Paper Patch and Filler

[Lead pot]

It's more of a sizing thing that will make a patch stick with the bullet.
When you size a bullet with a patch on the paper grain will embed right into the bullet shank and you will most likely use a lube when you run that bullet through the die this will also add to the problem by having the lube penetrate through the paper and adding to the problem by gluing the patch to the bullet.
You will eliminate most of the problems if you size the bullet before you patch it or just get a mould with the proper diameter.

Lp.

[303Guy]

True. Unfortunately the patch does seem to need a little lube to survive the bore. I was not sizing the boolit at all with those samples but the boolit was getting sized in the bore on firing. Losing the filler and increasing the powder charge seems to have done the trick and fitting a card wad seems to have resolved the base peeing issue. It's just a pain fitting the card wad!

[geargnasher]

Your experiment intrigued me, 303Guy, so this morning I loaded some of my .45 Colt NEF loads, but this time added some .025" heavy, waxed card stock from a beverage container between the powder and patched boolit base. This cut my 100-yard group size literally in half, with no other discernable effects.

Here's a pic of the target and recovered confetti and card wads:



Note the impression of the folded base of the jacket on the card wad. When I recovered them, two of the wads still had strings of confetti stuck to them with Felix lube.

Also note the little twisted-tail base cup I found on the range, it's at 10:30 just outside the circle. This is from one of my .270 loads WITH filler, note the perfect condition even after a month of sun and three rains. There was ZERO damage to the paper on the inside of the cup, indicating that the boolit base was well-protected.

I think a stiff card wad right under the boolit base is key to protecting the base from stick powder damage when using soft PP boolits without any sort of filler.

Gear

[303Guy]

Gear's results are astounding!

But I've been thinking about that card wad. It's difficult to wrap under the patch tail and almost as difficult to glue it to the patch tail and a bit risky should it fall off inside the case. So, I tried the higher powder charge with a little wheat bran filler. This seems to work. The boolit base is protected and only the tail ring remains attached to the boolit. The higher pressure is ensuring that there is no patch residue on the boolit shank (and the bore remains clean and shiny). Pressure is still moderate to mild. Load density is 92% with PMP cases so the filler quantity is quite low. I could of course use polyester filler under the card to hold it in place.



Field tests will show if it's any good!

[geargnasher]

That looks much better, amazing what can be done with soft lead, isn't it? Apparently it doesn't take much to protect the base if eight percent wheat bran on top of the column does it. That's about how much I used with my top-end .270 loads, filling from just below the body/shoulder junction to about halfway up the case neck with BPI filler, settling the filler, and seating the boolit to push the filler flush to the bottom of the neck.

Gear

[pdawg_shooter]

How hard (or soft) are your boolits, pdawg? I have visions of the powder in my cartridges slamming into the base of the boolit on ignition. I have this crazy idea that heavier is better with cast but for the pig gun I suspect is is the best option because of the size and shape of the throat and the fact that the barrel is seriously short. My thinking being that a heavy boolit over a slow powder in a short barrel gives decent burn and reasonable power. It is a 'pig gun' after all. (But it is showing a tendance to want to go with me everywhere! And I do rather enjoy its company).

Hardness depend on velocity. Pure lead (2% tin for fill out) up to around 220/2250fps. Air cooled WW I take to 2500/2600fps depending on the batch. I to am a fan of heavy for caliber bullets. Just seams to kill better.

[Smoke-um if you got-um]

The card wad wrapped under the patch skirt seems to have done the job.




It's the R/H one. I increased the powder charge to 40gr under a lighter 192gr boolit.

I like that. I'm gonna give it a try in the near future. Slipped away from paper pacthing for a while while doing a little traveling here and there.

Mike

[leftiye]

I know everybody but me is allergic to this - but - How about a gas check?

[phatman]

You know Leftiye does have a point.

Cheers, John

[geargnasher]

I've considered that a few times, but have you ever tried to size a gas-checked boolit down .010" or more? I have and the check usually falls off afterward. If one had their own .30 caliber checkmaker it would probably work to use beer can aluminum for the checks and use .30 caliber boolits run through a sizer just over bore dimension.

Gear

[pdawg_shooter]

I cant see any difference in accuracy GC or no GC. Have tried it a number of times. The paper does as good a job protecting the bullet base as a GC, IF you use twisted tails as I do. Folded tails? Not so much.

