it's been a buncha fun delving into the ppb side of bpcr, but thanx to nobade, randy wrights ppb book, brentd, reading the threads and posts of others in this forum here at cast boolits, after a few months of trial (and error) learning the ropes i finally got to build some ppb rounds and light ten of 'em off this morning @ the 200 yard range.
i cast the slicks - accurate mold 45-505xr - that dropped at .4415" and 487 grains with 1:20 alloy. drop filled 80 grains of swiss 1-1/2f into redding neck sized starline cases that were federal 210 primed. after pushing in a .025" milk carton wad and a pair of .002" newsprint wads, i compressed it all just a bit that allowed a patched bullet to sit in about .187" into the brass. i used papermill onion skin to wrap the bullets dry, twisted the tails and then cut them off and flush with flush cut fretting nippers. pushed the bullets into the brass and ran the resulting cartridges into a lyman neck taper die for just a tad of neck tension.
the resulting ppb cartridges are 3.155" long and require pulling back the roller's hammer in order to get one into the chamber. the paper hits the leade and rifling with about 5/8" or so proud of the chamber mouth and rolling in the breech easily seats the bullet into the bore, no problem, no special seater required. neat.
for a first time out with ppb's, i had hopes of just hitting the 4x4 backstop and not having sideways bullets, but it went a bit better. the first 3 rounds hit low and left (the rifle was set up for greasers), i tweaked the vernier, then the next 2 went almost into one hole at the top of the X ring - just lucky, for sure. the 1st round on the next target was almost off the paper - the added recoil do take me some getting used to! - then i started walking the bullets home. wiped between shots with 1:10 ballistol:distilled water, dry patch for the bore, and then a dry chamber swab.
this is all of the patching confetti that i could find, about ten feet out on the grass. there was no leading of the bore at all, rifle clean up was easy.
this was real fun stuff and now i'm hooked on patching bullets. lots more to experience, and learn, but that's all part of the ppb bpcr fun, eh?