New .44 caliber Brooks mold.

[Distant Thunder]

When started casting again things went much better and the bullets were not too bad looking. I cast about 65 bullets and weighed them. The first 5 I kept were light at 511 grains and then they settled in at 512 up to 513+ with a few at 514+. This is a lot more spread than I’m used to, but it is a start. The bullets I cast today were with the mold set to the maximum length, 1.450”-ish.

I was impressed with how easy the mold filled and I only had few that had bases that didn’t fill out completely as I first started casting again. The bullets drop from the mold when it’s opened as I give the hinge bolt a tap with a light dead blow hammer. Casting, once the mold was hot, was fast and easy. It is a heavy mold and it does not get lighter with use.

The patches I had cut are .930” wide and with the bullet being that long I would really need 1.000” wide patches to have a comfortable folder over. I wrapped one with my 8 lb. Staedtler sketch paper and ran it through my size die just to see how it would fit in the bore of my .44-77. It went through the size die very easy. It slid into the bore with some light resistance and pushed through to the muzzle easily, almost a little too easy I think.

So I wrapped another with my 9 lb. Paper Mill paper and ran it through my size die. It was a good push through the die but not hard. Then I pushed it into the bore and through. It was a bit tighter and pushed a bit harder toward the muzzle. The barrel seems to have a slight bit of choke to it.

It looks like both papers could work so I’ll test to see which is best. Any shooting will have to for awhile yet, but at least I have an idea how the mold will cast and what patches I will need.

[Distant Thunder]

I had some time today to shoot some of the bullets I cast Saturday. It wasn’t perhaps the best day for load testing with gusty 12 to 15 mph left to right wind and every once in awhile it would switch and come from 2 o’clock. That caught me once on shot #9. Except for that one shot the rest held less than 1 ½” vertical.

Not knowing exactly where to start my load development and not having the time to test 3 shot groups I just pulled the bullets from some loads left over from matches this past summer and seated these Brooks bullets in their place. They didn’t shoot too bad and with less wind would probably group near 1 MOA.

This first group is very encouraging and it shows that when my .44-77 is happy with a load it will do well with almost any pp bullet seated over it. There is still a lot of load testing and development to do but I think this bullet is going to do well for me.

As I have been doing with this .44-77 when I’m just at home shooting and testing for fouling control I used 3 breaths through my blow tube followed by one wet patch and one dry patch, load and shoot. It works good at home when I’m not on the clock. That way there are no bore pigs to clean.

[J.B.]

Looking mighty respectable there Jim and 86 grns should have it moving over the 1300 fps mark. I'm really looking forward to firing a shot again. Havent bent a primer since June !
rgds.. Gavin.

[Distant Thunder]

My last match this year was in August and yesterday was the first time I did any shooting with one of my single shots since then. That 2 shortened match shooting seasons in a row and I don't like it much.

I really enjoy just shooting my .44 and especially with the scope on it. Right from the beginning the rifle has responded every time I turn the knobs. That shows me thatit is not just throw bullets at random. As I plot each group I can see then the center of the group will move around with the conditions, but remains tight as I plot each consecutive 3 shiot group within the larger 10 shot groups. This makes it much easier to adjust for conditions while trying to hold on to the center of the target. That, I find find is a lot of fun!

I'm looking forward to working with this Brooks bullet and seeing what this old design is capable of.

[Distant Thunder]

I posted this information on the Shiloh forum under the 2021 200 yard postal match thread but I don't know if everyone who may be interested will see it there so I decided to post it here as well.

I was able to get out and do some shooting yesterday with this new Brooks bullet. These loads were the same as my first 2 targets a bit earlier this month. These were the last of my loads left over from last summer, I simply pulled the other PP bullets and seated these 512 grain bullets from my new Brooks adjustable PP mold. I had some concerns about the cupped base in this mold but these targets do show promise and a consistency that make me a little less concerned. Steve Brooks did make a flat base screw for this mold and I will do testing with it in time.

The only difference between these two loads was in the paper I used to wrap the bullets. Group #3 they were wrapped with my old standby, the 9 lb. 100% cotton paper that is no longer made by THE PAPER MILL. Group #4 were wrapped with Staedtler 8 lb. Tracing Paper. Both were run through my custom push through sizing die which brings them down to a push fit in the bore of my rifle. Because the 9 lb. is thicker, .002”, they fit tighter in the bore even after sizing than the 8 lb. paper (.0015”) which after sizing is an easy push into the bore. I was interested in seeing if one paper/fit had an advantage over the other. This is only two groups and doesn’t prove anything, but it does show that both papers will work.

The mold was ordered at .434” diameter to be used with the Staedtler Tracing Paper and I’m pleased that it did well.

The wind yesterday was at 9 mph from 10 o’clock with some occasional squirrely swirls running through and a few reversals so I had to watch my one wind flag pretty close. If I broke a shot with the flag slack or when it was dropping off it would go about an 1 to 1 ½ inches left of were I was sighted. I actually sighted in at the right edge of the 1” circle knowing that the letups would pull me left and I was working hard to keep all my shots inside the 3” circle, which I did not quite manage to do.

