Marlin 1894 in 44 and hbwc

[mag44uk]

On a whim I got a MP moulds brass hbwc mould - a thing of beauty!
Here in the UK Marlins are used for paper punching out to 50 yards.
We have no need for loads for felling critters.
I use 200 and 240 gn boolits out of saeco moulds @ around 950 fps.

I tried some of the hbwc and it brought merit to the expression " couldn't hit a cows **** with a banjo!"
A mate tried some in his marlin and they were spectacularly awful as well.

Shooting these as cast @ approx. 0.432
They shoot fine out of a pistol.

Is this to do with the 1 in 38 twist or lack of velocity or bearing length?

I have a 41mag marlin with 1 in 20 twist I am toying with trying with hbwc when MP mould gb comes up.

Tony

[longbow]

Sounds as though boolits are fat enough at 0.432" as most Marlins run 0.431"+ groove diameter.

Could be low velocity maybe not enough to stabilize with the 1:38" twist. Try some speedier loads to see if that helps.

Have you recovered any boolits? Could the skirt be blowing?

Are you using soft alloy or WW?

I've shot some pretty large meplat boolits from my Marlin but never a full wadcutter and not at such low velocity. Not soft either. Most of my casting is with range scrap or WW.

I actually wanted the same mould but my Marlin would even feed SWC's so there is no way it would feed full wadcutter except single loading. Does yours feed them from the magazine?

Another though though unlikely I think... if you are seating all the way in the brass and full length resizing brass the skirt may be swaging down so is undersize for the bore. I had this happening when reloading for my Lee Enfields. Factory dies size the necks to an optimistic 0.310" or close for 0.312" bullets but I was loading 0.315" boolits. After pulling a few and measuring I found the lead boolits were being resized smaller by the tight necks. So, I made a larger expander button which solved that issue but of course still worked the brass a lot so then got a Lee collet sizer and set it up to size 0.313". Problem solved.

In your case if you are full length sizing .44 brass it will be small for Marlin chamber and with the taper in the brass you may be squeezing the skirt as it goes deep so making it undersize. I only "neck size" my .44 brass these days but when I seat boolits they really bulge the brass. One day I'll get a different sizing die I can hone out. I am using a Lee carbide die and it sizes way too small for my 1894 chamber.

Just a couple of thoughts.

Longbow

[bmortell]

hbwc's confuse me on how they can not be stable, ive seen it in handguns. the front end weighs more than the back end so idk why they would not be stable. id catch one and see if you can gather any info from it.

[longbow]

From what I understand turbulence from the shockwave is the issue. They are accurate over short distances then lose stability.

From someone with much more knowledge than me:

http://www.lasc.us/Fryxell_Book_Chap..._Wadcutter.htm

The sentence of interest here: "The wadcutter also generally has extensive bearing surface that provides better alignment in the throat and forcing cone of a revolver, thereby favoring concentric engraving, and better short range accuracy (before the lousy aerodynamics of the "flying trash can" destabilize the bullet and ruin flight stability)."

He also comments on HBWC's.

Not sure if they are any more accurate than other bullet designs but their popularity apparently comes from punching nice clean holes through targets for easier scoring more than anything.

I'm not much of a handgun guy so not much personal experience here but the above is what I have always been told.

Longbow