. Looking forward to the continued discussion.

[Dapaki]

... H110 and lilgun both need a max charge to make them burn right. They both also should never be downloaded....

21gr is not a download, it is the starting load for the 200gr LEE boolit. I am not seeing this "burn right" issue here, the spread is 27 fps average.

[Dapaki]

Someone post the 100m+ results/targets of 357 caliber/plain-base bullets:
- 180@2100fps or 200@2,000fps
- Accelerated from a carbine-length barrel
- Any lube/coating
- Any alloy. . .

. . . and lets chat.

Um..... 263768

[Dapaki]

Wait... is this thread going to be the big "Boo-Hoo, I cant do that so everybody else is lying"? Let me know and Ill post in another thread.

I was going to chrony some shots today but I had this to deal with instead.

Who does this to their carb bowl? I swear I'll never buy used again...

263769

[mehavey]

Details please.
Inquiring minds want to know.... :2_high5:
(and I'll try it myself)

[Dapaki]

mehavey, look at my post on page 19.

I shoot sub 2" groups at 100 yards with PB PC C358-200-RF LEE boolits with my 350L from BCA. Whats going on with your loads?

263726

[mehavey]

I also shoot the 358-200 to good effect, but gas-checked/ALOX'd.
Is that a commercially available plain base variant, or did you ream the gc shank out?


(BTW: How fast were you pushing it?)

[Dapaki]

I also shoot the 358-200 to good effect, but gas-checked/ALOX'd.
Is that a commercially available plain base variant, or did you ream the gc shank out?


(BTW: How fast were you pushing it?)

I'll chrony them tomorrow if the rain holds off but it's posted as 1900. Yes, I cut the shank out for the PB version but even then, I am not seeing the minute of barn issue with this round with PC and the GC base without the GC.

[mehavey]

OK, I'll try it bare -- still shanked but no GC.
(ALOX'd variant)








I'l be honest -- Just plain thin-film ALOX has held up to some remarkable (2,500/223) velocities.

[P Flados]

Someone post the 100m+ results/targets of 357 caliber/plain-base bullets:
- 180@2100fps or 200@2,000fps
- Accelerated from a carbine-length barrel
- Any lube/coating
- Any alloy. . .

. . . and lets chat.

See post 362 of this thread for my sub 2 moa 200 yard target of a plain base ASBB HF red 200 gr at just over 2000 fps.

The gun is a 16" 357AR.

The 180s seem happiest at around 1830 fps and I am ok with that. That 180 gr load shoots sub 2 MOA at 100 yards, but not at 200 yards. I was having ignition issues with H110 so I ended up with WC 680 (I have a decent stash) as my 357AR powder. With WC 680, the case is pretty full even for the 1830 fps load and I prefer to avoid greater than 98% load density.

[mehavey]

Threw some naked-based/ALOX'd Lee 200's into the oven this evening.
If it stops raining, `will shoot them tomorrow PM.

Film at Eleven.....





FWIW: QuickLoad led me to Norma 200 and I've never looked back.
https://i.postimg.cc/PfwTs87v/350-Legend-Powders-Bullets.jpg

[kenton]

So you're saying I can run my 180gr Cast#2/ALOX at 2,100 fps/41,000psi as a plain base ?

Am I missing something? I thought PC indicated powder coated not ALOX lube? Maybe I have been in the dark this entire time.

[mehavey]

No, the issue in that question was centered an ALOX coated bullet.
I've never had an unexpected failure up to/including mid 40's ksi -- as long as the base was protected with a gas check.

We're going to see if -- all other things being equal -- just exposing the base of that same ALOX-coated LEE 358-200 bullet results in failure. (and by extension, whether the powder-coating on just the base effectively is a gas check)







I gotta tell`ya... since I have to pick up the individual bullet anyway to push them through a Lee sizer die pre ALOX, slipping on a gas-check in the same motion doesn't cause me much heartburn.

[kenton]

The text you quoted in post #382 specifically says a PC bullet

"A PC plain base is gonna be 100% fine for ANYTHING a 350Legend can push to, velocity wise"

[mehavey]

Then my apologies for the confusion.
But today (rain willing) we'll see if PC protects the base on par w/ gas check.
(I'm not concerned w/ body/shank, as ALOX has already proved itself there)

[Dapaki]

I shoot my 7mm-08 with 45:45:10 since its a bore rider but the 350L is going to be PC only so that is what I will chrony. Sadly, we have an all day rain event today so no shooting.

[mehavey]

https://i.postimg.cc/bv1WN1wL/350-Legend-SAECO-LEE358-200-NO-gascheck-sm.jpg

Boundary value results as we say in the trade
(I think I'll stick w/ GC & ALOX)

[44Blam]

It does seem that prehaps H335 or H4198 might be good in this caliber...

I am really looking at getting a nice 350 legend upper and playing with it... Wife is not gonna be happy.

[tomme boy]

H335 will work for subsonic. But I think it is too slow for anything else. From reports I have seen it is extremely dirty because of the low psi it generates. 4198 works so does 1680. This is the speed where it cuts off at for powder.

[fastdadio]

It does seem that prehaps H335 or H4198 might be good in this caliber...

I am really looking at getting a nice 350 legend upper and playing with it... Wife is not gonna be happy.

Hate to do this to you...but what are friends for? I just had this 18" mil-spec upper show up on my porch. Couldn't beat the price.
Bear creek Arsenal;
https://www.bearcreekarsenal.com/upper-assemblies?spec_caliber=473&stock=1
The better half said "Oh, did you get a new gun"? I said, well, gun parts actually. She said, "That's nice, happy fathers day"
I love that gal! Tomorrow, I'm going to my LGS and pick up my lower receiver and a 5 rnd mag to get things going.
https://tituskustoms.com/aero-precision-ar15-complete-lower-receiver-standard-black-apar501111/
So here I am, down the rabbit hole. Lurkin and lurnin about how to feed it.
Thanks guys!

[44Blam]

Hate to do this to you...but what are friends for? I just had this 18" mil-spec upper show up on my porch. Couldn't beat the price.
Bear creek Arsenal;
https://www.bearcreekarsenal.com/upper-assemblies?spec_caliber=473&stock=1
The better half said "Oh, did you get a new gun"? I said, well, gun parts actually. She said, "That's nice, happy fathers day"
I love that gal! Tomorrow, I'm going to my LGS and pick up my lower receiver and a 5 rnd mag to get things going.
https://tituskustoms.com/aero-precision-ar15-complete-lower-receiver-standard-black-apar501111/
So here I am, down the rabbit hole. Lurkin and lurnin about how to feed it.
Thanks guys!

Did that upper come with the bolt carrier group??? It sure looks like it does. I like the idea of the side charging handle over the standard AR charging handle...

[Dapaki]

BCA uppers do come with the BCG. I have 2 side chargers and love them but HATE the handles themselves so I turn ones from aluminum for my uppers.

I will get the next one with a left side charger and make it a bolt action.

