Let's design a .351 Paper Patch Boolit

[357maximum]

I am wanting to remove a few sizing steps from my paperpatch procedure. I am thinking if I had a .351 (30to1 or pure lead) boolit similar to the 358315 with a few mods life would be better.

My thinking:


very small meplate instead of the round nose, but keep the general shape. Weigh about 200-210 grains, and have shallow lee type tl grooves along it's bearing length...or multiple shallow/skinny grooves. The skinny grooves would allow use in some 348 bores as a greased boolit so that may be a better way to go.

For now this is just an exercise in "what if, and what to" but you never know where it may lead.


Any ideas, thoughts, help or brain farts are welcome here, but I would like to see it weigh in less than 220 grains.

[45 2.1]

I am wanting to remove a few sizing steps from my paperpatch procedure. I am thinking if I had a .351 (30to1 or pure lead) boolit similar to the 358315 with a few mods life would be better.

My thinking:


very small meplate instead of the round nose, but keep the general shape. Weigh about 200-210 grains, and have shallow lee type tl grooves along it's bearing length...or multiple shallow/skinny grooves. The skinny grooves would allow use in some 348 bores as a greased boolit so that may be a better way to go. Making grooves like the 8mm Plinker had will allow a plinking boolit for the 348 Win.

For now this is just an exercise in "what if, and what to" but you never know where it may lead.


Any ideas, thoughts, help or brain farts are welcome here, but I would like to see it weigh in less than 220 grains.

I'll draw one up for you, but I need the distance your useing from the mouth of the case to the end of the boolit nose and the diameter of the nose under where the lands engrave the patch on the 358318 along with where that distance is from the case mouth.

[357maximum]

I'll draw one up for you, but I need the distance your useing from the mouth of the case to the end of the boolit nose and the diameter of the nose under where the lands engrave the patch on the 358315 along with where that distance is from the case mouth.

35 remington (remington stamped) Trimmed at 1.921 (I ignore the books trim to length in some cases and let the gun have all the case I can consistantly provide it with when required/desired/able to

* I use reformed/trimmed 222Rem Mag brass in my 223 H&R for instance*


Overall length of loaded round= 2.4465

Distance from case mouth to tip of the 358315=.5175

Diameter under patch where lands start to engrave = .3451

Distance from casemouth to land engagement on patch= .1455


You should still have pounded throat slugs from this gun....I think?

[TREERAT]

If you get some one to make the .351 mold, I would also like to purchase one. let me know!

[windrider919]

I / we here in PP did design a bullet very much like you describe. I had the mould made and have found it is very accurate. The premise was that smokeless needed a slightly larger diameter than BP. So instead of .450 it is .453 to patch up .008 more to fit the chamber throat. I get no excess pressure and great accuracy. I do NOT size either the basic bullet or the patched bullet. That was the whole purpose of my trying to PP. Simplify reloading. The small grooves were to hold the patch on better than the smooth sided bullets used in BPCR. It appeared that with smokeless the patch was 'slipping' and not staying on bullet when fired. If I were to do it again I would have them made 1/2 the depth.

I will try to post the sketch:

[303Guy]

I have met this German Fellow who is a tool and die maker by trade who now has a small and well equipped workshop with all new machinery. (And there he was making a fancy wooden table - but he is happy and that's what counts!) Thing is, if he can justify his time he could make all sorts of fancy stuff for us reloaders and cast boolit nuts. He has Solid Works - which can read other CAD software. What do you folks think? My assessment of him is that he is a clever guy and likes to to a good job.

[303Guy]

It appeared that with smokeless the patch was 'slipping' and not staying on bullet when fired.

I started out with this smooth, tapered boolit concept born out of the shape of my Lee Enfield chamber and the size of the fired case neck. Then I moved forward into the 19th centuary and discovered paper patching! So I just used the same basic form. What I have found is that the casting does not slip forward in the patch. This allows me to continue using nose pour push out molds. (Very convenient).

[windrider919]

What prompted the slipping theory was that the very smooth polished moulds (usually nose pour for BPCR) or smooth sided swaged bullets did not always shoot well using smokeless powder compared to the same bullets performance with BP. But bullets that had machining marks from home bored moulds DID seem to shoot better when using smokeless. And regular grease grooved [GG] cast bullets shot well too when sized correctly and patched to correct groove size. This led to numerous threads on whether bullets bump up and if they did was it more with BP than with smokeless. And the the theory was born that somehow the patch was held tighter by the 'rough sided bullet'.

Your pictures show tooling marks on some of your homeade moulds bullets so you might be having that advantage without knowing about it. And some of your other pic show you using GG bullets so there again it might be helping you.

I can say that when chambering, in MY rifle, the patch sometimes catches and pushes down on the smooth bullets. The tool marked bullets hold the patch better and do not push one side down as much or at all when the side of the bullet enters the chamber mouth and hits the edge.

