Milsup Sunday

[Boz330]

Loaded up some of the Cruise Missiles yesterday along with some oversize 303boolits for the Carcano and a Martini Enfield. I used 4759 for both.
I started with 14gr in the Carcano and got what I thought was a reasonable starting group with boolits hitting straight on. Went to 15grs and the group tightened a little but holes went oblong. Next up was 16gr and several of the boolits hit sideways and the holes were oval. I'm thinking of going the other way with the powder but I do have other powders that I can try. Any suggestions? Just trying to save time.
Next up was the ME that pretty much turned every boolit that I tried sideways. With the CBE oversize 235gr boolit and 20gr of 4759, I got a group about 2" high but strung out horizontally but part of that can be blamed on a 75lb trigger the lousy sights, sun and of course my old eyes. I think this now has some potential to turn in some good grooups.
I finished the day with a Martini Henry with BP and the last group shot, was 2 1/4" and all of the shooting was done at 100yds. A couple dark beers while cleaning up and a fine Sunday was enjoyed in some outstanding fall weather.

Bob

[madsenshooter]

to have your Milsurp Sunday! I just finished a dismal day at the range. The big ol 1000 yard target I pinned up at 100 would barely hold the pattern. It really wasn't that bad, but nothing went right it seems. First up was my Krag with the new NOE 311284 over 49.5 gr of WC860. This was done up in reformed .303 brass due to a lack of Krag brass. The load had it's moments, a few of them were close to each other! I did get to chronograph the load, it was going a bit over 1800fps, I was hoping for closer to 2000. Next was the K31 using the Eagan MX 3-30AR over 22gr of Blue Dot. That one got the velocity I was looking for, 2070fps, but I was unpredictably spraying them over the target, another wasted loading session, except for the learning experience, that should be a 35,000PSI load, I need some harder boolits! Finally I thought shooting some j-words out of my Garand, which I haven't shot since 2002, would save the day. It wasn't quite as bad as the cast loads, but it was a gross overload that clocked 3060fps using a 150gr FMJBT, good thing I have an adjustable gas plug. I reloaded them over 10 years ago, I think with a slightly compressed charge of RL19, which worked fine with 150gr softpoints (no crimp). But I was experimenting with a factory crimp die and the Hornady bullet had an awesome crimp groove to fill. The crimp from hell I think one could call it, it's very square and deep, without deforming the bullet though. It definitely got the start pressure up. Only shot a few of those, now I'll have to pull them down with that god awful crimp, or shoot them in something with a longer throat than the Garand has to see how the pressure looks. I'm looking at Nosler 2nds or something like that. If I don't come up with decent combination soon, 2nds have got to better than what I've been doing with cast. Oh I forgot to mention, the 2 trial kicker loads I made for the Krag. Same charge of WC860 w/3.5gr of Blue Dot in a neck sized Krag case. Worked ok with a 185 spire point boolit, not so with the 210, too hot, very much so. So, as I used to hear it said when I was kid, it's back to the drawing board, Sherman!:roll:

[Mike Venturino]

Yesterday was a success for me too, but not with cast loads. I got my very first decent (not great) but repeatable groups with my Type 38 6.5mm JAP. My first efforts had included full length sizing since I have three such 6.5s. Groups were lousy and my expensive Norma cases began to separate after only two loadings.

New Hornady brass and only barely sized enough so as to chamber in all three rifles. I tried these loads in the iron sighted Type 38 first and it was keeping everything under three inches at 100 yards. Load was 37 grains of IMR4350 with 140 grain Nosler HPBT and Speer 140 grain spitzer flat base. Chronograph showed both loads doing right at 2500 fps which is where I want them. Perhaps best of all the point of impact at 100 yards was about an inch or two above point of aim and center for windage. I shot these loads at my Action Targets PT Torso steel out to 300 yards and could hardly miss. Next to try them in the Type 97 sniper rifle.

So I came back up to the house from my range with the aura of the rightous and just only to find that my water well had crapped out. Spent the entire day today with the well guy in winds up to 50 mph trying to get it fixed. He says tomorrow by noon and we'll be up and running again and lots of bucks poorer.

