Badger: pawloads and mortar fire control

[meles meles]

Well oomanses, we were at Catton again this weekend. The weather was splendiferous and we had the added benefit of free viewing of the Spitfire and sundry other fantastic flying machines as they used Catton Hall as their IP for their final run in for displays at the nearby National Memorial Arboretum.

We were testing out our pawloads at 325 mards. These have been gradually developing over the last few months following some excellent advice and tuition from Dromia and Dodgytog of this parish. We have tried some cast boolits of varying shape and size, with and without gas checks, to feed to our Mosin and Long Lee. We've finally settled upon some 182 grain, .312" inch round nose cast bullets that the slugs trained to crawl through the bores with micrometers suggested would be good for our guns. We had previously worked out a set of loads of Alliant 2400 starting at 16 grains and working up to almost 19.5 grains and discovered that loads around 18.5 grains seemed to particularly suit the Long Lee. We built up a total of 50 rounds covering 18.4, 18.5 and 18.6 grains and test fired them this weekend. All worked well, with the 18.5 gn loads just having the edge. We'll settle on that for our load in the Long lee from now on.

We 'as to confess to feeling a ikkle bit smug repeatedly clanging a 12" steel gong at 325 mards using iron sights on the Long Lee whilst some nearby oomans frequently missed it with their TRG42 / Nightforce Astronomer combinations...

Later in the afternoon we acted as MFC for a ooman who engaged the 325 mard target with a fine underlever chambered in 45-70 Govt. Those rounds too were firing light loads and had a trajectory like a banana, which we, by virtue of a low sun and our Optolyth spotting scope, could see whistling towards their target. We were able to walk them onto the gong just like we were correcting for a mortar...

[WelshShooter]

Interesting tale ol' chap. Please tell us which Mosina you fed the heavy lead diet to, as I thought the Suomi would much prefer a slightly skinnier boolit (as the Finn's didn't care for the fatties so much). I'd ask if you chrono'd your rounds but I'm assuming you would have scribed this in your diary entry.

In terms of the smugness, it does often feel good when you know what a rifle likes and also where to set your sights at to get a hit. I always smile hitting a Fig11's at 500 mards plus with any of the milsurps!

Thanks for the write up!

[meles meles]

These loads were just for the Lee, we 'aven't yet finalised the Mosin load. Our first Mosin load will be for our Russki Tula, which has a big bore. The Suomi is a thin bore, so we might even be looking at .308 bullets for that.

The sights on the Lee need to be set at a fraction over 600 yards to be accurate at 300 with our pawload but we can cope with that.

One thing we noticed tonight when decapping and resizing the fired brass was that it took a lot more effort on the press pawdle to re-size them. Initially they were Kynamco full fat loads and resized easily. This time around they need a good stout pull to get the mandrel through the necks (we're full length sizing with lubricant and Lee dies)

[bradaz11]

is there any reason for the range being 325 yards? seems an odd distance, or does it relate to something else?

[WelshShooter]

Your brass may not have been fully obturation in the chamber, which would leave the fired size smaller than normal. Are the case neck exteriors dirty or relatively clean?

So long as the boolit remains supersonic at that distance it should be pretty accurate.

PS how long will it take old blighty to give you a good tip - carefully remove the ball expander from your die, put it on the ground, douse it with holy water and proceed to smite that demonic invention as it's a sin to mortal man.

[meles meles]

It's the distance Carl set the target at. It's related to the size of the bean field, the angle from the firing point and the need to create a safe backstop.

[meles meles]

Your brass may not have been fully obturation in the chamber, which would leave the fired size smaller than normal. Are the case neck exteriors dirty or relatively clean?

So long as the boolit remains supersonic at that distance it should be pretty accurate.

PS how long will it take old blighty to give you a good tip - carefully remove the ball expander from your die, put it on the ground, douse it with holy water and proceed to smite that demonic invention as it's a sin to mortal man.

The cases were nice and clean, no sign of soot. We were assuming that the lower power load hadn't fully expanded them, hence the mandrel was having to work harder to pass through them.

Should we just chuck the mandrel away then ?

[WelshShooter]

Measure the case neck difference between firing and resizing with mandrel, and resizing it after mandrel. If the mandrel is opening up the case necks by a significant amount then don't bother with the mandrel since you'll be over working the brass.

At the moment, I haven't got around to trialling this out just yet, but that's the theory which I'm sure Dromia will reiterate.

[dromia]

If by "mandrel" you mean the expander plug decapping rod on FL sizing dies they are indeed an abomination, the work of the devil and should destroyed on sight, they ruin brass quicker than cleaning with stainless steel pins.

Replace with an ordinary decapping rod.

Neck expansion especially for lead bullets should be done with a Lyman "M" style two step expander, never use a tapered expander like the Lee. Fine expander plugs can be obtained from NOE at a very friendly price and fit the Lee "Universal" expander body after you have thrown away the Lee tapered plugs.

This way you can exactly control the case neck tension on the bullets, avoid bullet deformation and sizing down along with helping to ensure a squarely seated bullet concentric with the case and the bore.

[TomH]

Neck expansion especially for lead bullets should be done with a Lyman "M" style two step expander, never use a tapered expander like the Lee. Fine expander plugs can be obtained from NOE at a very friendly price and fit the Lee "Universal" expander body after you have thrown away the Lee tapered plugs.

These I presume: http://noebulletmolds.com/NV/index.php? ... d7stjkv1j5

A small price to pay if it increases case life methinks.