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The Journal of Ammunition Reloading Handloader Number 136

Volume 23, Number 6 ISSN 0017-7393 November-December 1988

Page 23 . .

Page 2 9 . . .

FEATURES A New Look at the .350 Remington Magnum New powders and a long action boost performance. The .22 PPC (Pet Loads) Waters does his magic on Palmisano’s brainchild.

The 6.5 JDJ My kind of Contender cartridge.

Loading Federal’s Top Gun Hull How to stuff this long-life, less expensive hull. Accumulated Tumbling Media Residue If you tumble cases, avoid this dangerous condition.

Right-Hand Twist for the .45 ACP Does the direction of twist make a difference?

Lee Bullet Moulds How they make those inexpensive casting moulds.

New Ideas for the Old ’06 Part 1 Testing a fresh crop of powders in the venerable cartridge.

by Gil Sengel

by Ken Waters

by Layae Simpson

by Wallace Labisky

by Steve Timm

by Tom Donovan

by Ron Carmichael

by Don Zutz

16 20 24 26 30 32 34 3 7 DEPARTMENTS

Reloader’s Press by Tom Gresham Highly Variable Powder Lots, Custom Bullets in Factory Ammo. Reader Bylines Handgun Hokum, Askins Agrees, Outlaw Handgun Hunting, Miller Old Fashioned? Capitol Watch by Neal Knox

4 6 8 Critical Victory.

Benchtopics 10 The Firing Pin. by Layne Simpson

Aiming for Answers Which Bullets for a Bolo?, Reduced Hornet Loads, Bulged .44 Special Cases. 12 Wildcat Cartridges

Product 81 Service News Information you can write for.

14 The 6mm SM Wasp.

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by Ken Waters

ProducTests Sako Handy and Carbine, Smith & Wesson Model 745, Maki X-Spand Targets. Book Reviews

Propellant Profiles by Bob Hagel

61 68 Cartridge and Chamber Drawings.

70 Hodgdon HP-38. Index Handloader articles and columns of 1988. 69

COPYRlCHT WOLFE PUBLISHING CO. 1988

On the cover.. . In furthering our coverage of the new rifles and revolvers from Ruger (our report on them in Rifle No. 118 was the first published news) we show current offerings and a promise of things to come. At top is the new Model 77/22 with barrel and action of stainless steel and a synthetic stock. It is wearing a Tasco scope of polished aluminum to match the rifle’s finish. The huge blue wax receiver is for the new Ruger Magnum action which will be chambered for the .375 H&H and .416 Rigby initially, with other large cartridges likely to follow. Below that, the small action Model 77, dubbed the Mark 11, is chambered in .223 Remington. Ruger plans to chamber this action for the .22 PPC and the 6mm PPC. The SP 101 revolver, currently a five-shot .38 Special, will also be chambered as a six-shot .32 H&R Magnum and six-shot .22 rimfire. Photo by Dave Culver.

November-December 1988 3

BENCHTOPICS Layne Simpson

The Firing Pin NY TIME TWO or more shooters A start to discuss what determines

the inherent accuracy of a rifle, the main topics of conversation surely will include such things as barrel quality, bedding materials and techniques, and the degree of concentricity among its bolt, receiver and barrel. If it is a custom target rifle the level of talent and skill possessed by the chap who built the rifle likely will be mentioned before everybody goes home. I have been in on many such discussions but don’t recall ever hearing anyone men- tion the influence a firing pin can have on rifle performance.

Until a couple of years ago, had I put together a list of all those things held important in our pursuit of accuracy in a rifle, it would never have dawned on me to include its firing pin. After all, as long as the skinny little piece of metal strikes a primer with enough force to make things go bang, little else needs to be said of the lowly firing pin in a rifle, right? Three rifles I have worked with during the past couple of years have opened my eyes to just how important the amount of force a firing pin delivers is. I’ll begin with the rifle that was the most challenging.

