Retired...TWICE. Now just raisin' cows and livin' on borrowed time.
Hey, at least you know how far to hold to the left!! Just kidding.
I switched to a Felt wad this year instead of my .090 Cork, bullets are well out into the rifling and it leaves impressions on the bullet-paper, when pushed into the rifling, it does not tear my patch at all. Bullet is now about .365 in the case. It works, works well, and wins now and then the above won the Mile match this year set a new record of 8/10 hits at a mile, observed Vertical was on order of 1 MOA to maybe 1.5 MOA Less then 2 feet of vertical at a MILE. My 540 Gr Version of the Money in .446, took 1st 2nd and 3rd at a Mile, Paper patch made a clean sweep at that match this year.
I often check my bullets to see how the bases look after firing, I think that my 3 wad stack has a lot to do with preventing base fining or damage to the bullet's base, along with using Fg Powder and the 2-7/8ths Case. I think.............That I found out why Hyde and William DeV. Foulke used the 2-7/8ths 45 case now in the later years of long range. At a mile, spent bullets, even the ones that hit the target, I can get a real good look at the bullet's base and even see where the bump up ended, It's right at the top of my patch, Very few people have a Mile Range in their family Back yard, so I do consider myself lucky. My Creedmoor Range that my father helped me build was an excellent training ground for Creedmoor Shooting. And I learned much of my wind reading skills on that home built 1000 yard range.
KW
The Lunger
Kenny ,,, in these photo's i see that you are resting your rifle on the for arm. is this where you shot from or is it just there for the rest period/photo op?
Ted I rest my forearm on the front bag in my rest the barrel does not touch the rest, its a bit further back then in the picture not so close too the end.
Kenny
Kenny, the alchohol/water mix is distilled water and distilled Makers Mark right? Only the best components will do when paper patching. By the way one of the best bullets I use in my C. Sharps Arms 45- 2 7/8 is Kenny's 560 grain round nose and 7 lb. paper folded over the base and dried on a hot plate.
NAW Don,
We save the Makers for sipping not a patching! LOL. I hear from people now and then that really like that 560 Gr Round nose I designed up a few years back it does make an excellent Hunting bullet. I got no small kick out of the fact this years mile Match all 3 top shooters were using my .446 Money PP bullet. Pretty cool.
Kenny W.
I'd say soo!
Nice Group!
KW
The Lunger
Kenny, Didn't know that was your money bullet but I have that one also but haven't had time to work with it yet but looks nice.
Very cool subject.
I sold my paper patch chamber Sharps in 40-65 many years ago. But it was great fun and very accurate.
As it turns out some recent cleaning in the shop netted me 200 .402 Montana Swaged 400 grainers that had been hiding in the corner. My current love is a #5 Marlin Ballard Ron long helped my build for BPCR 16 years ago, it's 40-65 and the current chamber that very little freebore works incredibly well with Ron's tapered .395 Spitzer. But now after this I am tempted to try paper patching again.
A big question remains, is there a way to make the PP slugs work in a chamber that has pretty much zero freebore or should I just off load the Bootits and and move on?
Zero freebore is what should work the best when you patch to groove, or slightly over, but those.402's are liable to be a bit big, unless you seat them really deep. Only way to know for sure is to wrap a few and let em rip.
Long range rules, the rest drool.
Point well taken. I figure I'll roll a few and see what they do.
15 years ago common practice was to have free bore in the chamber enough to hold the exposed paper patch while allowing the paper to engage the rifling's by about
.050". With little to no free bore it would seem that I would need to seat the boolit deeply leaving little exposed patch. Kinda wierd with the taper case like a 40-65. The taper boolits for teh barrel extend some 4 grease grooves and the 3rd groove just starts to engage the rifling, that should be about .402, being dead soft lead they bump up nicely when you pull the trigger. You are right in that .402 might be too big, seems like .408 would be the smallest I could imagine it being after patching.
I'm not sure how things got so screwed up about how to make these guns work like they were supposed to. But over the last few years, there's no shortage of folks, with Kenny Wasserburger, and Kurt Altenburg leading the way have got most everybody interested in shooting paper patch, back up to speed where most teenagers of the 1800's were.
If you look at the instructions for loading from the Sharps catalog, they specifically said not to load the bullet much over a tenth of an inch into the case. Even as early as 1875 Remington was advising that using soft bullets for target work was not the way to go, harder alloy's to be preferred..
Lots of things to work with , but with the bullet you have I'ld suggest a felt wad and a card wad with the bullet seated just deep enough into the case that it will chamber with just a bit of push from the thumb. Shoot a few and see where to go from there.
Long range rules, the rest drool.
FWIW - For the rifle and target I showed above, that .395", 40:1 bullet was patched to .401". My rifle's groove size is .408" and bore size is .401" and it has no freebore. When I insert the cartridge I can feel the patched bullet slip into the rifling with a little finger pressure. The cases were resized prior to loading and I cleaned between shots. I'm not saying its the right way to do it, just that it works in my rifle.
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 |