Originally Posted by
Molly
Hi Starmetal
>22 rimfire cartridges don't have enough powder in them to make them skin burning hot, but yet casing shucked out of an auto loader with burn you.
Interesting. Did you just say that a 22 doesn't have enough powder to make the cases hot unless they are fired from an autoloader? No, I know you didn't, but that's what I got on the first reading. (VBG) What you say is still not inconsistent with my proposal that the auto-ejected case simply doesn't have time to cool before it hits your skin.
Enough about my mental excentricities. You have claimed that the real cause of hot cases is friction from the chanber walls if I understand you correctly. Why not actually test the notion? Fire something (22 or 30-06, I don't care) and find some way to test case temperature. Maybe it'll melt into a block of parriffin. Or styrofoam. Whatever. I don't care how you test the temperature, just test it. Then wax a few rounds and see if the reduced friction is detectable in whatever temperature test you come up with.
You can even fire two nearly simultaneous shots from your autoloader, pick up the cases and judge temperature with your hands. (Fire the unwaxed case first, so there won't be any residue to confound your results.) I'm betting there won't be any detectable temperature difference between the two cases, despite what should be a substantial reduction of friction.
>Listen to this true story. One of my really good friends had a Rem 742 in 30-06 many years ago, which by the way shot groups that most bolt actions would have a hard time beating. He loaded it using the Lee hand loader. ...When we got back we noticed one the ejected cartridge had melted all the way through the styro foam cartridge containers that Remingtom loved to use. We noticed the other empty casings were a deep blue from heat, I'm talking about like gun bluing and this was from the case mouth to about halfway down the case. The rifle didn't do this with factory ammo or fully resized ammo.
I'd sure like to know why not. Factory, unsized or fully resized makes no difference: When the round is fired, all of them will be clinging to the chamber walls with all the force that the propellent can exert. Sizing or lack thereof normally makes absolutely no difference except in ease of chambering. Under factory 30-06 pressures, that brass case had all the structural resistance of a bit of tissue blowing in the wind.
>Now you tell me that's not friction heat.
I just did, at least in my opinion. Your story - though interesting - seems to have some logical inconsistencies, and lacks some easily performed tests on its validity.
Now may I tell you what I suspect may have been happening? I wasn't there, and can't possibly know for sure, but I've seen some very strange things done by begining reloaders using beginner tools like the Lee Loader. One of these brethern poured his powder out on a sheet of paper and scrapped up a pile of gunpowder that "looked big enough". This was then decanted into a case and topped with a jacketed bullet. Enough said?
As an aside, this in no way refelcts poorly on the Lee Loader. They can produce excellent ammo, and I still have several in my own inventory. When I just want a couple of rounds to test some notion, they are better suited than my Dillon presses.
I've also seen brass cases discolor toward blue from serious overloads. The worse the overload, the deeper the blue. I think that's enough said too.
Now I REALLY don't mean to belittle either you or your friend. God knows, the idiocies that I performed as a beginner don't give me any leeway to make fun of anyone else. It takes a special kind of fool to see if he can fire a 35 caliber bullet through a 6.5mm bore. (Believe it or not, it CAN be done, but I sure don't recommend it!) And I suspect that I've made just about every mistake that it is possible to make with cast bullets. But I honestly think that you have simply misinterpreted what you have seen.
Firearms can do some very strange things. My father swore to me that he had once seen a 30-06 barrel which had the bullet depart the bore about halfway down the barrel. And he was an aircraft gunnery sargeant at the time, and would have had ample opportunity to see strange things.
An interesting test you might try just occurred to me. Find an automotive garage that has a hydraulic press, with an owner that will indulge you for a few minutes. Cut the base from a 30-06 case, and slit it down the side so you can unroll it into a sheet of brass. Drill an attachment hole in one end and place it in the press under some pressure. Lacking a press, put it under a three foot stack of bricks, and then under a six fooot stacn of bricks. Pull the brass sheet out and check the temperature. Then double the pressure and test it again. I'm willing to bet heavily that within the limits of your ability to pull the brass sheet out, you won't find any differences in temperature.