308 Paper Patch

[303Guy]

Try wheat germ or wheat bran. Wheat bran needs to be sieved to get out the big bits and can leave a ring inside the shoulder - well at least I have seen it once or twice. The wheat germ is oily and doesn't seem to do this and is a bit lighter and springier and easier to get into the case. It also doesn't seem to harbour as many bugs that eat it and make silk balls in it like wheat germ does - wheat germ is best baked to dry it and kill the bugs.

[geargnasher]

This is a 4 shot group with 44 gr. H414 .7 cc COW 2400 fps at 50 yards. I'm not sure I will be able to try my gasket card idea because I don't think there is enough neck to hold the boolit with out pushing the card out of the neck. Where do I go now???

I notice the group printed about 2-3" higher with the fillered load, I'll bet had a bit more "punch" than the 45 grains without filler.

You don't need a card base wad with filler most of the time, the filler does the job by itself. Now that you've shot the fillered load, what were your impressions? How was the bore condition? Any "crusties" inside the case shoulder from the filler? Are you lubing your patches? How much are you compressing the filler when you seat the boolit? If all looks to be functioning well, my suggestion would be to keep at it with what you have, and make small adjustments, you're shooting a very proven combination, it's just a matter of putting it together just right (assuming the rifle is capable of delivering good accuracy to begin with). The groups might settle down with some more shooting.

I don't know what kind of stock or recoil buffer you're using, but the H&Rs can kick pretty badly and induce "flinchitis" after a shot or two, don't discount that factor

Gear

[161]

Bore seemed fine, I didn't see anything left in the case. I lube with LLOX and push through a Lee .309 die. I don't give it a second coat. I but 44 gr of powder tapped the side of the case 5 times and but in .7 cc COW then tap the case again until it's about 1/8 inch short of the case mouth. Then seat the slug so the base is even with the bottom of the case mouth. You can feel some resistance when seating the boolit. I was patching graph paper just past the ogive. It does kick a little more but not as much as a factory 168, the gun will shoot sub MOA with Federal Gold Medal. I'm going to go back and retry the trace paper and different patch length. Sound like a plan???

[geargnasher]

Sounds just right to me, it ought to shoot better than that, though. If you're going to try different papers, try some plain, 16lb copy paper or some Meade sketch paper. Those papers tend to tear more easily when wrapping, so you'll have to be careful and not let them stay too wet too long before you finish the wrap, but they might confetti more easily than the graph paper. I dip the patch in water, lay it on the board, wipe is smooth with my finger to get the excess water off, then roll it while stretching the paper, then gather the tail and twist it gently. If you do this quickly, before the paper gets too soft, it works pretty well and shrinks very tightly to the boolts.

Gear

[161]

This is what I been shootin. If the pic turns out you can see the rifling engagement up to where the punch is pointing.

[MBTcustom]

I think that sounds like a lot of press to me. I would back off on the COW just a hair and mess with the patch length. You should be realy close though. Any time now you will tweak the right thing and it will come together for you. Just be careful! PP is a discipline that will tempt you to change several things at once because there are so many options! Resist the urge! do one thing at a time. Be anal about it!

[geargnasher]

Thanks for the pic, 161, I was going to ask you for one. It looks great to me just the way it is. You might take Goodsteel's advice and back off on the pre-compression of the filler just a tiny bit, and maybe switch to JPW instead of LLA for patch lube. I have good luck with the 45/45/10 Recluse lube formula as a patch lube too, but at high-velocity I get better results with the JPW. Smear it on the dried patched boolits, wipe the excess with your fingers, and let them dry again before sizing. The LLA sometimes makes the patches stick to the boolit, which you DON'T want to happen. I'm guessing you were using LLA on the lower velocity groups that were shooting better than these with the H414 did, but changing away from it is still worth a try in my opinion. If it makes no improvement, you can always switch back.

I know it's a lot more patching, but shooting 10-shot groups will give you much more useful results than four or five shot groups. The higher count is not only better for statistics, but it gives each adjustment time to "settle in" so you can really see what's going on with each change you make.

Gear

[161]

Busy at work this week don't know when I will be able to get back to this project. But that's OK I'm starting to patch boolits and dream about rifling twist in my sleep.

[161]

I went out with some of my Lee 170s trace paper JPW 43 gr. H414 .5cc COW. Nothing really changed. So I took some 180 gr. with a gas check and sized them to .3025 soaked them in mineral spirits to get the lube off. Everything the same as before and this is what I got.

All but three shots were fired at the left target then the last three at the right. The next photo are 23 gr RX7 and the plain cast GC boolit on the left 10 shots. The right target is 5 shots with some old Hornady 180 round nose on top of the H414. I just can't get these pp boolits to shoot in the 308. I'm getting little paper rings after each shot left behind. What causes that??

[MBTcustom]

If you mean paper rings are being left in your chamber or on top of the case rim, I know exactly what causes that! I learned the hard way. Your brass has been trimmed too short. The paper is being vaporized and deposited in the space between the case rim and the left over space in the chamber. Your brass should be long enough to kiss the end of the chamber, or only miss it by .005.