Sometime back a manufacturer sent me a prototype rifle in 2 2 centerfire to play with and asked for my comments on its performance. Through the years. I had worked with enough of that par- ticular company’s rifles to know that, typically, they are real zingers in the accuracy department. So, I mounted a 36x Bausch and Lomb on the rifle, gathered up my reloading gear and a supply of Ed Watson’s wonderfully ac- curate benchrest bullets and headed to the range. True to form, the handsome little varmint rifle was a real tack- driver, with five-shot groups consis- tently averaging less than half an inch at 100 yards.

As often happens when I’m at the range with a superbly accurate rifle, I picked out the load it liked best and commenced to shoot the daylights out of it at 100,200 and 300 yards. The rifle responded to the bangfest by shooting increasingly smaller aggregates as the

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day wore on. About the time I had con- vinced myself that the rifle maker had yet another winner about to be in- troduced, groups started opening up by an alarming degree. From that point on, the more I shot, the more accuracy deteriorated, with the rifle eventually spraying bullets all over the paper like a garden hose. Bore fouling was first to be ruled out as a possible gremlin because I had thoroughly cleaned the barrel every dozen rounds or so. Then I checked all screws in the rifle and scope mount, finding them snug as a bug.

As I sat there with a puzzled look on my face, I noticed something a bit unusual about the average velocity each five-shot string had clocked on Uncle Ken’s Model 33. In matching up the series of bragging size groups with their average velocity, I found that velocity was what can be expected from the load I was using, and velocity spread and standard deviation were quite acceptable. Then I noticed a pat- tern developing on the paper in front of me; as accuracy decreased to lower and lower levels, velocity decreased along with it. In addition, standard deviation and velocity spread increased as velocity and accuracy decreased. Keep in mind now, through this entire exercise I was using the same load.

Finally, as accuracy and velocity were at their lowest, and velocity spread and standard deviation were a t their highest, the rifle started mis- firing on an occasional round and then suddenly stopped shooting at all. In other words, when I chambered a round, closed the bolt, and squeezed the trigger, nothing happened. Upon ejecting a cartridge from the rifle, I noticed that its primer was only slightly indented by the firing pin. As I drove home from the range, two possibilities were on my mind: either headspace had increased due to a loose barrel (highly unlikely) or improperly heat-treated locking lugs had set back (quite possible in a prototype rifle).

Back home, I lay the rifle atop my workbench and gave it a thorough go- ing over. Headspace checked out right

on the money. Then, as I carefully ex- amined the bolt, the gremlin emerged from the woodpile. Here’s what had happened:

The cocking piece and firing pin on the rifle were held together by a screw that had vibrated loose after I had fired the rifle for several hours. As the screw backed farther and farther out, it allowed the firing pin to move forward by the same amount. This served to decrease tension on the firing pin spring, and it also shortened the fall of the firing pin. In other words, as the screw backed out, firing pin travel and velocity began to decrease until even- tually the blow on the primer was in- sufficient to light its fire.

Now, the fact that too light a firing pin blow can fail to ignite primers is not exactly spot news among shooters, but what I did find to be most in- teresting during a second trip to the range was my ability to dial in predict- able levels of both accuracy and velocity with a screwdriver. With the cocking piece screw tight, the rifle once again averaged less than M MOA and velocity with the 52-grain Watson averaged 3,400 fps. Backing the screw out one full turn caused accuracy and velocity to drop to .85O-inch and 3,349 fps, respectively. Backing the screw out still farther, to a point just short of failure to ignite primers, booted ac- curacy to four inches, and velocity dropped to 3,184 fps. In other words, with the firing pin adjusted to deliver a minimum blow required to ignite primers dependably, accuracy deteri- orated by more than 800 percent, and velocity decreased by around 7 percent, as compared to what the same load would do in the rifle when the firing pin was adjusted to deliver its max- imum blow.