[Dapaki]

https://i.postimg.cc/bv1WN1wL/350-Legend-SAECO-LEE358-200-NO-gascheck-sm.jpg

Boundary value results as we say in the trade
(I think I'll stick w/ GC & ALOX)

Your rifle sucks! 10" AR target, the bright spots are the 10 shots for the chrony, about 2" from side to side, no gas check, PC, LEE 358-200. Just shot today.

263853

Chrony results for 21gr H110 under the LEE 358-200.

10 1856 0.00 0.00
9 1857 0.00 0.00
8 1959 0.00 0.00
7 1869 0.00 0.00
6 1822 0.00 0.00
5 1848 0.00 0.00
4 1825 0.00 0.00
3 1867 0.00 0.00
2 1808 0.00 0.00
1 1892 0.00 0.00

Not as fast as I like but no pressure signs, accurate and a lot of fun to shoot!

Shooting bench: 263854

[Dapaki]

OK, right side up now.

263856

Full target

263857

[mehavey]

...or it "could" be that PC'g protects the base/edges of the bare gas check shank, whereas ALOX'g leaves the base/shank exposed.
Be that as it may, I find gas-checking no big deal since I have to pick the bullet up to size it anyway, and ALOx'g a dozen or so at a time allows small-batch experimentation.

(and I can dry the ALOX in my wife's oven w/o complaint) :bigsmyl2:

[Dapaki]

Im sorry, I thought I had put a smiley face after my comment, pretty tongue in cheek. I do agree, I have several boolits that splashed off the steel that show a complete boolit base with no sign of gas etching on PC bases.

I do like Alox, I have a gallon on 45:45:10 that I use for the right load and anything that is a bore rider. I do use gas checks on them if I go super sonic.

[fastdadio]

Did that upper come with the bolt carrier group??? It sure looks like it does. I like the idea of the side charging handle over the standard AR charging handle...

Yes, it's complete and ready to go. Attach a lower receiver and optic of choice, and go have fun. I gave it a good complete scrub and loob today. One thing I noticed while cleaning it that gives me concern though. there appears to be what i would describe as a small bridge in the center of the feed ramp. Looks as though it's designed to guide bullets from the magazine to either the 5 or 7 o-clock position on the feed ramp leading into the chamber. Sort of a divider milled into the 6 o-clock position of the feed ramp. Could be a problem, especially with cast.
Anyone else have this feature or have an opinion on it? Maybe I can post a good picture of it tomorrow.

[cwlongshot]

Darned if they aint building so many side charger uppers I havent been able to find one for myself
for weeks!!

Im building another hunting upper and have to decide upon a caliber. Of coarse 350 is in the short list ;)

Good luck with it man!!

[Oldfeller]

Harken back a page or two while we wait for the bodkin arrow points to come in so I can build my tip splitter rig so I can tip split me some powder coated air dropped WW bullets.

Harken back further to the fixing of the run out on my drill press. It started at a "too durn much" .016" worth of run out and that was an unusable whole bunch of a lot of run out, so I had worked on reducing it.

Lapping the jaw gripping surface tip line up on a hardened ground 3/8" dowel pin using 6 micron diamond paste proved out to be a nice slow controllable method and I got the run out down to .002-.003" and I stopped right there as I wanted that .002-.003" of remaining run out to add to my .3535" (9mm) ball end cutter diameter to hopefully get me very close to .356-.357" post cutting desired diameter on my plunge milled cavities.

(sounds good in theory, until you try it for real :smile: anyway)

I just spent the last hour indicating in the LEE mold block in the vise jaws so I don't get so much cavity to cavity depth variation (well, as much as I would have before paper shimming and tweeking and measuring and paper shimming and tweeking and measuring and paper shimming and tweeking and measuring ....... you get the idea).

I improved both the hole to hole depth setup variation and the hole to cut off plate angle setup variation, so that was all to the good and I consider it time well spent.

I have a total of .0035" side to side and front to back across the mold face, both swept off the same indicator zero. This same zero measures .002" variation as it bumps over the grooves so some of that groove number should perhaps be detracted from the .0035" total indicator reading, but how much to detract is up to debate.

I plan to flat sand the surface and remove all the cavity mouth machining burrs after I finish the machining, so some of the present .0035" total indicator variation reading is going to go away in any case. We shall see.

But I am all mentally shot for today, so tonight I get me good night's rest ---- tomorrow I make some chips and we see if we make a mold or if I make a mess of things ---- either outcome is out there in the cards, so to speak.

Broadly speaking, I am looking for a simple straight shanked round nose (no gas check) bullet form that will cast all 4 cavities somewhere between 185 and 200 grains after powder coating.

Not being silly about it, if the cast slugs from each cavity were "weight constant" within 5 grains I would be tickled silly, but I think a 10 grain total spread is more likely considering both cavity cutting variations and normal casting variations (and powder coating thickness variations).

[Oldfeller]

Cavity machining went in a fairly typical fashion.

--- I broke a small bit in the gummy soft LEE aluminum and had to stop and get the shards out of the hole before proceeding. The drill press is violently over powered on small bits and it will snap them like a dry twig at the least opportunity. The gummy soft aluminum is the enemy of small thin HSS bits as exceeding their rotational strength is easily done in a strong drill press.

--- The drill press spindle construction allows harmonic vibrations to build up which get expressed in the hole you are machining. Lots of lube helps turn the internal vibration marks into a small repeated pattern instead of a LARGE repeating pattern. The vibrations originate in the belt drive system and in the clearances and out of round conditions of internal quill shafts, etc.

--- The HSS tooling cutting edges and drill bit cutting edges dull quickly in the gummy soft LEE aluminum --- faster than I would have believed possible before now. I question the LEE extruded aluminum mold block material for having lots & lots of little slag inclusions (recycled material, I suspect) .....

--- If you expect the built in quill based depth stop to just work the way it seems to work, you are young and naive about Taiwanese tooling. It does work, but the way it works is non-intuitive and is not covered by any literature.

--- The latter cavities (made with the abraded tooling edges) have very small "pressure ridge artifacts" at the cavity edges where the straight shank hits the round nose form. I will leave these pressure artifacts alone since the are part of the parting line and the cavity to cavity alignment now. They will wear away during lapping and cleaning, in as far as they need to be removed anyway. Lee cavity faces are designed to be interrupted surfaces for gas venting, and the small machining artifacts that take place in this intentional clearance envelope are natural parts of the LEE experience, IMHO, and should be left alone since removing them changes the closure geometry of the mold.

Because three of the four holes required a revisit with the finish cutter to get all the way down to final depth, three of my cavities are very slightly double cut. Good news is that the XY axis vise allowed me to "discover the holes" again and go back down inside them fairly cleanly.

Next good news, the fact I plan expand or "jack open" the bullets with the bodkin point and repack them back again in the sizing die means that the errors made so far in making the cavities really aren't so severe as they could be.

264115 click on the pic to expand it

Tomorrow I dot mark the cavities (very small dots along the center line of the bullet shank near bullet base) then put the mold into the handles, put it all together with the sprue plate and make my lapping casts. Lapping will simply be done to aid release more than to change bullet size as I think I am "good enough" for bullet size right now anyway.

