Reamed .457 to .459"

[onondaga]

My .458 Win Mag Colt Sauer slugged out at .4570" Previously sizing my cast bullets with a Lee .457 push through die had no effect on accuracy with the fine shooting Sauer, so I put the die away for quite a while and kept shooting as cast bullets. My Lee .457-340 RN-F mold drops bullets at .460" and the rifle groups those un-sized bullets <1" at 50 yards all day but over 1610 fps the groups open up. My plain base CheckMaker 45PB from Pat Marlin will hopefully be here soon. I decided to open up the sizer to .459 before I start to gas check this bullet.

I never did this before. This has been discussed in topics here many times so I gave it a try armed with a slotted wood dowel, strips of 320 grit emery cloth and oil and an electric hand drill. This is a lot slower than I had expected and took over an hour of spinning the dowel with the emery cloth and oil and checking diameter by running a bullet through the die periodically. I sure didn't want to over do it and then have to order a new die. It took 11 bullets used for checking until I finally got the die to size my bullet at .459" I cleaned the die with a couple of dry patches before each run through of a lubed bullet to check size.

If you are going to try this you will have better progress by not running your drill at high speed. I started at fast speed for 5 minutes and had no change so I slowed the drill down to about 1/4 speed and noticed immediately that the die got warm with the lower speed. I was right, the next measurement check showed progress. The slower speed cuts the metal better. I finished up by putting a new label on the die and box-- reamed .459" so it would be properly identified.

A Starrett micrometer was used to check sized bullet diameter, The same micrometer was used to check my slugs from slugging the Sauer rifle.

I am hoping to work up a new load for the Sauer with the 340 RN-F gas checked and No filler at a velocity of 2,000 + fps. My current load requires filler or I get squib rounds with 53.3 grains of H4895. I will go back to Accurate 5744 to work up the new gas checked load and try no filler.

Gary

[peerlesscowboy]

I assume you're aware that the actual inside diameter of a sizing die normally is smaller than it's nominal size to allow for "spring-back"?

John C. Saubak

[Typecaster]

peerlesscowboy, he should be OK as he says he checked the sized boolet diameter, not the ID of the die. In either case, I'd be more concerned about depending on the results of a warm/hot die. Back in the days of yore when women were beautiful, men were handsome, and I had hair, one of the first things I learned studying optical fabrication was to wait for the item to reach thermal equilibrium before checking. Of course, we were working plus or minus 1/10 of a wave, not thousandths…

BTW, welcome to the club.

Richard

[peerlesscowboy]

peerlesscowboy, he should be OK as he says he checked the sized boolet diameter, not the ID of the die. In either case, I'd be more concerned about depending on the results of a warm/hot die. Back in the days of yore when women were beautiful, men were handsome, and I had hair, one of the first things I learned studying optical fabrication was to wait for the item to reach thermal equilibrium before checking. Of course, we were working plus or minus 1/10 of a wave, not thousandths…

BTW, welcome to the club.

Richard

Thank's for the welcome Richard, and yes I noted that he'd measured the sized bullets so he should be OK. Just thought I'd mention that fact so somebody else doesn't get the idea to ream out a die without being aware of that and getting it a couple thousands too big by using a caliper on the inside of the die itself.

John C. Saubak

[onondaga]

Thanks, I was concerned about the die being hot and not getting a good measurement. The last few times I abraded the inside of the die, I cooled it under a water faucet then cleaned the inside with an oiled cheesecloth wad. I believe it was room temperature before I ran a bullet through to check the diameter. I just checked it again and the micrometer still stops right on the line at .459" checked at 6 places along the circumference of the sized bands. I am real happy the way this came out on my first try. The bullet must be nice and round to measure that well, I was concerned about roundness too and rotated the die frequently when working on it.

Just as a note, I think I could have used a more coarse emery cloth than 320. The finish on the worked area is very fine, it is finer than the original finish in that area was.

Now I just have to continue the waiting for my PB45 CheckMaker.

Gary

[looseprojectile]

I have to be careful. I usually use 280 or 320 but I got some new wet or dry recently and it is really agressive compared to the old stuff i have used.
The new sandpaper was only allowed to run about thirty seconds and nearly took it out too big before I checked. Only needed about .0015" . There are differing qualities of wet or dry. Just a heads up.

Life is good