In case you’re interested, this little story does have a happy ending. I reported my findings to the manufac- turer, a design modification was made to correct the problem, and the rifle has gone on to find fame and fortune.

Two other rifles have shown me the same light, but in another way. One belongs to a deer hunting pal who in-

Handloader 136

formed me that the accuracy of his rifle had gone sour and a local gunsmith had recommended a new barrel. This struck me as rather strange since he had fired less than 300 rounds in the rifle. In addition to the accuracy prob- lem, he also mentioned that the rifle had misfired on two occasions, both on December days with the temperature well below freezing.

After finding nothing wrong with the bedding of my friend's rifle, I disas- sembled its bolt and was greeted by a mass of rust that probably once resembled a firing pin and its spring. The chap hunts come rain or shine on the coast of South Carolina where the saline content of the air is always high. I also suspect the rifle may have suf- fered from a dunking or two in a stream. At any rate, he obviously had never thought about what all the water might be doing to the innards of his bolt, otherwise he would have taken it apart and cleaned it a t least once each year. A wad of steel wool attached to a section of cleaning rod chucked into an electric drill cleaned out the inside of the bolt body, but the spring and fir- ing pin had to be replaced. The rifle now shoots as well as it ever has.

The third rifle was a custom job I had built for competitive shooting. The action was what a used car dealer might describe as previously owned, but everything seemed to be in work- ing order. In fact, everything about the entire rifle was top quality, but despite the best of my efforts it simply refused to shoot the tiny groups expected of it. Finally, I decided to take a peek inside its bolt.

Somewhere down the line, a gun- smith had performed various accuracy tricks on the action, including replace- ment of its original firing pin spring with a custom spring. The replacement spring was a bit larger in diameter and was scrubbing so hard against one side of the bolt body, small flats had already worn into the outer surfaces of several of its coils. I replaced the custom spring with an original factory spring and the rifle immediately shot like a house afire. Apparently, heavy friction be- tween one side of the spring and the bolt body caused the striking force to vary from shot to shot.

Once, while a friend of mine was com- plaining about the low velocity he was getting from a particular factory load, I jokingly remarked that he probably wasn't pulling the trigger hard enough. It could very well be that I had something there and really didn't know it. 0

November-December 1988

At RCIBS, we'w made custom dies for eve- fmm a 17 Bumble Bee to a 577-500 Mag- num Nitm Expm. Owr 3,lOO d&mt custom caliber dies in all.

And emy year that number grclws as we receive requests for one wildcat caliber or another

why all the fuss w r custom die makmg? It's just one m p l e of our on-going commit-

ment to the serious reloader The kind of commitment you'd expect fmm the people who pioneered the art of reloading.

Need a custom doadmg or case foming die? Call RCBS. Chances m, we already haw the too& to make what you want If not, we'll &dly giw it our best shot

For orders or infomation, call ton-& 1-800-m-5000.

Your Shooting h e r CCI, Speer, RCI3S. Outers &Weaver

For a 1988full line catalq, send $2 OOforposiaxe and handing lo

Attention Spr ing f ie ld Enthus iasts

SPRINGFIELD ARMORY A historical overview Woodworking and t h e stockers

Manufacturing methods Little kinks and devices

By special arrangement with the Society for Industrial Archeologists, Wolfe Puhlishing Company has acquired a limited number o f their special issue journal devoted entirely to the Springfield Armory.

The issue is perfect hound with 80 pages and over 60 photos. Offered at $12.00 each, plus $2.00 shipping and handling(1imited supply). This is an extraordinary treatise on the Armory. MusterCurd and VISA uccepted.

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Accumulated Tumbling Media Residue..

A Potential Disaster Steve Timm

HE “PROBLEM-CHILD” was a T Kimber Model 84 in .17 Mach IV. The owner had shot it for awhile with complete satisfaction. Suddenly, the ac- curacy failed and the rifle started to ex- hibit intermittent pressure-excursions. Two or three rounds would fire nor- mally; the next would freeze the bolt or blow the primer. Wisely, the owner substantially reduced his loads. The rifle still was grossly inaccurate and the pressure-excursions continued, only to a lesser degree. At this point, the rifle was sent back to the Kimber factory and it was our problem.

