Hi, I'm new to this site, I'm also new to reloading, I'm a machinist by trade and love making everything i can for projects i get involved in. most times i try and make too much of my projects and get over whelmed. i hope this doesn't happen in this case. well i have some questions about the load I'm making and the bullets I'm casting and my practices. I'm new to this and i feel i may be in over my head, seemed easy enough until i started looking into it, and now I'm realizing i have lots to learn, every question i ask my self i google it and that opens up hundreds more questions.
first off, ill tell you what I'm doing (sorry for the wall of text ill try to keep it short) i have a few 303's one is a lithgow 1917 no1mk3 and a 1911 no1mk3 parker hail custom #1, i love the PH and the lithgow has a heavy duty barrel factory fitted to it. i also have a 1918 no1mk3 .22 trainer but thats a different story
i want to shoot my 303 ALOT more often and while it is legal for me to shoot all day in my yard, i feel bad for my neighbors, while i cant see their houses from my house i know they can here a center fire going off.
so I'm very interested in reduced loads, i bought some h4895 and loaded 123 surplus ammo with 27 gr as per their website, it was nice to shoot but loud and alot more then i needed to plinking and keeping critters off my farm, realistically a 9mm,45,357,44,410 in a rifle would be nice but i don't have one Nor the money. and my .22 cooey 39 just doesn't cut it, while i love shooting it i need a little more kick and impact.
first i filled 5 303 cases with lead and drilled them out 25mm deep with a 7.9mm drill to make .32H&R mag cases for my 303, i used 90gr lead cast bullets i cast and used the load data for my pistol power i have W231 so 3.4gr and i was a great round to shoot however i like the idea of heavy slow moving bullets from this gun, more of a lobber
so from that i made new molds for 288gr bullets
as of now I'm loading 288 gr/ pure lead/35mm long/ .314 dia/ unsized/rubbed with candle wax lube bullets from neck sized 303 cases with 3.0gr w231, I'm not sure of the velocity's I'm assuming around 900, seems as fast as a 22 short getting to my 100 yard mark.
now the questions, so i guess ill just number them to make it easier for one to reply to any of them with out quoting it.
#1 bullet depth, as of now i have them deep in the case this was to pull it off the rifling to reduce pressure with my unknown load and also to reduce case capacity since i have 3gr of fine ball powder. but more then half the bullet is in side the case, about 10mm lower then the bottle neck starts. I'm thinking i should reduce the first 10mm of the bullet dia to .300 so i can seat the bullet about .350 into the case and still not have the bullet touching rifling.
#2 double charge, while most sites i see people post that 6-12gr of various powders can be used in these loads where I'm loading only 3 gr (plan to work up to 1050fps) if i was to double charge in theory still well within the suggested limits of the powder. is this true? its also a 288gr bullet soft but lots of bearing area
#3 the power is great, i have added pics of the bullets i have retrieved from various items ill put a caption when the pics up. so I'm thinking if i get to 1050fps with only 3.5gr i wont need any more powder. unless I'm missing something, i read less powder is some times more dangerous, is that just slower powders or all?
#4 bullet weight/design, if I'm firing a heavy bullet for the caliper and also a large bearing area, there is going to be large pressures built up? also I'm wondering if i redesign the bullet to have 50% reduced bearing area will that help a lot or can i continue shooting the simple cast bullets as they are. i have a bottle of alox now to put on instead of the candle wax.
#4 leading, it seems i have fired about 80 rounds of varying gr bullets 90-288 and different amounts of powder 2.0-4.0gr, i just rub the candle on the warm bullets and they get a thin coating of wax, i have no leading or build up, is this something that happens after thousand shots or am i firing them slow enough they don't leave any behind.
5 honing the load, so I'm looking to get to 1000-1100 fps with a 288gr bullet, that's about 665fpe, seems exactly what i want, I'm not sure if i under stand the relationship between the heavy bullet and the little powder I'm using, am i able to just work up the load to get desired fps if there are no pressure signs, also what would the max powder be with my given weight bullet, i read a normal weight bullet for the cal should be close to 10gr w231.
thanks for taking the time to read that. i promise all other info added with be smaller posts
(right to left, 1,2,3,4,) all 35mm 288gr bullets 1- unfired 2- fired into the end of a softwood log (made it 12"deep) 3- fired into the end of a dried ash log (made it 3” deep. you can see where i hit a bullet with another one) 4- fired into a price of 1” lexan, bullet went from 35mm to 7.9mm long still weights 18.70g (288gr)
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