So, theorys but no way to really prove them. what we do know is what worked for us. And I found I like it rough.

[303Guy]

That's good enough for me! Thanks for the info. Besides, it's a helluva lot easier to make a rough mould! (My very aesthetically pleasing boolit came about from before I progressed into the 19th centuary of paper patching!)



But hell, it looks good! It's a hollow point too. (Very shallow hollow).

I was considering abandoning the push out mould for that reason but if a mould rough enough to hold the paper but not so rough as to hold the casting will work, then I am still in the running!

I get the impression that rebated boolits are generally a good idea.

[windrider919]

It sure is pretty all smooth like that though. Sexy. and I always got a kick out of your gas check in place casting too. The main thing to remember is that your rifle might like something mine will not tolerate. Thats what is so exciting, solving each guns querks

[windrider919]

If you look up an old thread of mine called, if I remember: "how do you like my cherry?" or something like that I was going to have a cast, rebated boattail PP bullet. Go to the Corbin bullet swaging site and there is some info on rebated tails. Also, researching the numerous VLD (very low drag) sites shows that there is some basis to their being good. BUT. And this is the killer. Boattails only work at supersonic speed and have a nasty tendency to tumble when they slow down to subsonic. Flat based bullets, although not as good of BC (ballistic coefficient) have a turbulent drag behind the bullet that tends to keep it from tumbling.

So, where in the flight regime where your boolit is going to spend MOST of its time? When I really looked at cast bullet velocities using the ballistic drop programs that are free I realized that, even with PP, at most ranges beyond 100yds the bullet would be SUBsonic.

Additionally, to really take advantage of the boat tail the bullet NOSE must be 'pleasing', ie: pointed. Yet for two centuries shooters have been trying to make pointed cast bullets shoot accuratly. And failing. each new shooter is seduced to the dark side by the catalogs that show points like j-boolits have. I actually asked Mr. Lee on the phone one time why he kept those bad designs in stock. Reply, "Because people keep buying them. And when they find out they need a rounded nose then they buy another mould." Lyman and NEI and many other mould makers do the same thing. Anyway, bullet [nose] slump on firing is considered to be one of the most significant reasons why pointed unjacketed bullets are not accurate. Also, the harder jacketed bullet will shift a little to line up in the bore at firing, the softer lead does not, the bullet just swages cocked. So the larger dia. nose pushing up into the rifling / bore centers and aligns itself. The pointed bullet is just touching air.

About the best pointed nose today is the "Money" bullet design by one of the BPCR very long range Quigley shooters. Technically it is not pointed but is a slim round nose. The Postell nose is good too. But my rifle is a bolt action, not a single shot and the next round to shoot is in the magazine. I found that any too pointed of a round nose was slammed against the front wall of the magazine, blunting it and distorting the shape. Experimenting by keeping the same round in the magazine for multiple shots showed that the mushrooming damage would go so far then stop. So I added a small meplat to my bullet. Now when a round rests in the magazine and is bounced forward and back by recoil it does not distort because the nose is blunt enough to support itself and not mushroom. No, not as aerodynamic but the distorted, uneven mini-mushroom on the more pointed round nose was much less aerodynamic.

So, no matter how much I wanted to prove the tradition bound, old fogeys wrong they made me admit they knew what they were doing. At least about cast bullets, I don't admit to anything else. Because they had rebelled in their time and tried 'new' things and proved to themselves what worked and what did not. Now a new crop has to do the same thing. I have no doubt that it is locked into human nature.

So, what do you think? Hey, look at the solid VLD bullets. I shoot both them AND my custom lead PP.
First pic/left side: LM-101 solid copper, 2nd pic/center: LM-102 max VLD; 3rd /right side: GS hv HP solid; and last, the awsome Lehigh 458-100T VLD solid which is a 1 MOA in my .458 Win Mag

[303Guy]

Great pics!

... it is locked into human nature.

Yup. We all have to pee on the electric fence for ourselves!

I never figured on the nose getting damaged in the mag. Good point. I was planning on a shallow hollow point but now I will go for the simpler meplat. I figure I can get reasonable BC by having a somewhat long boolit. My first boolit was essencially a copy of the orignal 215gr Brit bullet. I didn't bother to fire that one - not enough nose support. I ended up with a 245gr torpedo with a very blunt nose shape. It didn't fit my rifle so I shortened it to 220gr and that one rested on the leade. At around 1900fps (it was plain with surface lube) it did this;


Three shots donot make a 'group' but is an indication. Another four shots were fired onto a different target. They too printed real close together.

The loaded boolit


Now, compare that one to 357maximum's 35 Reminton boolit.

[RMulhern]

Any of you guys know what a 'knurling tool' is??

