Dacron Wadding - How much?

[StarMetal]

The shotgun getting a bigger barrel made me think about how the military puts those (what I call pipe end caps or protectors) plastic caps on the muzzle of their rifles and in the event of an ambush emergency or something they just shoot them of with no ill effects. Same as in WWII where the soldiers put condoms over the ends of their barrels. In these cases the air ahead of the bullet does blow them off or apart with no harm, at least I haven't heard of any.

Larry Gibson brought up an interesting point about getting a bullet stuck in the barrel. He said instead of trying to pound it out with a cleaning rod and perhaps ruining the barrel,to just shoot it out. NO, not with another loaded round, but with a case loaded with a just a safe charge of powder. He said that in essence when you load that case with just powder it then turns into , in conjunction with the bore of the barrel, a gaint case with the bullet seated way out there. He said that what blows a barrel or bulges it is an obstruction ahead of the barrel. In the case of the stuck bullet there is no obstruction ahead of the bullet because there is no bullet in the casing. He's right.

Joe

[mroliver77]

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So you just keep on keeping on with your tumbling loaded ammo, it's not me or my gun.

Joe>
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So my experience means nothin? I dont just throw em in and dig them out later and fire them. I have pulled many and weighed and sifted with no difference in the powder.
Have YOU ever tumbled and pulled any rounds or just take what you read as gospel? Jay

[sundog]

About powder migration. I build slug and buckshot loads using clear Cheddite hulls. One of my more favorite powders for this is HS6, a ball powder. Well, guess what, over time some of those itty bitty powder balls had worked their way up betwixt the wad and hull - doesn't seem to hurt performance. Pull the trigger it goes bang. Soooo, I'd be interested in whether ball powder migrates into dacron, but since I don't use it that much I'll let someone else do the experiment. It seems like if the rounds are not handled much, like bench to range to gun and shot, it would be okay, especially if stored boolit end up. sundog

[beagle]

Guess I'll put my $.02 worth in here as I use dacron ona regular basis.

On a big .45 like that I use the 1/8" sheet stuff cut 1 X 1.

As you pointed out, just enough to fill the space between the powder and the bullet.

The ignition in every case has been improved in my experience and and the dacron protects the base and edges of the bullet base much like agas check does.

When you start seeing dacron fly, you're using too much.

Other than that, dacron's good and the only experiences I have had with it have been good and I've shot a lot of quilt padding down range.

Probably the loose stuff is easier to use than the sheet./beagle

[slughammer]

A very recent discussion between myself and a lifetime friend.

ME: A guy here at work has some boxes of 30-30 that I can have, they are factory but old. A little time in the vibrator should clean them up. Someday, he may bring them in...

MY BUDDY: For the old stuff just remember shoot first then vibrate. You wouldn't want to change the properties of the powder. Burn rate has to do with formulas, size, shape, and coatings of the powder. Tumbling may affect 3 out of 4. Like turning reloader 22 into some thing like red dot. I've seen that twice at the range one was a 30-30. The guy with the 30-30 tumbled gramps old ammo. The cases split. He thought the cases were weak. Until the fifth shot when the primer flowed back and broke the firing pin. At Pikeville I saw a 30-06 with do about the same thing but with the first shot. Smoke was coming out of the vent hole in the side of the action and the primer was FLAT! Except where the firing pin hole was. The primer completely contoured to the primer pocket and bolt face If need be, clean them up with Scotch bright. I don't know how many people ask me about cleaning up old ammo. It's always a hot topic.

ME: Wow! There are tons of threads on tumbling ammo, mostly for getting case lube off of pistol ammo. Your experience speaks volumes above and beyond the internet garble. I just came in to find 7 boxes of 170 gr Winchester silvertips. One loose round has half the silver tip coroded away...***! I CUT one box open and they are not as bad, but I'll check out the rest in the boxes and report back.

MY BUDDY: I was thinking of tumbling some older 30-06 after Dad first got the reloading stuff but I read Q and A section in some magazine that just said don't. But it seems it must come up constantly. Every six months I read a Q and A article about tumbling old corroded ammo. My dad just asked me about tumbling some loaded antique .32 Remington (no longer commercially loaded, can get dies and custom brass but brass is $38 for 20 and the dies aren't cheap either RCBS set from Midway $122) for a guy at work(he wasn't that attached and sold it). Rick Jamison from Shooting Times finally spelled out why, with the burn rate, shape and coatings. Turning a slow burning rifle powder into a flake pistol type powder just spells BOOM. For loaded ammo I use Scotch bright to knock off the big stuff and shoot it. Then for badly corroded empty cases I tumble them for a while, case lube them well, full length resize and decap, trim to length, tumble them to bright polish and then prime and load. For every day dirty I case lube, resize and decap, trim, tumble, prime and load.

ME AGAIN: I started pulling the 30-30 silvertips and once I was started, I just kept going until I had pulled them all. The powder turned out to be 3 different types; ball, short extruded and long extruded. One case had the powder STUCK inside and picking with a screw driver was required, took the pliers and crushed that one. I put all the brass into a mix of water and vinegar to clean the corrosion off, worked great. Dried and tumbled in walnut media. I sized and deprimed them all, about 135 total, got 4 cracks. One cracked in the neck, and the other 3 cracked where the neck joins the shoulder.

[BruceB]

My case-cleaning routine is inter-related to the way I load most of my ammo. There are NO intermediate pauses in production when I sit down to my turret press (or Dillon 550, for that matter). I do not do processes on batches of brass.

All brass arriving home from the range is tumbled in 1/8"-size feed-store corncob with some Turtle Wax Scratch and Swirl Remover added. Only very rarely does any corncob stay in the case, even in the .22-calibers. This is most likely because the Midway rotary sifter, if operated properly, allows a rather vigorous (and NOISY) cascading action of the brass which dislodges virtually all of the corncob in all the cases. This regime results in brilliantly-shiny cases with a microscopic wax coating. These are easy to inspect for flaws, and also don't tarnish even in long storage.

Each case is picked up and inspected before being placed in the press, but once it's in there it STAYS in the press until it's fully loaded. I have discontinued un-necessary frills such as cleaning primer pockets, which I have PROVEN to my satisfaction to be un-needed for my purposes (except for cases used with blackpowder).

So....I only really need to know that the flash-hole of my lovely shiny case is positively cleared of tumbling debris, and the decapping pin does that without fail. Beyond that, I don't worry about it. The cases are lubed with Midway pump-bottle lube and each round is wiped clean manually and inspected before being placed in a box. That's all, folks!

(Ooops...did I get into the wrong thread here?? I sure like this "edit" feature.)