Temps were 36-37 degrees and humidity was 65 to 62%. The wind was at 9 mph from 10 o'clock and pretty steady with the usual squirrels thrown in and a reverse or two just to keep it interesting. The let ups were hard to avoid.

[45-110]

Curious as to how the .060 poly wad and the cup base work in unison. Surely the blast must force the disc into the cavity then does it pop out in flight? All my old Tom Ballard molds where cup base and more than once I retrieved a few out of the berm that had pieces of the veggie wad jammed in the base after traveling 600 yds.
kw

[Distant Thunder]

45-110,

That is why I ordered this mold with a flat base, I'm a fan of the LDPE wads and I have hard time seeing in my mind how it doesn't push into the cavity. The cavity that Brooks cut for this mold is fairly shallow or I would have machined it flat before casting a single bullet. Being the ODGs used cupped base bullets and I'm always interested in what they used and how they got it to work I decided to cast a few while waiting for Brooks to make a flat base for this mold. He insisted on making it for no charge because I had ordered a flat base with the mold. Very good of him I think.

Well the mold casts very nice and easy with the cupped base once I get it hot, it's no small mold. The sprue hole is rather small, but it fills super easy. The first batch of bullets looked good enough to try and being short on time as I said, I just pulled the bullets from old loads and seated these new bullets in their place. I patched one and ran it into my size die and it zipped right through with barely any effort! I pushed it up into the bore and it went in pretty easily, a bit easier than I usually like but not bad.

After shooting the first few targets with my thicker paper I thought I would see how the thinner paper would compare. There's some old guy on here that claims the .44-77 really likes thinner paper. My #4 target makes it hard to argue with him. It's only one target but it did look good to me.

So for now I will continue to work with the cupped base version and see how it goes. I will also work with the flat base at some point down the line, but hey this is working.

I was worried that the poly wad would push into the base cavity and functionally be too small to seal behind the bullet. That would likely lead very badly, but there has been no evidence of any problems so far.

If the wads were sticking to the base I’m pretty sure that would have showed up on the target as flyers. I have had a few of what I call outliers, shots that are just a little out of the main group with no discernable cause, but no flyers as in shots that are wild and randomly well outside the group 1 moa or more.

The patches from both papers are all well shredded and laying 3 to 5 feet in front of the muzzle which is 5 feet off the ground when I’m shooting out of my shooting shack. So patches are separating cleanly and quickly. With the patches folded over the base and between the wad and the bullet I think it would be pretty hard for the wad not to be pulled off by the patch when it separates.

I do plan to experiment with some different wad combinations and I’ll see if any problems show up then. So far so good!

[45-110]

Well the targets look fine, so the cup base in this case maybe a non issue for you. Amazing to think about it, the poly wad deformation being blasted into a partial hemisphere. You surely would think all bore sealing would be lost and hence leading would occur. Hard to understand the dynamics involved.
Good job on your loads.
kw

[Distant Thunder]

45-110,

Yes, I am 100% with you on this, cupping the wad can't be good and would almost certainly cause problems. Since no problems have been observed in 50 rounds I have to conclude that what we think should be happening in regards to cupping the wad is indeed not happening. I will attempt to recover a wad or three and see if they can tell us anything. We are all just learning here and for me that is an important part of the fun. If I had all the answers I’m not sure BPCR would hold my interest as long as it has, 30 years now.

Thank you for your replys.

[Kurt]

Jim,

Those groups are looking good with just a starting load.
I used to swage bullets and I still have the Corbin tools, both Corbins.
Most of those dies were cup based as well as flat base and man I looked at a lot of snow bank bullets to see what goes on with different ways to load and alloy that works best.
The thing with cup and dish base bullets, dish base do perform better than the cup base.
One thing to keep in mind is that the larger the diameter the more critical it is to use a thicker and harder wad as the diameter's increases. The .50 caliber that I used to shoot the most was a big problem shooting a cup based bullet even tucking the tail into the cup but the skirt was fragile and it created a problem with the lube getting pushed past the wad under the bullet and the lube would glue the patch folded under or twisted, especially just folded under and the patch would ride down range with the bullet.
But it also created another problem. The soft skirt using a hard .06 wad under the bullet would just the thin skirt wall forward creating wrinkles that would trap the patch onto the shank and carried down range. This was more of a problem when I used to wet patch the bullets then dry patching.
Here are some of the .50 caliber I still have a photo of. Notice the wrinkles and one had a gas leak.
With the smaller diameters bullets this will usually not be a problem with a good wad. Surprising a .06 cork wad under the bullet worked well protecting the skirt and I never found one in the test bank at 100 yards down range more was a patch stuck to the base.
But cork wads can create other issues.
I also tested these cup based bullets without using a wad seating the bullet right on the powder would work well but the finer 3F would make less granual impressions on the base then the 1F but groups held tight.