The first handloads.

Every step of the way requires a fiddle and adjustment.  Right out of the box I find my decapper won’t work because I don’t want to resize the cases and the die does these two steps at once.  I get a new decap only die and it works like a charm.  Why not resize?   It isn’t necessary if I always use the same rifle, may be more accurate, and may make the little press last longer.

After decap, I drill out the flash hole to .096 as the Wolfe book says is a MUST.  Then I clean, dry and recap with magnum primers. 

Now to pick my loads.  I have 2 types of lead bullets.  One is 405 grains, the other 500 grains.  Both are copies of the original bullets for this gun, except the 405 is a flat base where the original was a hollow base.  I have sourced some hollow base bullets and they should be here any day.  I do a smokeless and a black powder load for each at about 60 grains equivalent.  I have some copper jacketed sabots too.  These are 200 grains, which is a bit off the mark, except I’ve seen loads that use 220 grain pistol bullets for practice rounds, so I figure I’ll give it a shot. 

Time to head back to the range.

A day at the range is fun, but I always feel like I'm just wasting ammo and time if I'm not trying to improve something, even if it is just me.  This day I had 10 rounds each of 5 different loads, plus some duplicates of loads I thought had promise.  The surprising thing was how really bad the bad loads were.  One of the loads was measureably better than any purchased ammo, but some of them made gigantic patterns and went through the paper sideways.


The loser was anything with a 405 grain flat base.  The pattern was either narrow and tall (like 12 inches tall) or completely shotgunned allover the place.  Black powder, smokeless, it didn't matter.


The winner was a 500 grain flat base with 60 grains by volume of 777 blackpowder replica.  It shot 6 inches wide and 5 inches high at 100 yards.  I was using a blade front sight with an aperture rear, so I think I can make some of that go away with my aiming.

The "interesting" round was the sabot.  These rounds were very lightly loaded to mimic the "gallery" round from the Wolf book.  I almost laughed out loud at how soft and quiet it was.  I was using smokeless powder (12 gr SR4759) and it left a lot unburned in the bore.  The group was 13 high by 15 wide, which is awful, but all the rounds went through straight.  I found a spent sabot and it looked like it took the rifling.  I think it may be time to play with stepping up the load on these.

Here's a photo of a new sabot/bullet and the spent sabot.

My next step is to get my hands on those hollow base 405 grain bullets.  They seem to be more elusive than I thought.  I also need to mount a globe sight on the front so I can get that nice "circle in a circle in a circle" picture.