I recovered two balls from the sand backstop.
Those were fired with 29 grains of Bluedot.
And they were cast from hard shot.
You can see how they got jammed into each other and "flattened" during acceleration ....
Link to Image
I recovered two balls from the sand backstop.
Those were fired with 29 grains of Bluedot.
And they were cast from hard shot.
You can see how they got jammed into each other and "flattened" during acceleration ....
Link to Image
Faustus were those heat treated or air cooled? If heat treated that seems like a lot of flattening.
Were balls directly in contact or nitro card wad between?
Longbow
Longbow, these were cast from hard shot ... and dropped into cold water to cool down.
In the column the balls are sitting right on top of each other with buffer filling up the remaining space.
Here is the column ....
Column:
1. Cheddite 3” hull (Burgundy)
2. Powder
3. Cut wad open down to the base
4. Split a 20ga .125 Nitro Card in half
5. Place half of a 20ga overshot card into wad
6. Insert Wad into hull
7. 3x .600 round balls
8. buffer (vibrate into the balls)
9. .125 Nitro Card as overshot card
10. Roll crimp
Yeah, what BT said.
Not sure what hardness you get from water dropping but you should try oven heat treating to get maximum hardness. In case you are not familiar with oven heat treating:
http://www.lasc.us/heattreat.htm#chart
I guess with Tri-Ball loads there isn't enough room to add nitro card wads between balls to cushion. Harder balls should help avoid distortion.
Longbow
I joined just to say thanks for this post, I've been looking to make my own Tri Ball clones and this thread has great info.
BP | Bronze Point | IMR | Improved Military Rifle | PTD | Pointed |
BR | Bench Rest | M | Magnum | RN | Round Nose |
BT | Boat Tail | PL | Power-Lokt | SP | Soft Point |
C | Compressed Charge | PR | Primer | SPCL | Soft Point "Core-Lokt" |
HP | Hollow Point | PSPCL | Pointed Soft Point "Core Lokt" | C.O.L. | Cartridge Overall Length |
PSP | Pointed Soft Point | Spz | Spitzer Point | SBT | Spitzer Boat Tail |
LRN | Lead Round Nose | LWC | Lead Wad Cutter | LSWC | Lead Semi Wad Cutter |
GC | Gas Check |