[161]

If you mean paper rings are being left in your chamber or on top of the case rim, I know exactly what causes that! I learned the hard way. Your brass has been trimmed too short. The paper is being vaporized and deposited in the space between the case rim and the left over space in the chamber. Your brass should be long enough to kiss the end of the chamber, or only miss it by .005.

Yep that makes sense. I'm assuming it's bad to have them??
Thanks

[MBTcustom]

Yeah, no bueno. I was not getting good accuracy until I got new brass and started over, also, those paper rings were damaging the next boolit patch if they were left in the chamber.
Here's some pictures:
this is a mock chamber I cut in a blank piece of steel and then cut in half so I could see what was going on inside the rifle's chamber.

This one shows the "quicksteel" chamber cast I made of my rifle next to the new cartridge, showing that the problem has been fixed.

Here's the rifle I made. (this is a wildcat cartridge called 358Malcolm, based on the 303 british)

This is a typical 50 yard example target from when I was where you are.

This is a typical 50 yard example target that I can do now if I hold my head right.

The more important issue is that this load provided two deer for my family last year.
There was a lot of experimentation that went into this and I got a lot of help from folks on the forum here. With PP everything matters. Primer, paper, powder, lead, lube, length of the patch, OAL, case length, boolit length, rifling twist, everything. It is cool as all get out when all these details work together to give you an awesome load, but it takes some figuring.
Dont give up! keep changing one thing at a time. Once you get close try minor adjustments to some component to make the others settle in. My success came when I knew I had a good close load, but it just wasn't quite there yet. I decided to mess with the patch length so that I could control where the patch failed. When I shoot, I dont get strips of paper, I get a cloud of vaporized paper fiber. I kept shortening the patch until I started getting leading in the last inch of my barrel, then I lengthened just a little. There was a very specific point where I started getting good results. I think If I had kept dinking with it, I could have come up with a load that didn't care what length the patch was, or if I had a twisted tail or a folded crimp tail etc (the folded crimp worked the best for me BTW, the one that leaves a dot of exposed lead on the base of the boolit.

[geargnasher]

Some papers are worse than others at leaving the rings, but Goodsteel's assessment is spot-on. When I find them happening, I run a clean groove-diameter swab into the chamber neck and pull out the ring, assuming it didn't come out on the case mouth. If I don't get the ring out, it will spoil the next shot.

Gear

[161]

I went out today thinking that if I don't see something promising I'll admit defeat and move on. I took the advice from the last several post. First 10 shot group once fired Federal Gold Medal cases untrimmed, 42 gr. H414 .7cc COW graph paper sized .310 around a core of .3025. Lubed with JPW. Group wasn't even worth taking a picture of.

Next everything the same except trace paper that did not need post sizing, end result was .309, 44 gr of H414 and .5cc COW. 50 yards nine shot group.



The hole to the right is not part of the group nor is the one low half covered by the next target. I had one patch cut by the crimp because I had the die seat to just straighten the case mouth out. But when I used the longer cases it of course crimped more. I'll try some more with less crimp. But I found that I still need to take a brush after each shot and pull the paper ring out. Any ideas????

[161]

Interestingly enough I just went to cut the rings off the brush. And they aren't just paper. If the picture is good enough you can see they are paper and lead rings together.

[MBTcustom]

Your brass is too short, and I'm not surprised by the paper mixed with lead. That paper ring is caused by your boolit having to pass through a "ring of fire". The ring is made of vaporized paper and lead because if at any point your bore is not obturated, then you will get leading, witch is caused by gas cutting around the boolit and vaporizing the lead. You have paper that is doing acting just like lead does. Like I said before, you need to make your brass long enough that it kisses the end of the chamber.
Do you also have fowling on the necks of your brass?.....same problem.

[geargnasher]

LEAD rings? I thought those were too neat and sturdy to be just paper. You have a patch failure somewhere before the boolit even gets engraved. How about a pic of the loaded rounds?

Gear

[161]

This is what I been shootin. If the pic turns out you can see the rifling engagement up to where the punch is pointing.

They look just like these only trace paper and JPW. I understand that I need to fill the gap in front of the case mouth but apparently my once fired cases aren't long enough either. I have Federal, Winchester and Black Hills Match grade cases and they are all 2.17 to 2.19. Where do I get longer??

[geargnasher]

You really have me baffled. I've never gotten the slightest bit of lead anywhere near the breech end of the gun with paper jackets. I had some "slicks" that would wad up the paper in the throat pretty badly, but that only resulted in a few streaks of lead further down the barrel and gawdaful patterns that wouldn't reliably hit the berm. Something is badly amiss here, but I can't figure what it could be, the dimensions are right and the loaded rounds look right to me.

Gear

[Nrut]

First of all you need to find out how long your chamber is..
1. lead impact impression is what I like..
2. creosafe (sp?)
3. I think Redding makes plugs for determing chamber length..
Then you can run a 30-06 case thru a die (very lightly to no lube) and trim to the length of your chamber..
I find that a Redding shoulder die works great for doing this but sometimes you can use a seating die with out the seating plug depending on the brand then the regular sizing die...

That is assuming that a long chamber, short case is the reason you are getting those rings..
I have the same problem on several rifles myself..

edit: I should add that I have 'paper rings' on my case mouth when I extract the case..
Never checked to see if there is lead rings in the paper..
Groups suck..