Another Home Made Gas Check Maker

[longbow]

Well, I decided I had to try making a simple gas check maker too. Nothing new or innovative just my take on the simplest of ideas I liked.

I have not shot any yet so don't know how they will perform.

Also, these are not yet sized as I have to make a sizing die. They are a tight fit onto the shanks or these NOE boolits. The punch is 0.284" so more or less standard size but the aluminum is 0.019"-0.020" thick so thicker than most. I am using old gutter and flashing I have. Finished diameter is 0.318" OD then they swell another couple thou after being installed.

This was really quite easy to make though I do have a small lathe.

It consists of:

- a simple hole punch like a gasket punch (made out of old drill steel photo drill steel_1 & drill steel_2): drilled 13/32" (0.406") then inside polished with emery

- a simple die body (old Suzuki axel): drilled 13/32" at the top and 5/16" at the bottom; then bottom reamed to 0.318"

- a simple forming punch (old Suzuki shackle bolt): turned to slide fit in 0.406" top and with 0.284" forming punch with slight taper

- a block of wood, plastic, lead or whatever to punch on

I punched out 350 +/- disks in about 20 minutes and it took a little longer, maybe 1/2 hour or a little better, to make the checks. I will have to accurately time 100 or so to be sure but it went pretty quick.

FWIW

Longbow

[6.5 mike]

That's kool , longbow. And the suzuki lives again.

[wistlepig1]

Nice work and it's good to see another "recycler":lol:

[WILCO]

Nice work and it's good to see another "recycler":lol:

Indeed.

[longbow]

Well, I got out to range to test out a couple of new bullets and the new gas checks.

Photos of recovered boolits attached.

Most loads were fairly light in the 1600 to 1800 FPS range but some were pretty hot as well. Hard to tell what is what other than I know these are my boolits.

I shot the NOE 0.314 x 129 gr. first (left photo) and dug up the remains from our 100 yard berm so I know which those are. Then I shot the NOE 316299 (right photo) and they kicked up a lot of sand and "debris". Some of the second set of recovered boolits and checks may be NOE 129 gr. mixed in but the point of the exercise was to recover the boolits to see if the checks stayed on and apparently they do. Many boolits still had checks on them and I also found a number of checks loose in the sand.

Accuracy wasn't fabulous but then I had to size slightly small because I didn't have the right sizing die. I normally shoot as cast fat boolits but had to size the gas checks on these.

For what its worth, the simple check maker works well and the checks stay on. Now I have to work on load development and accuracy.

Longbow