[lar45]

When I did an 80% AR lower, I found some Aluminum cutting fluid that worked great on the end mill. I had zero aluminum build up on the end mill.

[Oldfeller]

Lar, I oiled both the cutter and the hole and had no notable cutter build up issues anywhere. The last motion of the round ball end cutter once it went past the drill bit relief hole was the highest pressure cut of the entire thing and that is what made the pressure artifacts in that area.

The vibration seen in the holes came from the 3 pulley drive system expressed through the quill shaft and I moderated that a good bit by loosening the motor bracket to take tension off the belts. They still grip and drive just fine, they just rattle the output shaft system a bit less.

264146 click on pics to expand them

264147

Tomorrow I warm the pot up and get some trial casts off of it, and I start learning the ins and outs of getting the cavity closest to the sprue plate pivot pin to drop free from the mold.

I may have to use the sprue plate's rotation motion to kick that innermost cavity free, but I will NOT be beating on the mold blocks with any wooden stick a la any standard LEE stupidity. I wear two to three sets of cotton gloves one over the other for heat protection and I use my hand to force the sprue plate over, getting there just as the sprue begins to harden.

And yes, I grip the hot mold with my gloved hands. Layered cotton gloves protect you very nicely and if the heat comes through (or you wear out a spot on the gloves) you add in another newish glove over the top of what you are already wearing. 2-3 layers of cotton gloves are enough for comfortable mold handling.

Casting at speed is very easy when simple hand motions do everything for you.

As always, my steel handles are adjusted as tight as they can be and still move acceptably, my mold halves are pinned to the handles and then treated with Primer T and heated up, then locktite is dripped into the handle to mold joint gap where it gells in minutes, taking out any loose clearance and giving a matching location to the big handle bolt joint that will always put the mold block alignment pins into their mating holes accurately and cleanly every time.

You don't beat on a mold once you do this trick, you teach the cavities to drop free by lapping and the use of hexagonal boron nitride powder.

Remember, this mold is going to catch pure thermal hell from speed casting frosty hot bullets and then resting on a wet rag briefly to get the sprue to jell quicker. My sprue plate has very generous linked pouring cones in it so it is going to get right hot too. With this one, the LEE Production Pot's ingot melt rate may well be what really limits my overall casting speed ......

I think I will like using the mold, it actually weighs less than what a dual cavity mold weighs because of the extra holes and the use of the lighter aluminum sprue plate.

[Oldfeller]

First cast is done, and I got me some really really bad extremely oversized cavities due to VIBRATION and to quite large amounts of final cutter run out.

Having grabbed my quill and spindle and tugged at it some just now I can actually feel some of those clearances in the quill and spindle moving. These were the issues that originally gave me .016" of chuck run out and which were really not fixed by all my work on the chuck, but instead they were simply moderated and disguised.

Given some real full speed cutting action all the .016" of original run out plus the accompanying VIBRATION was allowed to re-express themselves inside the cut cavities.

First cut mold looks pretty, but it is scrap.

Now to digest what I learned, think about it all for a bit, and let it all settle out some in my mind .......

First thought is to progress through the drills up to the final pass with the ball end mill --- but stop there and set a STATIONARY ground center in the chuck and use a tap holder to hold the end mill in line with the undersized hole and advance the end mill like it was a reamer using the quill. Issue remains that the quill/spindle clearances will likely still be reflected in the final "reamed" hole as the chuck mounted center will still wander inside those same clearances.

[Oldfeller]

Here are the measurements (averaged by measurement technique and intention). There is a good bit of form error that followed the helix form of the cutter, so that is another cause to be reduced if possible.

I tried hand reaming a piece of scrap aluminum with the milling cutter -- not gonna get anywhere with that "hand ream off dead center" idea as the cutter is not controlled by much during feeding and it wanders off and likes to go tilted.
Bad bad idea, hand reaming with a milling cutter.


small end___________________________large end

.360" - .370"________________________.370" - .380"


The two flute HSS ball end mill is too flimsy due to the more flexible HSS material and the deep deep relief grooves between the cutting edges. The cutter's general form is relatively too weak and the material is not inherently stiff enough to fight feedback vibration.

I feel the drill press speed was set too high and the cutter pressures used were too high as well. Drill Press RPM has been slowed down as much as possible for the next try. A slick coating on a four flute carbide ball end mill has been chosen for sharpness, better rigidity, better hole wall support and much better cutting edge durability to get rid of some of the vibration effects.

I will use a heavy oil to try to fight vibration marking next time.

Cutter size was reduced to 11/32" (by .010") which will bracket the small end to ~around~ .350" to .360". The better cutter will reduce taper and vibrational effects with the slick hard coating contributing to reducing the vibrational feedback.

I will be buying new jobber length drill bits for stock removal as the new carbide cutter is a good bit shorter (cutter length and drill bit length was found to be unnecessarily long on that last try as well). It is important that all cutters mount all the way up into the chuck to hit the same depth controlling surface so I can use a common depth stop setting.

Now we wait another 1 1/2 months for cutters to ship from China.

[Oldfeller]

Who shoots a 9.3 metric caliber?

I have actually made me up a dandy little 9.3mm four hole round end powder coat mold that will powder coat just fine and using a LEE push through sizer it will size down to fit your .366" bore without excessive sizing pressure in one pass.

I also note that I could size to .366" as a first step, then take it on down to .356" - .357" on a second sizing pass. Bullets would be fairly heavy for a Legend, and I think I can do "closer" with the new tooling that has been ordered and is on the way.

264431


Bullet weight ranges from 224 grains to 234 grains as cast.

[P Flados]

Now we wait another 1 1/2 months for cutters to ship from China.

I could make you a quick D reamer and have it to you inside of a week :-D

You really should try one before you spend too much on other choices.

[Oldfeller]

Now, that would involve me confessing that I had frick'd up .......

....... especially since I just discovered I was just building a 9.3 (.366") mold all along. :-P

[kenton]

Shars has 11/32 ballend endmills in stock if you don't want to wait on the slow boat from China. $24 plus shipping.

https://www.shars.com/products/cutting/end-mills?cutting_diameter=11%2F32&end_mill_category=Ball+End

[P Flados]

After making the offer, it occurred to me that I should add a 80 - 90 gr 32 cal WFN cavity to an existing 2 cavity 55 gr plinker mold I made up years ago. Since I shoot about 2 plinkers for every one stout load, this would work pretty good for feeding my high volume 32 habit (4.2" Ruger SP-101 327 Fed for the stout loads and 8" stub tube Contender in 32 ACP for the plinkers).

So I found an existing D reamer in my basket with an OD of 312", and reground it to be more of a WFN.

I mounted the mold, drilled a pilot hole and cut the new cavity. After cutting it with the reamer, I bored it out to 0.313" or so.

I cast ~ 300 of the new boolits and ~ 600 of the 55 gr boolits. The new ones turned out to be 78 grs. A little light, but I will try them and probably leave the mold as is. If needed, I can remount the mold and cut the cavity a little deeper.

