.38-50 Hepburn

[Kurt]

Arnie,

FedX came this morning and dropped off a big envelope from BA.
It took a while to get it. I called last week and asked if Jim had the order or if there was a problem with the print and talking to the fellow on the other end I sent him the second print incase the first got lost and he said I will check on it and call you back. A day later I got a call and Dave was on the other side and he asked if I still wanted the mould, you bet I said I paid for it. well we chatted for a while and he said I will get shipped in the morning. Two days later I had it. He must have been on the delivery pushing his foot on the drivers foot.

Arnie I patched the bullet and checked how it fits the freebore, PERFECT!! With it seated in the case .100" the taper is snug compressing the paper slightly.
The weight with the alloy of the sample bullet I suspect is most likely 1/20 or 1/30 from the way the cut sprue looks on the bullet base is 359.3 gr
length is a little shorter than the print at 1.418"
The DD is .259" before the 3º taper.
From the base to the breach face it's in the chamber 2.101", this gives me a good hold in the case mouth .100".
Jim marked the mould the Jim 371-359E.
The pot is heating and I have 21 ladder loads loaded ready for the morning test
TNX for your help drawing up that print. Now the rest is up to me.

Kurt

[beltfed]

Kurt,
JUST WOW!!1
Looks good enough to shoooooooooooooootttttttttttttttttt!!!
Now eagerly awaiting for the ladder test reports
Arnie

[J.B.]

That's one very tidy looking bullet Kurt. We wait anxiously for some feedback on its performance. I've ordered some moulds through BACo recently and they delivered an amazing turn around time. The mould of course is
perfect and the bullets...almost..but not quite.. 'just step out of the blocks' on opening. Mind you Steve B, Kal and Accurate deliver at their word too and I've never had issues with any of them. The time from submitting a diagram to BACo to opening the parcel on my kitchen bench was 15 days in total ! Think the pedal was 'to the metal' that time too. Great service.. great product. Time for another I do believe.

J.B.

[Kurt]

Arnie,

They look very good. I like blunter .100" hemi nose over the 371-345 bullet and the shorter ogive of this bullet.
The longer DD base with the bullet seated .100" in the case makes it a perfect fit in that long freebore this chamber has. It pushes easy till the rim is just entering into the rim recess and a firm push or the little taper rim on the case has it closes easy.
I have 21 3 shot ladder loads of 2F OE from zero compression at 60 gr to a full case with 66 gr plus some loads to play with loaded with 1.5 KIK powder. Those loads on the left need another firing. They have only been shot once and the patched bullet is a tight fit with only one shot forming besides the corn meal blank.
Now lets see what I can comeup with being the buttplate with this powder load.

Gavin,

This mould I ordered on Friday Jan 28 and it was took the longest time to get it from any of the moulds that they have build for me. I think the order was just misplaced, Just something that happens now and then.

Yup, it's a tidy little thing I cast 150 of those and still had a lot of alloy in the pot

[Semtav]

Kurt, et al,

I notice a little wrinkling of the patch just above the case mouth on your picture. Do you think that affects the accuracy any ? I see that on some of my DD patched bullets and try to get away from it. Only reason I would consider wet patching like Kenny etc is in case that gets rid of that wrinkle.
Brian

[Kurt]

Brian,

I don't think it will. That bullet above is just in the case with no powder. It's a very tight fit in the case mouth and I just had it seated enough so I could chamber it and it was seated the rest of the way with thumb pressure to give me a rough idea if the long .250" DD base would fit the long freebore.
That patch got pushed forward in the tight neck when I seated the shell.
But even with the wrinkle I don't think it makes any difference.
With these DD bullets there is a void just ahead of the taper going to a smaller diameter that loosens up.
I used to wet patch in the past but I abandoned it when I found patches on the plywood target backer 200 yards down range.

Kurt

[Kurt]

Ladder test with the 371-359-E

I had three shots each starting with 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, and 66 grains on 2F OE using the 359-E bullet shot at 200 yards. Wind was up a little from the 11 O-clock at 14 to 19 mph max on my wind meter.
This is what could have caused some of the nagging verticals ??? but all in all this bullet is going to work.
All of the loads except the 60 and 64 gr loads I think are looking pretty good. I have no idea why the 60 and 64 grain loads strung out like that.

Round two will be using 1.5 Swiss. I don't have much left of that but I want to see what the difference will be using it.

The bottom center target I shot blowing out once fired .303 British cases that are .043" shorter than the .30-40 Krag cases with 62 grains of 2F OE just dropped from the Redding powder drop with the 359-E bullet I must say the 3/10's variances in powder drops it's not bad at all The 4 KIK loads with the 371-345-E below the first two shots were way low but the two following almost printed touching.

Arnie if your reading this,

I finally found a pretty much undamaged 371-345-E DD.
It really makes me scratch my head with the on off good bad results it shoots in this large freebore chamber. The alloy is good, good obturation right to the edge of the shank/ogive line, no gas cuts or base fins but it's very unpredictable.

Kurt

[ian45662]

I know you must be excited to finally get that mould in your hands and start shooting it. I am going to do some more testing on paper tomorrow. I was going to shoot it at some sillywets but the wife wants to put it on paper so that’s what we will do.

[Kurt]

Ian,

When I opened the box and looked at it I went down in the basement and plugged the lead pot in. When it finally got up to temp I started casting and did not stop till I had 152 cast and after supper I had them patched and loaded before bed time.

[beltfed]

Well, finally got warm enough yesterday to do a bit of load testing in my 38-50/10 twist. Temps 44 rising to 51 as I shot from 3 to 5pm.
I did a latter test for Jim Ruch with his 16+1 Accurate 37-287D bullets.
with reference groups with my own 371360E bullet.
Best group pic2553 with the 37-287D was with 64 grains of Swiss 1.5 .
shot number one was the low shot in the diamond. the final 4 formed a really nice sub-minute group
The lighter loads tested were with 61 and 63 grains. Seemed to be double grouping
vertically with them. But still close to a minute.
The reference 3 shot warm up group pic2550 is with 64.5 gr of same Swiss 1.5 lot. under the 371360E.
Arnie