Just another mould..or two.

[Distant Thunder]

J.B.,

I'm with you on the coffee, brother! It's proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy!

I have resisted the under the powder wads until now. With very good shooters using them and having better result than without I had to have a look. I am probably way early in even mentioning it because it was only one group of 3 shots at 200 yards, not what you would call a big sample size. The group impressed me enough to make me want to try it again and I will. So you can see for yourself I will make an effort to attach a picture of that group here. If I said I broke number 3 to the left about an inch you would understand why this group got my attention!

I've been doing this long enough to know it isn't likely going to repeat in another 3 shot group and much less so in a 10 shot group and then in multiple 10 shot groups, but I remain interested in seeing what the next group brings.

In a 19 twist .44 caliber at about 1300 fps your maximum length for optimum stability is 1.320". Longer may be fine most of the time, but if the wind she a blowin' look out! The profile of the bullet plays into the equation also but I have NO idea how to calculate that part. I can only say that a shorter ogive is better than a longer one and less pointed is better than more.

As to giving up powder space with two wads instead of one I can only say that for me the sweet spot for powder charge in .44 and .45 caliber has been around 80 to 85 grains. That is where I have been the happiest. The .44-77 with a bore diameter paper patch bullet has almost too much room for powder, at least for me.

While we are talking about powder capacity, another thing that surprised me with these loads I shot yesterday was that the amount of fouling I pushed out the barrel after each shot was noticeably less than I have seen from this rifle at any time before. Was it the 82 grains with only 1/16” compression? Or was it the new lot of powder? I don’t yet know but there was not the big pile of black gunk that has always been there before! Just grey smudge mostly. That was very interesting.

At matches I use my bore pigs soaked with my oil and water mix because they do an excellent job but also because they are so fast and get me back in the rifle ready for the next shot much more quickly.

When I’m shooting groups here at home I have been first using my blow tube for 3 or 4 breathes and then I run a damp patch through and follow with a dry patch. The dry patches I collect and reuse as wet patches later. This saves me having to wash out my bore pigs and saves on patches in general. Time is not that important when I’m off the clock.

The fouling was so light I started thinking about blow tubing and then just running a dry patch, but I didn’t want that experiment to affect my load testing so I left well enough alone.

All in all yesterday was an interesting day of shooting and it left me with more questions than answers, but it also left me very hopeful.