I PC coated the 78s and have a nice batch ready to load. The OD with PC is just barely over target diameter (0.314") so they zip through the push through size real nice.

Easy peasy in the life of a D Reamer mold maker.

264498 264499

264500 264497

[Oldfeller]

264431


Reading some of P Flatos earlier work making reforming dies that crush form bullets with normal LEE press forces, I offer some new twisted __:twisted:__ thoughts concerning my original .010"-.020" oversized 235 grain mold.


Step 1:__First, the mold drops well and runs well. Making lots of source slugs off of it is not the issue.

Step 2:__Post casting cleaning by running them in my large vibratory tumbler with some dishwashing soap gets rid of any little pressure fins at the bullet base and on the sides and rounds up all the sharp edges on the nose just a little bit.

Step 3:__Apply Ford Light Blue powder using the dedicated little tumbler. Powder coating adheres much better to a washed, cleaned and surface roughened bullet form.

Step 4:__Then cure the original coat of powder, leaving it fairly hard tough and durable, but not hardened to the point it wants to crack when the bullet diameter moves, stretches and downsizes underneath it.

Step 5a:__Using my longest LEE Classic press arm to get maximum leverage, the ram pressures needed to extrude & size it all down in a single stroke are available if the powder coated slugs get some "extreme pressure" gear oil slickum put on them before their very first trip through the .3565" LEE sizing die.

Step 5b:__Those slugs that see the tip splitter could get that as a natural part of step #5, as heavy oil plays a part in that tip splitting process too.

Step 5c:__Repacking the tips leaving a film of gear oil between the 3 petals would be both a natural and a desirable situation for subsonic use.

These super 235 grain heavy slugs would lend support to a subsonic loading out of the Legend. With the tips heavily split, such powder coated slugs would still expand well as a sub-sonic loading and because of the high mass they would have lots of energy available to transmit to a game animal's chest cavity and still bore on through for a good blood trail.

[P Flados]

For a while I had an oversized PC coated boolit I was sizing.

A very light wipe of beeswax or some of a softer traditional bullet lubes makes it much easier and I did not have to worry about the "residue" causing problems.

I am betting a very light coat of a liquid tumble lube woulds also work.

Either of these would save you any worry about needing to remove the lubricant after sizing.

The other approach that you might want to try is:

1. Cast the booilts
2. Size down ~0.005" before PC
3. PC the boolits
4. Size them down to final diameter

If they are hard to size even with the two pass system, the light wipe of beeswax / lube works. I had no trouble getting PC to stick after sizing bare boolits and then leaving the residual lube on them.

With the tooling you have, you should be able to make a mating nose punch for doing your sizing base first. I found that this seems to take care of any small base fins pretty good. It also smooths out any small fins or imperfections in the nose region of the boolits.

Now all of the above is only worth the effort if you use them and work up a sub load that your gun likes. I would focus on testing some loads at this point. If you find an accurate load that uses a "non-expanding" version, then you will have a reference point as you then move forward with your nose modification experiments.

With that round nose, you may find that drilling a big hollow point works for expansion and is beefy enough to survive the feeding trip into the chamber without excessive damage. A simple drilled hollow point is proven technology.

[Oldfeller]

I am thinking about running the bodkin into the lead bullet until the cuts hit the straight body section for a 1/16" to 1/8" distance. I know I will already have a very short post nose section that will be very slightly sub-sized to the rest of the body, so the air gaps that result at the remated cut zones will give that very mild clearance space something constructive to do.

I have tried base first sizing, but didn't like the powder coat displacement that sometimes occured at the nose ogive area as that affected stripping and loading from the 13 round steel lipped M96 Beretta magazines that happened on several (too many times for personal defense use) occasions.

Having me some very minor and relatively even finning of the powder coat at the bullet base does not bother me as much as I feel that the very minor even finning does not survive the forcing cone and the trip up the barrel and the tiny fins would not survive the very violent very hot gas flow muzzle blast effects ...... whatever "group scattering effects" that actually would remain are not worrying to my old eyes and to my generally poor shooting anyway.


I also ordered a foot of 7/8"x14 all thread from McMaster Carr so I can build me a handy dandy repacking tool or two for the split tip tulip form as they have to get small enough to re-enter the .370" entry opening of the LEE sizing die.


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


Today my set of larger fully ground HSS countersinks with titanium nitride coating showed up from Amazon, so I repaired the small depth & form errors in my sprue plates that came from the original countersink being simply a bit too small in diameter. Repairs were composed of re-countersinking the existing sprue hole cones, a very very easy repair to do as the set up was already done and the cones acted self-centering to the cutter anyway.

Slowing the drill press down and removing most of the run out changed the nature of the sprue cone cutting action to a VERY LARGE degree ...... cutting finish was much smoother and the drill press did not vibrate and groan at all during the high pressure stages of the larger diameter cut.


Good news from the cutter suppliers -- all of my stuff should be in by 2 weeks as they can make my specialty coated ball end mill by vapor coating a standard bare carbide end mill that they keep in stock.

[44Blam]

Y'all, I think I may have a little secret sauce with this one...
Hodgdon is calling for W296 in the 350 legend... BUT what about AA #11???
Seems like you can get a 125 grain boolit in the 2700 fps range and a 180 in the 2200 fps???

UPS is coming tomorrow with the upper...

Forgive me but I'm gonna dream a little. ;)

[Oldfeller]

This thread is all about dreaming, and trying and reporting the results (good or bad).

It is a conversation.

I can't find AA#11 on my old burn rate charts, must be new or unusual stuff for the caliber. I use the milsurp pulldown equivalent to AA#9, so I get the gist of the "neighborhood" but I haven't met that particular powder before.

[Dapaki]

....UPS is coming tomorrow with the upper...

Forgive me but I'm gonna dream a little. ;)

Dream away! I have found more boolits and probable loads for the Legend than any other rifle round and so far, I can load and shoot anything I can load/shoot in my DW .357. Some don't feed off the magazine but will single feed and some will not cycle but are fun to plink with.

[Oldfeller]

All of my tooling and the 7/8"x14 all thread rod stock now reports as shipped --- some will take a week or three to actually arrive.

[44Blam]

This thread is all about dreaming, and trying and reporting the results (good or bad).

It is a conversation.

I can't find AA#11 on my old burn rate charts, must be new or unusual stuff for the caliber. I use the milsurp pulldown equivalent to AA#9, so I get the gist of the "neighborhood" but I haven't met that particular powder before.

[EDIT] It IS on their chart. At the same level as H110 and W296.
No. 11FS - Power Pro 300-MP - H-110 - 296

But it is touted as a magnum pistol powder (44mag/357mag) and I believe it is just slightly slower than W296.

[Burnt Fingers]

11FS isn't AA 11.