[303Guy]

Thanks! I never thought of it.

[303Guy]

OK. I tried the knurling. Great! I did not do a control test but who cares! It worked, that's all that matters.

But of course I could not resist trying something else out at the same time. smilie=1:



It's a spiral wound single wrap patch. (You can see where I got the idea from).

And here it is fired.


The patch stayed in place just fine and came off mostly at the muzzle. For very low powder charges, I am no longer worried about 'all of it coming off at the muzzle'. It will with a full charge.

See that curved line? That's from a human hair that got under the patch. Curious!

[windrider919]

So 357M, what do you think? We covered some ground about PP bullet design. What are your ideas now. Have we been any help? Any questions?

Also: To FPMIII - Yes I considered knurling but as I have stated, the reason I got into PP in the first place was to simplify. No sizing / lubing / gas checks, etc. Just cast and patch and load. That means no extra step of knurling either. But it was a good thought and I do knurl some of my other non-PP bullets to hold lube and bring the size up where they are cast too small (ex: .452 to .460 for my Ruger Old Army BP cap n ball).

[RMulhern]

So 357M, what do you think? We covered some ground about PP bullet design. What are your ideas now. Have we been any help? Any questions?

Also: To FPMIII - Yes I considered knurling but as I have stated, the reason I got into PP in the first place was to simplify. No sizing / lubing / gas checks, etc. Just cast and patch and load. That means no extra step of knurling either. But it was a good thought and I do knurl some of my other non-PP bullets to hold lube and bring the size up where they are cast too small (ex: .452 to .460 for my Ruger Old Army BP cap n ball).

KISS aka KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID....is a good foundation for shooting PP bullets but NOT the only reason! Probably there are two fundamental reasons that are really good for using PP; (1) no problem with 'leading' if done correctly and (2) an increase in aerodynamic performance because the bullet has nothing on it (grease grooves) to cut down on flight performance! You guys are traveling on a slightly different road than mine however as you're shooting smokeless powder...which cuts no skin off my nose I might add! However...with that being said, based upon my experience with shooting cast PP bullets and from others whom have worked with PP bullets for a long time....if one wants the BEST DEPENDABLE PERFORMANCE from my game, which is BPCR...the best way to go is with blackpowder! That 'dirty ole' blackpowder!! Not really difficult to clean however with a falling block single shot rifle! Matter of fact...I can clean a BPCR rifle after a session of shooting faster than others can clean a layer of copper that's been laid down in the bore of a SP rifle! That's pretty much a 'no-brainer' as I don't shoot anything that will give me a layer of copper!! I've read your postings and looked at your sampling of some groups fired and it appears you're doing quite well. Getting into the PP game can be difficult at first as a 'newbie' because at one time I didn't have a clue about what worked but over time after listening to some guys that had more experience with it than I did.....things finally started working quite well for me! Hang in there! God took 6 days to make the world!!

[303Guy]

....if one wants the BEST DEPENDABLE PERFORMANCE from my game, which is BPCR...the best way to go is with blackpowder!

I glance over at black powder from time to time. It's the "Holy Grail" of shooting! Maybe a 9.3x74 one day. But the old 303 Brit with a heavy PP boolit might just work too. Nothing wrong with black powder! (Specially since one can make it in the comfort of one's own kitchen!)

[357maximum]

So 357M, what do you think? We covered some ground about PP bullet design. What are your ideas now. Have we been any help? Any questions?

Also: To FPMIII - Yes I considered knurling but as I have stated, the reason I got into PP in the first place was to simplify. No sizing / lubing / gas checks, etc. Just cast and patch and load. That means no extra step of knurling either. But it was a good thought and I do knurl some of my other non-PP bullets to hold lube and bring the size up where they are cast too small (ex: .452 to .460 for my Ruger Old Army BP cap n ball).

I am really waiting to see what 45 2.1 comes up with I spose. I have not had time to think about it much...lighning got me modem in chat fri night...so I have been fooling with that and then I had a Father's Day Weekend shoot/dinner to attend to.


I want this simple cast/patch/load shoot...that is the whole point of this exercise. General consensus says that small grooves work better with smokeless, and in ths case it would also allow a plinker type boolit for the 348 folks.


Stay tuned

[windrider919]

One thing I forgot to mention in my previous post describing 'my' Windrider bullet [click on the drawing for expanded view] was where the ogive of the nose ends at a dia of .443 then tapers up to .455. This is so the patch can extend up onto the ogive a 1/16" or so and the full PPed diameter of .450 would ride on the lands, centering it without tearing or pushing back the patch. Also, there is a theory that an abrupt change in dia. like this helps the airflow / shockwave stay attached when crossing from super-sonic to sub-sonic, instead of briefly going turbulent and affecting the bullets flight. Two functions in one!