I’m Kimber’s resident gun nut and handloading consultant. I don’t work fir the Kimber folks; I work with them, just for fun. If a rifle is sent to Kimber with an accuracy or loading problem, I’m the one who tests it first. If the problem is beyond proper handloading or shooting skills, the Kimber warranty department does whatever necessary to cure it. In this case, I normally retest the firearm upon completion of repair. I enjoy helping the guys at Kimber, and I get to do a lot of shooting and handloading. The best part about my unpaid job at Kimber is that it gives me a unique opportunity to learn. Now, back to the errant .17 Mach IV.

The owner sent some of his brass along with the rifle. The cases were properly formed and the necks were turned. Obviously, he was a handloader with some degree of sophistication. The hulls were a sad-looking lot with pierced and flattened primers, greatly expanded bases and incipient case- head separations. All-in-all, the cases were prime candidates for Federal Disaster Aid.

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I opted to use my own cases and headed for the range. The rifle proved to be an accurate shooter and showed no pressure-excursion problems. I shot several loads of H-322 and H-335 behind the Hornady 25-grainer. No load shot over 1.5 MOA, and several ap- proached .75 MOA. I left the range with the opinion that our problem- child shot just a tad better than my own .17 Mach IV - and mine is one fine shootin’ rifle.

So what was the problem? Back at Kimber, we discovered large amounts of tumbling media residue caked inside some of the cases. The accumulated residue reduced the capacity of the minuscule Mach IV cases dramatically. I don’t even want to guess at the resul- tant chamber pressures - it’s enough to give you a cold sweat.

In this case, the media residue tended to build up in the shoulder area and ex- tended about ‘/8 inch down the case wall. The residue was a hard-caked substance resembling dark red polished brick. Years ago, I had a .24 Gibbs that had exactly this problem, and it gave me fits before I found a remedy for the situation. Apparently, the sharp shoulder acts as a trap and, to make matters worse for the handloader, it is an area not easily inspected. I’ve noticed that smallbore cartridges are more prone to media residue accumula- tion problems than large-bore cases. Undoubtedly, the reason for this is the small necks don’t allow media to freely circulate in and out of the case. Empty the media out of a .243 Winchester, and then try it with a .358 Winchester - you’ll see what I mean. The trapped tumbling media tends to grind itself into a fine powder, and the grease- based jeweler’s rouge coating acts as a cement.

Like any other step in handloading, cartridge case tumbling must be done properly. Each step in handloading is critical and the loader must always watch for problems. The owner of the Kimber .17 Mach IV was trying to load ammunition that was both more at- tractive and smoother working. He assumed that tumbling cartridge cases was a purely straightforward affair. As it turned out, he was courting disaster.

There are several things that the handloader can do to prevent tumbling media residue accumulation. The treatment results in cartridge cases that are much cleaner and more attrac- tive than those that are merely tumbled.

First, it is essential that the tum- bling media be absolutely DRY: The method by which you accomplish this depends a great deal on your geograph- ical location. If you live in an area of low relative humidity, tumbling media needs no special preparation. For those of us who have to contend with an average relative humidity of 50 percent or more, tumbling media must be carefully prepared before each use. I spread my media on a cookie sheet and dry it in front of a heat register dur- ing the winter. If we are having a sunny summer day (rare, here in Oregon) I’ll often move my cookie sheet out into the sunshine when preparing to tumble cases. Dry media will polish better and leave less residue than damp media.