[mehavey]

QuickLoad doesn't show an AA#11 either
HANDLOADER sees AA #11FS as a flash-suppressed/slightly slower W296 --> WC297
https://www.handloadermagazine.com/propellant-profiles-12

Sometime in the early days of this century, the Olin Corporation, parent company of Winchester Ammunition, decided to divest itself of its powder manufacturing operation. The first step was to establish a separate subsidiary, Primex Technologies, Inc., that would assume manufacture of all powders and sell them on the open market. Coming across the Primex booth at a trade show shortly after its formation, I was given a table of then-available Primex powders. Included in the list was one called SMP297. I was told this was the same as Winchester 296, but with a flash suppressant, and was used primarily in ammunition for law enforcement and other entities where a reduced muzzle flash would be advantageous.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
When Western completed its review, WC297 was released under the Accurate label as No. 11FS. So now we have four, but with No. 11FS having 297’s flash suppressant in its composition, hence the suffix FS.

[Oldfeller]

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B078WC2NFG/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

265562______ click on the pic to get an expanded view

Quick update

Bodkin points came in with a rough ground finish. The nitrided steel is tough to sharpen and I will NOT be trying to cut it using carbide lathe tools as I see the cutting forces needed to cut the stuff would exceed what the little lathe can generate (or tolerate structurally). I used a 6" fine diamond hone plate to do the flat honing job on this one.

The bodkin you see above is fitted to the LEE resizer die top large bore size (see the tiny shiny flat point at the fat end of the blade taper). No need for a tool post grinder, you could have done the job with a diamond file and saved the expense of the tool post grinder.

The basic idea still seems sound and I will proceed to fit the aluminum shaft and stop shoulder next.

Look at the picture to eyeball the relative penetration into the nose and body of a P Flados 185 grain powder coated bullet.



This will take you to a source for the bodkin points.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B078WC2NFG/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

[Dapaki]

Oldfeller, looking forward to your findings.

I had some fun with gallery rounds yesterday, 6.1gr Red Dot (very dirty) with the 105gr TC/SWC and the LEE 90428 which they dont make anymore, that part number is now a .429 cal RN...

These were very easy to shoot and mind blowingly accurate at 50 yards. I dialed in a loaner scope from another AR and settled in on this 20 round group, 18 shots in 3/4" and two fliers bringing the group to 1-1/4" overall. Front supported on a sand bag, butt unsupported so there was a lot of heartbeat osculation going on.

Still, I think that even though I had to pull the bolt for every shot, the lack of recoil and accuracy was well worth the extra effort. Ill move out to 100 yards today and see if they hold the same group.

265574 265575

[Oldfeller]

Dapaki,

I am theorizing a way to make a round nose pre-coat form (.010" undersized before coating) so that the shank of the body can take an aluminum can gas check pre-coating, then get coated, size and then get the tip split (which jacks the body diameter way up by simple displacement) then get the whole slug straightened and re-sized down to .3565" in my same LEE .3565" die.

I theorize such a slug off a 200-230 grain body length could be fired at 1000 fps off a fast powder (generating pressure and acceleration enough to cause bullet stacking growth by chamber slugging effects when first fired).

Bullet as cast size plus aluminum gas check thickness plus pressure bumping effects will gas seal the base and the nose will be full .3565" sized after tip splitting and re-sizing. I think these slugs will do OK when fired from my gun as the tip splitting is well supported by the thick lead webs that the splitting action leaves and the bore of the gun while it makes the trip out the muzzle.

Will it be long distance accurate after being split open mechanically and put back together by a sizing die? Well Gold Dots and Deep Curls and other plated tip split bullets seem to do OK through this series of steps, so I would think it would do OK enough for a home made system.

Would it open up? Yes, and fragment (spin toss) the heavy petals off too. Expansion after petal loss would be moot as you would be on the second half of the animal anyway. Nosler Partitions did this exact same trick and the blunt bullet shank just smashing on through the beast was never seen as a detriment to "bullet performance" as it went through ribs and spine bones, etc. just fine and provided a good blood trail for animal tracking after exiting.

Would it perform as a sub-sonic? I think so as the tip split effect is 100% at the nose and the tri-lobe form runs down deep inside the bullet.

I will complete the rig and do some bullets by this fall as right now I have the second half garden to struggle to put in (the late fall garden is over half my crop cycle) and the second half garden planting is going rough right now as it is too HOT and too DRY to get good sprouting and young plant survival right now.

I am having to multiple plant things 2-3 times to get a decent row fill.

[Oldfeller]

Guys, who has some aluminum can home made .38 caliber gas checks they could put in a US Mail envelope so I can try them out?

[44Blam]

Guys, who has some aluminum can home made .38 caliber gas checks they could put in a US Mail envelope so I can try them out?

I've got some 35 caliber aluminum gcs... I know it won't work with that particular boolit, but maybe you can cut a GC shank? PM me if you want a few.

[Gone_rabid]

Y'all, I think I may have a little secret sauce with this one...
Hodgdon is calling for W296 in the 350 legend... BUT what about AA #11???
Seems like you can get a 125 grain boolit in the 2700 fps range and a 180 in the 2200 fps???

UPS is coming tomorrow with the upper...

Forgive me but I'm gonna dream a little. ;)

Thought I posted this info in this thread but it may have been another. I have used w296 with a 90gr Lehigh extreme penetrator and had it going from 2980 to 3200fps starting at 29g of powder.

FYI, on the higher end of the spectrum I had gotten some loose primer pockets.

I know, not cast but it at least gives you an idea of possibility.

Wanted to used the AA 11fs but it’s difficult to find around here.

[cwlongshot]

I have been trying some subsonic loads. Using heavy cast bullets I have a 135 green white flat nose and a 270 grain flat point. Investigating with quick loads I discovered Herco powder, as a good option for these loads. Seven grains that's me 1100 fps on QL W/16" bbl. ( bolt) its quite safe as much more can be used and its bulky so not a tiny splash of powder either!
Accuracy with both has been very good! Im svg 1040/270g & 1085 w/235g.

I DO see a tail wag in 270 holes. Today I tried 8g yo see if a boot in the bum wouldnt stabulize better. That load is avg 1090 and YES its better but still a alight mark showing issue. BUT accuracy is veru good @1" @50 & 4" @100 ( 24" low)

Ext is 8.5g to see if its more stabule.

CW

[Gone_rabid]

What mold is the 270 your using? I’m looking for a nice heavy boolit to run subs with the AR. I know the saeco 352? Is out there but darn it’s expensive. May just have to make my own mold.

[Dapaki]

I put some 200gr LFP down range today and hit 1600fps using a duplex load of 4gr Silhouette under 25gr WC867. I tried 4gr of IMR 2400 but that only got me 1500fps and red dot was a huge fail with 4gr giving me only 1300fps!

The big surprise was IMR 4198 with only 1520fps using 4gr as the kicker. In the .223, it was the fastest..... bottleneck?

