style="font-size: 11px;"Looking for suggestions with paper patching for my M48. Had done some experiments but ended up minute of barn door. Bullet was a Lee 185 wrapped twice for .324 diameter with notebook paper with 45 grains of varget behind it. Bullet was 11-12 bhn acww. Bullet worked real well on some phone books so it has hunting potential. Just need to get it accurate. Where am I screwing up at?
Mike
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Patch the bullet so that no lead can contact the bore. Seat the bullet far enough out that it contacts the throat. Beyond that just experiment like we always do. Possibly use a thicker paper to that the final product is 1 to 2 thou over sized.
B.E.Brickey
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I question the notebook paper. I use onion paper That I get from Buffalo Arms. Cheap paper has never worked for me.
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I use tracing paper. It's a little tougher than a lot of other papers, but works for me. Tracing paper runs about .002 in thickness, and seems to stand up to the gaff better than most others. Broie
B.E.Brickey
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I have an M48 and love it. Have you slugged your bore? .324 should be enough under normal circumstances, but a lot of surplus Mausers, Yugo's included, are cobbled together from parts and then stamped with conveniently matching SN's...it's a crap shoot and there's no 'standard' bore size.
Add to that the corrosive ammo which was fired through it at some point, varying manufacturing tolerances, etc and bore sizes can vary quite a bit. Plus one on thinner paper, but either way, let us know how you make out!
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Old Coot; the onion paper I'm using is also .002"s thick.
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Howdy G'runner,
I wonder if your bullet is too small in the “bore-riding nose” section?
Your Lee 185 is a nominal .312” bullet, which might drop as large as .314” on the driving bands, if you're lucky and your mold runs a little large. That diameter is probably fine for your Mauser, since two wraps of note book paper would increase the patched diameter to .324, or thereabouts, on the driving bands of the bullet.
The problem comes in with the dimension of the bullet's nose, which was intended to ride the tops of the lands in such rifles as the 7.62x54R Russian, .303 Brit., etc. As a result, your bullet's nose, as dropped from the mold, is likely in the neighborhood of .303” or slightly smaller, and when patched would only stretch to .313” at best.
Thus, half of your bullet's length (the nose section) would be supported on the tops of the Mauser's lands by nothing more than the .010” thickness of paper overlying the .303” lead nose beneath. Such a bullet is very likely far too free to wobble about on it's trip out the barrel to shoot accurately.
I think you'd be much better served by a bullet measuring .314'' or so along the entire length of the bullet body. The reduced nose diameter of the “bore-rider” bullet style, in my opinion, is poorly suited to paper-patching.
Why not try patching the Lee 175-grain 8mm Mauser bullet, after sizing it down to the .314"-.316” neighborhood? A two-wrap patch of note paper would then bring the PPB diameter up to about .324"-.326” along the entire body-length of the bullet, and would likely suit your Mauser much better than the smaller-diameter Lee 185-grain bullet.
Hope it works for ya, and, happy trails,
-- Cary Gunn --
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Aaron
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