Let’s assume your cartridge cases have been tumbled in dry media. The next step is to clean the cases even further. Some call this the “wet step.” Basically, the cases are washed in solvent or a grease-cutting detergent, water-rinsed and air-dried. The solvent

Handloader 136

Tumbling i s an easy way to dean cartridges. As with any other handloading step, however, tumbling i s not free of potential hazards. Media residue accumulation can ruin accuracy and cause dangerous pressure excursions.

method is smelly and expensive, so let’s skip straight to the detergent method. I usually clean tumbled cases in lots of 100. For this quantity of cases, a three-pound coffee can works quite well. Place the cases in the can, fill three-quarters full with warm water and add one to two tablespoons of “Mr. Clean All-purpose Cleaner” (amount not critical). Then the plastic lid should be placed on the can and the contents shaken for a couple of minutes. It may sound a bit crazy, but two minutes can be an awfully long time to shake a brass and water-filled can. Usually, I shake it a bit and let it rest - then shake it some more. Be careful to support the plastic lid with one hand or you’ll end up with one heck of a mess (I’ve done it).

Next, the cases are drained through a kitchen colander and rinsed liberally with clean water. Don’t spare the water - it’s cheap and plentiful. It helps to agitate the colander to ensure all cases get thoroughly rinsed inside and out.

A glance a t the bottom of the coffee can will convince you that a very worthwhile step has been added to your handloading procedure. The residue on the bottom of the coffee can would have been left on (and in) your cases if you hadn’t done the wet step.

The cases are then placed neck-down on a drying rack. The drying rack is made out of a 1x12 board with galva- nized finish nails at one-inch intervals. Sixteen-penny nails are used, and I‘ve found it helps to predrill the nail holes

November-December 1988

The materials needed for washing tumbled cases are inexpensive and easily assembled The detergent, colander and empty coffee can probably are already at hand. The case drying rack can be built in minutes and need not be fancy.

to prevent splitting the board. If you dry .17 caliber cartridges, the heads need to be cut off - if not, leave the heads on. It is essential that the case necks be off the board for proper air circulation. If it’s a sunny day the drying rack, complete with cases, can be put outside. If it’s nighttime or damp, the cases will dry well in front of a heat register. Air circulation or dry heat is essential for drying. After a thorough drying period, the cases may be loiided as normal.

It would be prudent a t this point to emphasize the importance of avoiding excessive heat in drying cases. Ob- viously, using the heat register or dry- ing in the sun does cartridge cases no harm. A heat source like an electric oven can draw the temper from case heads and should always be avoided. Never use the oven or any other excessive heating process to dry cases. Conser- vative measures in handloading are always best.

It is important to do the wet step every time you tumble cases. The tumbling media residue accumulation is just that - an accumulation. Every time the case is fired you bake on another coat. This process goes on until accuracy disappears and pressure ex- cursions appear. If you habitually wash your cartridge cases after each tum- bling, your brass will be clean and sparkling with no hint of residue.

So what can we learn from all this? Perhaps the most important point is to never assume that any reloading step

is without complications. The case tumbling process itself is a great aid to reducing die wear and we cannot help but be proud of beautifully polished brass. It is essential, however, to carefully maintain tumbling media. Also, I believe that tumbling media should be replaced fairly often. Media breaks down from extended use, and it’s probable the “dust” is a con- tributing factor to media accumula- tion. There is no doubt that some sharp-shouldered smallbore cases are more prone to accumulation and that the problem can be dangerous.

The incident with the .17 Mach IV was an extreme case that easily could have caused a rifle blow-up. This was a true account of a returned Kimber rifle and the ultimate resolution of the problem. With clean cases, it was an accurate rifle and a total joy to use. If the condition had existed for a few more firings, I’m convinced the owner would have demolished a lovely rifle and quite possibly have hurt himself in the process.

We all strive to handload ammuni- tion that will be accurate, trouble-free and safe. The phenomenon of tumbling media accumulation can be combatted by simply paying attention to media and thoroughly washing cartridge cases after tumbling. The first and most important step is to be aware that the problem occurs. I don’t believe cases can be too clean or a handloader too at- tentive to details - it’s just good housekeeping. 0

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