[Michael J. Spangler]

Yesterday I tested the lee 358-200
50/50 alloy no gaS check sized to .357” using an expander for .358”
50/50 alloy with gas check. Sized to .357” with a regular expander
WDWW no gas check. .357” with regular expander
WDWW with gas check .357” with regular expander.
These were all loaded with 26 grains of CFE BLK

as expected the gas check bullets shot much better. I was only shooting at 25 yards because I had just mounted the eotech and wasn’t sure where it was hitting. Also a poor rest and I’m not a very good shot to begin with.
So the 50/50 GC shot about 1.5” and the WDWWGC shot about 1.25” I guess I’m going to have to give in to the gas check. Time to order a free Chex

[Dapaki]

Yesterday I tested the lee 358-200
....

What were your speeds?

[Michael J. Spangler]

I would have to check the notebook. I didn’t chrono then this time but last time I was playing with the legend I was around 1850 if I remember correctly.
I went with CFEBLK because the pressure were low for the same speeds. I’m not sure you could get any more powder in there. It’s pretty much full.

[cwlongshot]

What mold is the 270 your using? I’m looking for a nice heavy boolit to run subs with the AR. I know the saeco 352? Is out there but darn it’s expensive. May just have to make my own mold.

My mold is a Accurate mold. I made of video of casting with it.

https://youtu.be/T1-1Q5XL8cA

Im seating to 2.255 ish. If I go much more that flat meplat hangs a bit in the mag.
CW

[bluejay75]

My mold is a Accurate mold. I made of video of casting with it.

https://youtu.be/T1-1Q5XL8cA

Im seating to 2.255 ish. If I go much more that flat meplat hangs a bit in the mag.
CW

Good to match a face with a personality. Good video.

[mehavey]

I'm calculating that the ACC_36-270 produces an OAL about like this in the LEGEND ?

https://i.postimg.cc/W11GN2TC/350-LEGEND-ACC-36-270-sm.jpg

[cwlongshot]

I seat mine to 2.255 ish... longer and they hang up in the magazine.

Your pic represents almost exactly where Im seating too. Just a tad deeper.

Scroll down the 25th posting.

http://bushcraftusa.com/forum/threads/my-350-legend-thread.274996/

CW

[mehavey]

Sure looks (surprisingly) like a wide range of powder options for SUBSON

265668
(I'm a little short on the OAL in the calcs, but you get the picture)

[tomme boy]

Those loads will not have the gas to operate a AR15 from that chart. Maybe if you have a pistol length gas port.

[cwlongshot]

Those loads will not have the gas to operate a AR15 from that chart. Maybe if you have a pistol length gas port.


Ooh man always someone pokin holes in anothers fun! ;).
Yea Im sure your right TB. At this time I dont have a semi to test in. Still looking for a bbl. but because of these tests I might be just fine staying 16:1 as accuracy is very good with slight evidence of wiggles. Im sure its gonna be tumble city upon impacting flesh.

My buddy has a upper in 350. But forgot to bring it last week.

CW

[Gone_rabid]

On an ar15 10.5 Beowulf, so far, was able to get it to eject with green dot but not enough to lock back on the mag. This is also suppressed and an H2 buffer. It may work with a standard buffer and a little more powder. The Beowulf pressure is around 33k.

I wonder with the higher pressure of the greens dot on the 350 if it may Work.

[cwlongshot]

It will be something Ill Make happen once I can build mine..

(My post came off snarky. For others info, Tommy and I talk allot on this and other forums not causing problems with him.)

CW

[mehavey]

Those loads will not have the gas to operate a AR15 from that chart.
Maybe if you have a pistol length gas port.Dunno... but already have Tom's ACC 36-270CG on the way
So we'll see.....

:bigsmyl2:

[cwlongshot]

Dunno... but already have Tom's ACC 36-270CG on the way
So we'll see.....

:bigsmyl2:
Hope ya like it a d it works as well for you!! I bought it for my 358Norma Mag but my 358 & 35 Whelen would see it too. I have only used it in the NM with TB but it shot very well @ 1700 fps!!

Now with this 350Legend Im really thinking I am onto something as my 1:16 is providing great groups yet the bullets shows signs of serious tumble
Potential once in flesh. Id like a 1:14 AR barrel and Ill buy If I can find what I want withbthat.

CW

[Oldfeller]

I've got some 35 caliber aluminum gcs... I know it won't work with that particular boolit, but maybe you can cut a GC shank? PM me if you want a few.

44Blam,

Your care package of aluminum can gas checks was received today. They are very nicely made and look like something that could work out fine if I build a little tool to put a tiny recess or bevel edge on the bottom of the coated cast bullet.

A tiny care package like this answers questions that otherwise get no answer ---- wife is now retired as well and now there is no flow of play dollars for me to send off buying stuff as I used to do ......

:razz:

[cwlongshot]

I Found quite an accuracy node...

https://youtu.be/31xsOIMEUvg

CW

[klenke.ryan]

I Found quite an accuracy node...

https://youtu.be/31xsOIMEUvg

CWIt might be time for me to go back to SWBO seeing your results with 1680. I'd be happy if my H110 or LG loads printed at 3 inches with 200 grain cast bullets.

Sent from my Pixel 3a using Tapatalk

[44Blam]

44Blam,

Your care package of aluminum can gas checks was received today. They are very nicely made and look like something that could work out fine if I build a little tool to put a tiny recess or bevel edge on the bottom of the coated cast bullet.

A tiny care package like this answers questions that otherwise get no answer ---- wife is now retired as well and now there is no flow of play dollars for me to send off buying stuff as I used to do ......

:razz:

Cool. Have fun!
Those are actually made from Amerimax aluminum and are 0.014" thick - same as your standard GCs.

[mehavey]

Arrived today from Tom:

https://i.postimg.cc/65sRM7hF/350-Legend-ACC36-270-CG.jpg

We'll see what it does tomorrow with my Legend Standby: NORMA-200

[cwlongshot]

Looks great Mehavey!! Sub or super?

I have a ladder with a 190 RD bullet with 296 to teat today!!

Instead of sending my 358430 out to be HP'ed...

I called up Al and ordered a close proxcimity, for allot less $$!!

360-197 RN HP AL2 is heading my way!!

CW

[mehavey]

Super to start (that's where I'm calibrated with the SAECO 352-245)
https://i.postimg.cc/kMkG9MdK/350-Legend-SAECO-352.jpg
then I'll work backwards.

[cwlongshot]

I was shooting my 270's today. Once I figured hold over. I was plunking these in on a 10/12" target out at 255/260 yards!!! Im loving this load for sure!!!!

That 245g saeco looks good!

CW

[44Blam]

Spent some time on the range and found a good W296 load and it turns out AA 11FS is actually pretty much identical. At 23.5 grain (both powders) is pretty much where I got the best accuracy and the lowest ES/SD. Interestingly enough, 23.5 grain W296 is where my 44 mag starts really working too...

So, I did something stupid with some rounds I made for a comp and I made the expander die expand a little more. Well, it caused part of the case to be whatever thousandth off that made it not go into battery in my rifle for about 3 out of the 30 that I made after that. And of course I find two of them IN the copetition. Meh. Won't do that again...

I had a guy watch as I shot a round of W296 vs AA11FS and he said that the flash was more noticable in the W296. But he also said that the flas was present in the AA11FS. So - I think these powders are pretty much interchangable.