Oh well, at least my old Arisaka is finally shooting.
Mike

[bruce drake]

Sorry to hear about the water well going down (electric pump or windmill) Nice to get a load for that Arisaka finally (even if its with one of those jacketed thingys)

Boz -sounds like a good day
Madsen - maybe next time :)

Bruce

[madsenshooter]

Mike, I've found a lot of those type 38s have a bigger bore than the normal .264, with some running .2675-268, so that .268 Carcano bullet might be something to try. That old Norma brass is going to get someone killed if it already hasn't. Good thing the head is fully supported. I wrote them and they show pics of brass based on the .303 British head size on their website, but nobody can find any of them. I make them from 30/40, 303 British, or swage down GI 7.62x51 to .4575 head diameter. I'll bet that old Norma brass got a lot of rifles trashed for having excess headspace when the flaw was in the case, too small, too thin a rim.

[Buckshot]

.............I've wondered about that. A couple years ago a shooting buddy gave me 3 boxes of once fired Norma 7.65 Argentine. He said a buddy of his was cleaning up and had found them, and he'd long since sold the rifle. At home as I was dumping each box into the tumbler I noticed a brightish ring down by the extractor groove. I figured it was from his FL resizing. After doing some other odds and ends for maybe 15 minutes the thought suddenly floated through my noggin that these were once fired and still had the primers in place!

I sifted out 3-4 cases and sure enough the ring was above the solid head. Fishing around insde the case with the good ole bent paperclip, I found sure as the world each one of those cases had a groove inside. I dumped the rest out of the tumbler and began checking them out. A couple had thin black lines partially around the case where they HAD seperated and leaked gas. It sure hurt to chuck them in the scrap bucket.

I don't know what kind of rifle that guy had shot them out of, and I also know Norma listed them (Norma data on the boxes) as 154gr SP's IIRC at 2900 something FPS. Maybe shot in a tired old 1891? They did look nice and newish but that was a LOT of case stretching going on.

.............Buckshot

[Boz330]

Mike, I can sympathize with you on the well. Just got city water about 3 years ago. They never broke down in the summer, always during the coldest part of the winter. Not to mention that power outages were a common thing when I first bought the farm. I have figured out that power failures when you have running water aren't to bad.
Buckshot, I had a #4 that would do that to cases and finally slipped up on a #3 bolt head for it, it had a #0, and solved that problem and it is a real shooter now. Reloading doesn't help much when the cases fail on the first shot.

Bob

[Mike Venturino]

Got the well up and running again! All new and all top of the line, state of the art. The pressure tank went bad and that screwed the pump. Done just in time too cause a storm started moving in.

Can't wait to try that new 6.5mm load in the scoped Type 97!
MLV

[Buckshot]

Got the well up and running again! All new and all top of the line, state of the art. The pressure tank went bad and that screwed the pump. Done just in time too cause a storm started moving in.

Can't wait to try that new 6.5mm load in the scoped Type 97!
MLV

...........We lived out in the sticks for 20 years, and had a well that was set up as a water company. It was a good sized well drilled way back for agriculture. There were 4 of us using it. About 2 years after moving out there the pump (submerged) died. The new pump came from back east and instead of going to the airport in Ontario California it went to some airport in Ontario Canada.

We were without running water for almost 2 weeks :-(. At the time my wife drove a '67 Chevy stepside pickup and we used that with three 55 gallon plastic barrels in the back to run the 20 miles round trip to my parent's house to shag water :-) At the time we had 3 horses and 2 mules and I think in that 2 weeks we must have made about 5-6 water runs between them, the toilets, and watering the various plants around the place.

Amazing how we take for granted the turn of a tap for water or the flick of a switch for electricity, isn't it?

..............Buckshot

[Boz330]

Yes it is and we have had 2 power outages in 3 days. Not sure what is going on but there has been no bad weather of any kind, in fact this is the time of year that power usage is probably at a minimum.
I was in the reloading room sizing a bunch of cases last night when it went out. It was darker than the inside of a black cat. I had a flashlight in the reloading room SOMEWHERE not to be found. Went to get a Coleman lantern, but the floor in the man cave isn't that neat and in the dark is an obstacle course to say the least. SWIMBO finally showed up with a flash light or I might still be looking for those lanterns.

Bob