klausg
06-06-2006, 06:35 PM
Hey gang-
A little report from this weekend; in response to my advert. for a set of small handles, I ordered a set each from Beagle & Floodgate (Thanks again guys). Beagle was also kind enough to e-mail me some photos and acccounts of his more recent adventures in his enlargement technique of the same name. Well Saturday afternoon rolled around, and when I got home Floodgate's set of handles was waiting for me. Well since I have been staring at my 3118 for nearly two months, well you can probably guess what happened next. I started casting and man that mold throws perfect bullets:mrgreen: . However, per my usual luck, something had to be wrong. I started sizing (@ .314) and no resistance was felt, I measured a couple (no micrometer yet, just calipers) and they were around .311. Yup, I was the proud owner of around 200 perfect undersize boolits! Well this occurred around 2100hrs or so; too late to hit a hardware store, (not too mention Beagle had promised me some of his magic aluminum tape). So I loaded 50 of them, just to see what would happen with them. I threw the rest into the re-melt box and went to bed.
Sunday I went to the range and the results were rather dismal, no leading but it looked more like I was patterning a buckshot load in a 10 gauge than a group @ 25 yds. Now my brain is on fire and my impatient side is coming to the fore. What to do? What can I shim those blocks apart with? I settle for masking tape; figuring if it doesn't work it won't be too much of a mess to clean off. So I 'beagle' my blocks w/ strips of masking tape, (don't try this at home, I'm a trained idiot) and to my surprise it actually works!! Well kinda, I make around 100 before I start getting boolits that look like radar antennae, and give up. I size & lube my 100 boolits and I'm happy. Well almost; bit of advice if you're going to 'beagle' w/masking tape, get it off before the blocks cool. It was a bit of work, but I managed to get all of the baked masking tape off the blocks; just in time for Beagle's package to arrive with, God Bless him, magic aluminum tape:mrgreen: .
The moral of the story: "Beagling" works! And, don't get too impatient.
-Klaus
A little report from this weekend; in response to my advert. for a set of small handles, I ordered a set each from Beagle & Floodgate (Thanks again guys). Beagle was also kind enough to e-mail me some photos and acccounts of his more recent adventures in his enlargement technique of the same name. Well Saturday afternoon rolled around, and when I got home Floodgate's set of handles was waiting for me. Well since I have been staring at my 3118 for nearly two months, well you can probably guess what happened next. I started casting and man that mold throws perfect bullets:mrgreen: . However, per my usual luck, something had to be wrong. I started sizing (@ .314) and no resistance was felt, I measured a couple (no micrometer yet, just calipers) and they were around .311. Yup, I was the proud owner of around 200 perfect undersize boolits! Well this occurred around 2100hrs or so; too late to hit a hardware store, (not too mention Beagle had promised me some of his magic aluminum tape). So I loaded 50 of them, just to see what would happen with them. I threw the rest into the re-melt box and went to bed.
Sunday I went to the range and the results were rather dismal, no leading but it looked more like I was patterning a buckshot load in a 10 gauge than a group @ 25 yds. Now my brain is on fire and my impatient side is coming to the fore. What to do? What can I shim those blocks apart with? I settle for masking tape; figuring if it doesn't work it won't be too much of a mess to clean off. So I 'beagle' my blocks w/ strips of masking tape, (don't try this at home, I'm a trained idiot) and to my surprise it actually works!! Well kinda, I make around 100 before I start getting boolits that look like radar antennae, and give up. I size & lube my 100 boolits and I'm happy. Well almost; bit of advice if you're going to 'beagle' w/masking tape, get it off before the blocks cool. It was a bit of work, but I managed to get all of the baked masking tape off the blocks; just in time for Beagle's package to arrive with, God Bless him, magic aluminum tape:mrgreen: .
The moral of the story: "Beagling" works! And, don't get too impatient.
-Klaus