The other test I did was with SW Precision Rifle. Turns out my ladder was nearly identical to Varget. I found accuracy at similar points as well.

Next week I'll make up some 350 legend rounds and take them out to the long range and try to get some DOPE data.

[cwlongshot]

Here is my last ladder with 296/190g RanchDog GC

https://youtu.be/kH3iN_PjOnE

[cwlongshot]

A new mold arrived last night!!

AWESOME AWESOME SERVICE FROM PROVO UTAH AND NIGHT OWL ENTERPRISES!!!!

I ordered this mold Saturday mid day. It arrived here to the New England coast 14:00 yesterday!! What stinkin virus!! NO EXCUSES just AWESOME SERVICE!!!

I even cast half a pot last night with it!!

https://youtu.be/Jrk-hC9N_XI

CW

[fastdadio]

Spent some time on the range and found a good W296 load and it turns out AA 11FS is actually pretty much identical. At 23.5 grain (both powders) is pretty much where I got the best accuracy and the lowest ES/SD. Interestingly enough, 23.5 grain W296 is where my 44 mag starts really working too...

So, I did something stupid with some rounds I made for a comp and I made the expander die expand a little more. Well, it caused part of the case to be whatever thousandth off that made it not go into battery in my rifle for about 3 out of the 30 that I made after that. And of course I find two of them IN the copetition. Meh. Won't do that again...

I had a guy watch as I shot a round of W296 vs AA11FS and he said that the flash was more noticable in the W296. But he also said that the flas was present in the AA11FS. So - I think these powders are pretty much interchangable.

The other test I did was with SW Precision Rifle. Turns out my ladder was nearly identical to Varget. I found accuracy at similar points as well.

Next week I'll make up some 350 legend rounds and take them out to the long range and try to get some DOPE data.

What boolit were you shooting? I took mine out with factory 125, 147, and 180 grs. First run seemed to favor the 147's. I haven't done any loading for mine since I don't have any primers....

[cwlongshot]

What boolit were you shooting? Still lurking in here. I haven't done any loading for mine since I don't have any primers....

I still occasionally buy Factory 145 FMJ. I was getting mini cases for about 90$ + ship. 5 boxes of twenty. I wont shoot them. I pull the bullets save powder, trim cases and re load with a re sized FTX 140g. Bullet.

https://youtu.be/7UjApxeQQeo

CW

[Tonto]

Great thread, I'm still finding factory 147 FMJ at Walmart here in NW Indiana for under $10 a box, with the LGS price of $37/100 for starline brass, $13 more for 100 rounds of factory seems a deal. Funny though, a month ago they were $8.96 a box, the latest inventory was $9.86. Classic market drivem pricing, if we keep selling out, raise the price. They don't know that I'm done buying for awhile. The empties will get stuffed with 180 and 200 grain cast.

[fastdadio]

Great thread, I'm still finding factory 147 FMJ at Walmart here in NW Indiana for under $10 a box, with the LGS price of $37/100 for starline brass, $13 more for 100 rounds of factory seems a deal. Funny though, a month ago they were $8.96 a box, the latest inventory was $9.86. Classic market drivem pricing, if we keep selling out, raise the price. They don't know that I'm done buying for awhile. The empties will get stuffed with 180 and 200 grain cast.

Well, that's one way to get me into Wally world. Wonder if that price is regional? I'll have to go take a look.
I suspect Winchester was dumping their ammoes at a low price to lure folks into the round. It's working too, because I know several people who have bought 350's recently and made comments about how much cheaper the ammo was compared to 450BM which is also legal in the restricted areas and is quite popular.

[Burnt Fingers]

A new mold arrived last night!!

AWESOME AWESOME SERVICE FROM PROVO UTAH AND NIGHT OWL ENTERPRISES!!!!

I ordered this mold Saturday mid day. It arrived here to the New England coast 14:00 yesterday!! What stinkin virus!! NO EXCUSES just AWESOME SERVICE!!!

I even cast half a pot last night with it!!

https://youtu.be/Jrk-hC9N_XI

CW

Don't forget to thank USPS. They're the ones that did the heavy lifting.

[44Blam]

What boolit were you shooting? I took mine out with factory 125, 147, and 180 grs. First run seemed to favor the 147's. I haven't done any loading for mine since I don't have any primers....

It is the Accurate 36-180LG. With nice hard alloy (~15 bhn).

[44Blam]

Don't forget to thank USPS. They're the ones that did the heavy lifting.

I keep telling my mailman - if you see a box that says "HEAVY" leave a note, I'll pick it up from the post office...

[45 hunter]

CWLONGSHOT, I have a question for you. In your Ranch dog ladder test you mentioned a sub load with a 270 gr bullet. What bullet were you using ? Thank you!

[cwlongshot]

CWLONGSHOT, I have a question for you. In your Ranch dog ladder test you mentioned a sub load with a 270 gr bullet. What bullet were you using ? Thank you!
I am using two bullets. (I like the 270 best) First is a NOE 360-232 its a 230g with a wide Meplat.

Second is a Accurate 36-270c I find it accuracy stabile. Meaning Its gonna tumble in contact. You can see slight tails on the target.

(W/270g bullet)
I found HERCO to be awesome. (BOLT GUN) I seriously doubt it produces enough gas to operate a AR! 7-8g 8 is borderline super. BUT slightly better stabilized. (Of coarse, Vel is why)

In my 16". 7 was 1040 ish. 8 was 1150 ish. Neither had a crack for me. Drop is about 4.5@50 and 16 ish @ 100 but VERY REPEATABLE! I was on a 6" clanger every shot @125/130 last time out.

CW

[45 hunter]

Thank you CW ! I just ordered a CVA hunter in 350 Legend, and plan on shooting mostly cast bullets.

[cwlongshot]

Awesome 45 Hunter!!

As a CB caliber its been alot of fun. Now that Hornady offers the FTX in a 165g there is a good WORKING jword available Too!!

Please BEWARE of winchester brass length. Personally I wont shoot factory Legend ammo. I have had case head separations FACTORY AMMO!! Some have blown up guns! Its because brass can be so long it cannot "release" bullet and pressures spike. I have measured MYOWN FACTORY BRASS and found it from 1.695-1.74+. (Need to ck notes to be accurate) Proper length is 1.710. I usually trim to 1.700.

Here is what I do;

https://youtu.be/7UjApxeQQeo

CW

[45 hunter]

Thank you for the info! I got my dies yesterday and my Winchester brass should be here today. I will check the length of them. Would I be better off buying Starline brass?

[tomme boy]

Yes and no. Starline is thinner and can make holding a bullet difficult. Last batch of Winchester I got a month ago was spot on.

[45 hunter]

Okay, I just checked my new Winchester brass and it's right at 1.700. Now I am just waiting for my gun to come in!!

[cwlongshot]

Awesome!

I agree with TB.

Have fun!