[docone31]

When I final size my patched castings, I twist the tail, then it gets compressed to the base.
I, also, do not use gas checks.
I have perhaps used 40 in my lifetime. Didn't like the performance.
Might as well have been throwing stones.

[leftiye]

Size them, then seat the checks.

[geargnasher]

Size them, then seat the checks.

I don't follow how that would work when knocking .010" off of a boolit and then wrapping it in a paper jacket.


Docone31, do you mean that you don't trim the twist at all and kind of spiral it around the base before sizing? I trim my tails, but leave a generous stub like a tree stump cut off about half a trunk diameter above the ground, then swage it good in the base-first sizer. It compacts nicely into a base "wad" that works pretty well unless the boolits are unreasonably soft for the pressure, then a very stiff card wad punched from a 12-pack soda carton either under the patch directly on the base, or under the patched boolit helps a bunch.

Gear

[303Guy]

I have been thinking about a gas check. I'm figuring my alloy is too soft for the pressure I am giving it. I could modify the mold base pug easily enough and make a push through seating die.

[heathydee]

I use this home-made 152 grain PP boolit in my 30-30 Chicopee with a 1 in 14 twist . Since I just clip off the tail of twisted paper I was worried about the scrunched up paper deforming the base of the boolit. Half a CC of ground up plastic used as filler between the powder charge and the boolit allays my fears of this happening . The recovered boolits shown here are the Lee 150 grn FN and my homemade PP fired into wet paperbacks at 50 yards . Velocity 2150 fps .

[geargnasher]

Heathydee, the 1/2cc is exactly what I use when I use it. The idea is to get enough filler into the shoulder area of the cartridge to really squash down hard right as the powder gets going and thus make a solid plug of plastic behind the boolit. If you use a powder type and charge that fills most of the shoulder and only put a little filler in there, it doesn't work nearly as well.

I might add that I didn't figure this out myself, I picked up the tip by paying attention to a grumpy old engineer that occasionally drops pearls of wisdom here and lets you figure out how to make it work on your own.

I played a lot with this last weekend in .30-'06 and tried both Win 780 and RX 22 at near 100% loading density, and backed off to just barely below the shoulder/body junction of the case with powder and then halfway up the neck with sifted-in filler before seating the boolit to compress it to the bottom of the neck. I wanted to see how the filler would affect both accuracy and pressure in side by side tests with the two powders. Interestingly both powders had the same POI at 100 yards, similar groups, and the reduced charges with filler also had the same POI and virtually the same recoil. Going by the loading books, the 5-6 grain reduction in powder to accomodate the filler should, by itself, reduce the pressure by about 15K psi. While I have no chrony data from that session to back it up, I can pretty much tell that most of that lost pressure from reducing powder was made up by the addition of the compacting, granular poly filler in the way and amount I was using it. Pretty important to keep that in mind as experiments go on.

Gear

[heathydee]

Geargnasher.
I played a lot with filler in my 6.5x55 in the pursuit of high velocity accuracy ; using around 2cc and the filler extending deep into the case . While the fired primers were still rounded , indicating that pressures were not reaching too high a level , I found that cases needed full length resizing more often than usual given the low pressure . The filler was blowing the shoulder of the case forward in my opinion as it was funnelling through into the case neck .
Have you noticed this effect?

[geargnasher]

Absolutely I have. When said filler is used in an amount that falls much below the neck/shoulder junction in any bottleneck caliber with significant bore/body ratio I notice a much more distinct impression of the machine marks of the chamber on the shoulder of the case, and also notice I have to bump the shoulder back or the bolt face makes a shiny scrape mark on the face of the case head when camming home the next time I load them. I agree that it's simple physics and the filler tends to push really hard on the brass trying to get out of the case. This probably accelerates the factor of the "dreaded donut" formation quite a bit too, but I haven't reloaded cases shot with that much filler enough times to observe it.

Like all things in reloading, I find filler works best when it's in harmony with the other components in a way that produces minimal stress to brass and gun. The "too much of a good thing" thing.

Gear

[heathydee]

I would agree with everything you have said there Geargnasher . I use filler in all of my high power cast boolit loads where I use a slower burning powder to achieve a 100% load density . The advantage of course , having the powder right back against the primer where it will hopefully be ignited in a consistent fashion .
I have never worried any filler with plinking loads using small amounts of fast burning powders .