After loading up the 100 BACO cases with a mix of black powder from pulled ammo and a mix of prime also from pulled ammo I had just a little time this afternoon between family doings to fire 40 of them, well 39 one of the primer was junk and it didn't fire.
I also need to mention that I had change out my scope bases to some .250" taller because the hammer was too close to the scope at the lower setting. So my sight settings needed to start over again somewhat.
I started at 100 yards and had about a 2" group going for 4 shots with my fireform loads and then one shot jumped way over to the right and the next to the left. WTF? Things didn't get much better from there. Then I grabbed the rear scope mount to check if anything was loose and it was as wobbly as could be. The clamp screw was over a turn loosened. I tightened that down again and having an idea where it was at 100 yards I moved to 200 meters. There I had a full size turkey standing so it could not be knocked down. Also a 10" round gong and a 12" square gong. I hit the turkey on the first shot and continued to pound him pretty good until it got hard to tell where the last hit was. I moved to the 12" square and after 5 shots that was on the ground and had enough. On to the 10" round and there I tired to shoot a group just for grins. I don't remember if it was 7 or 8 shots but they were all in about 5". Pretty good for loads that were just scooped and dumped, bullets not weighed and in fact some were pretty ugly and wrinkled, but looked good enough after patching. The shooting improved noticeably better when I switched from the Goex Express (pulled) and moved to the loads that used new 3f Goex.
Even at only 78 grains of 3f it was pretty zippy, getting to 200m fast! It was fun to hit what I was aiming at and I am really impressed with the BACO cases. They start out much closer to actual chamber size than the JBA cases and I think that helped with the accuracy such as it was.
This picture is of before and after fireforming and there is only a slight difference in size with the shoulder much closer to it's actual location. In fact I had to push the shoulders back just a bit for them to fit my chamber. With the JBA cases they are more like a overgrown .40-65 before fireforming with not near so distinct of a shoulder which is very low on the cases.
I'll clean these cases and check the neck OD and ID and see where that is at. Even if a little thick it doesn't hurt anything while I'm shooting bore diameter PPB. If tight, I'll have to turn the necks when I move to a 2-diameter PPB.
I have 61 cases to fireform yet, I put a new primer in the misfired case, and then I can work on a good load for the match coming up the 25th of July. After today it looks pretty doable.
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Development of PP loads for the .44-77.