CW

[mehavey]

Would I be better off buying Starline brass?It would not be my recommendation.
https://thefiringline.com/forums/showpost.php?p=6767327&postcount=203

You want the extra base thickness to ensure pressure containment at the chamber entrance/chamfer.

else.....
https://thefiringline.com/forums/showpost.php?p=6766792&postcount=189

[mehavey]

First ran QuickLoad against the ACC 36-270CG for Subsonic info and the usual fill/burn constraints.

Green Dot & Viht_N110 & Viht_N320 fit the bill and tested well (except GD didn't even generate
enough port pressure to even unstick the case. (N-110/N-320 did well, but also wouldn't function)

Went looking for slower powders at the expense of burn efficiency and pressure -- focusing on 7" port
pressure and enough chamber/peak pressure to obdurate the projectile.

AGAIN... NORMA-200 popped up. Magic stuff from top to bottom.
But at BP chamber pressures (~12K), went to extremely soft 30-1 alloy (it tests about BN~6 no matter
what anybody writes "on the internet")

Powder Coat w/ Eastwood Red Mirror and out to the Range

https://i.postimg.cc/mZvm0fnS/ACC-36-270-CG-vs-SAECO-352-Red-Eastwood-sm.jpg

The ACC 36-270LG performed well. Locked back on the sled -- but the 270's wide metplat being real soft hung up
& got cut up upon chambering while trying to function in a regular magazine.

Back to the tried & true SAECO #352, 250gr when cast 30:1

Bingo:
https://i.postimg.cc/d3xZPBWk/350-Legend-SAECO-352-SUBSONIC-sm.jpg

Could probably pick it up to and even 14.6 grains without coming close to supersonic at 100° Wx

(FWIW: POI about 15 MOA down from the two high-speed loadouts of these two same bullets)

[cwlongshot]

AWESOME GROUPS MAN!!!

I was concerned about functioning in the AR... I just have the bolt now. But Im a step
Closer, my upper FINALY arrived last night!! Faxon is out of stock on my Bbl. But Amazon has so might jump on that soon.

I cast a hundred more 20:1 270's this am!! I thought I had plenty... But everything was harder then I wanted.

As for the budged case. (Second link). Im more blaming LIL GUN. I have had pressure spikes all
Too often with that powder. Its never much of a consideration because of that. Not to mention how hot it burns. (Heat)

First link is good information. But remember the legend is a LOW PRESSURE 55 k caliber. The brass is but a vessel to hold the primer and powder. Its slightly more of a consideration in a MSR. But its not really a issue. All the brass is more than sufficient to the task of those pressures.

CW

[mehavey]

We went round & round on another forum as to the reason why we were seeing bulged-bases and even blown out bases on early Legends. It came down to that insufficient base thickness/web floor to handle "slightly out of perfect spec" chamber entrance chamfer that exposed just enough of the sidewall to high pressures.
See https://thefiringline.com/forums/showpost.php?p=6772685&postcount=257

I relegated 300 starline cases to the closet, went Winchester, and sleep better at night.

[tomme boy]

That is also the reason lots of people have kabooms in 556. They seem to always blow out right at the web. Everyone thinks it is a overloaded round but it is actually just a normal load that had a case failure. But a 60K psi load can blow the whole side out of the up supported case head.

[44Blam]

A buddy of mine had a Kriss Vector in 45 ACP and somehow a round did not go fully into battery and the firing pin was still able to strike the primer. It BLEW the whole side out of the gun! And 45 ACP is a much lower pressure round.

[mehavey]

One of the saving graces of Gene Stoner's design is that the firing pin cannot
protrude at all until the bolt is near completely rotated.

Doesn't prevent "unpleasant" things, but disasters are very, very (very) rare.

[44Blam]

(Disclaimer: This works with my gun - could blow up your gun... So, work your load up for YOUR gun.)

Went to the long range today and went to get some DOPE on my new load. The boolit is Accurate 36-180LG and it is sitting on top of 23.5 grain AA #11FS. It is also seated at 2.195" COL.

I chrono'd this a little while back and it averages around 2175 fps. My rife is the Bear Creek Armory upper with a 16" barrel and I have an obnoxious muzzle brake. I've also got a Nikon 2-8x scope (it's M-223, so the #s on the turret are not useful).

I am getting MOA accuracy - probably better but the limiting factor is the shooter.

I zeroed it at 100 yards, so it is about 1" low at 50 yards.

Then:
200 yards - up 3 MOA for a bullet drop of about 6"
300 yards - up 7.5 MOA (total) for a bullet drop of about 22.5"
400 yards - up 18.5 MOA (total) for a bullet drop of about 74"

So, it looks like my bullet went subsonic between 300 and 400 yards. I did not shoot past 400 yards.

I did another ladder with a 125 grain boolit where I had similar accuracy and was able to push it about 2650 fps. So, I think I'll make up a hundred or so and take it back out there and see what the DOPE of it is. I bet it gets out a little further.

[44Blam]

The range I shoot at has steel targets all the way out to 880 yards so it is really entertaining to shoot there. A lot of these targets are knock down targets. Today at 300 yards there were a bunch of knockdown pigs...

350 legend:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lq2iAhWFYaI
308 (first shot hit the rail - oops):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQpXWPNJgpc

It was interesting to see how much more power that 308 has - headshot flung it around! :D

EDIT:
I got a thing that I can hold my phone up to a spotting scope a couple months back because my buddy got stuck in South Africa (he's still there) - so I have no spotter... Mostly, you can tell if you miss, but I thought I was hitting the pig because I could see the boolit explode but the pig wasn't falling over!!! So, I reviewed my tape:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNiTaUu6fE0

[cwlongshot]

Looks like you where hitting the horizontal stand Under the pig.

Fun video! Wish my main club allowed steel.

CW

[44Blam]

Looks like you where hitting the horizontal stand Under the pig.

Fun video! Wish my main club allowed steel.

CW

Yep - once I saw the video, I was like "Ahhhhhhhh" need to go up about 1 1/2 MOA (4.5" at 300).

[moto357]

This has been a fun thread. I’ve recently acquired my first AR and it’s a 350, because I love 35’s and especially my Max. Trying to keep this one a strictly cast shooter. The only boolit that feeds reliably that I have is the Lee 358-200. Sized at 358 in starline brass passes the plunk test, no go with Winchester brass. Playing now with alloys and powders, and of the powders I have I wish there was some sort of 300-mp data! I’ve had good Results with 4227 and 1680, though nothing special. Best accuracy has been with 300-mp but I feel like I’m flying in the dark with that one

[tomme boy]

use h110 as a baseline for the 300 powder. Some say it is the same.

[brewer12345]

Guys, I have a Bear Creek 350 upper I have thus far been using factory loads in. Obviously I would like to cast for it. What is the mold most likely to work? Lee 200 grain 35 rem mold? Something else? Powders I suspect wil be limited to what I have on hand given the crazy market right now.

[cwlongshot]

The lee 200 is a fine bullet.

[garandsrus]

I shot the RCBS 35-200 and Lyman 358315 in a Savage 350 Legend. Both had to be seated a little deeper than normal but they worked well and were accurate. I sized them to .356.