Here's what you get from the Internet: help sighting in your Lee-Enfield from someone you met through a strange and wonderful series of tubes.
ASM826 is my brutha from another mutha that I met through blogging. I'm a bit behind on reporting on reloading, but he's running a great series on what we did and what we learned. That last link was sort of about separation anxiety, as you can see in this picture:
No, that's not the One Ring to rule them all ...
As I said I'll post my impressions (and more pix) as soon as I get my head above water. In the meantime, ASM826 is doing a great job covering for my slacking. Thank, bro!
9 comments:
Here’s my tips for reloading big rifle rounds (which I would never recommend anyone follow, ever, and expect any result other than a destroyed rifle and physical dismemberment, so don’t do this unless you’re willing to take the huge risk associated with loading your own rounds. It is horribly dangerous. You could die. There, now no one can possibly say that they can blame me if something goes wrong):
Get several modern reloading manuals. Do your research on what bullet you want (ie, ballistic coefficient, type, grain, etc). Then, set your goal on maximum FPS at the muzzle. Start at one grain under the max load in the manual, and then load up five rounds each in half grain intervals up to a full grain over the max recommended in the books (remember, if you had books from 50 years ago before the lawyers started getting tenured positions in ammunition manufacturing companies, one grain over max in your modern book would be likely ½ to 1 grain under the old published max in those older books).
Get out your chronograph, and start with the low bullets, making notes about FPS as you shoot all five of them. Check each one for signs of pressure (ie cratered primers, case expansion/separation, etc). There won’t be on the low bullets. Then, fire the next 5 up, and the next five, until the primers start to crater (etc). Once you’ve gotten to the point where you’re showing signs of pressure, back it off a half a grain and call that your rifle’s maximum load. If one grain over shows no sign of pressure, it’s your choice on whether to continue adding more powder to some test rounds and keep doing so until you see signs of pressure. I would never recommend this (I do it all the time) because it’s dangerous (it totally isn’t, as long as your rifle is in good shape).
Using this method, I’ve got my 300 win mag throwing 190 grain (190 for the better BC over the more popular 180 grain) hornady interlocks downrange at 3,000 feet per second. Nasty.
Oh, then check accuracy. You may have to back it off a touch more off max to maintain good accuracy, depending on the rifle...
Good point, and it's what friends do! :-)
Goober,
We had this separation at 1 gr above minimum recommended powder with a fairly light bullet. Just some simple loads made while teaching Borepatch how to set up his press.
What I might do in a modern magnum to get a maximum result and what I am willing to do with a 70+ year old military rifle assembled out of spare parts and sold as surplus is kinda different. I like light loads, moderate velocities, and even cast bullets over pistol powders going 1400 to 1600 fps in the old rifles.
Good point.
That case separation probably didn't have anything to do with powder load, though.
Best guess is a defective case. Was it new brass or recycled? Where did it come from?
Also: goober is big game hunter. Goober shot moose last month at 275 yards. Ooogah boogah.
Goober rifle for making meat for family
I probably wouldn't be so worried about muzzle velocity and energy if I was punching paper with it as opposed to elk, moose, and bear briskets.
So take that for what its worth.
Goober, I've used either Remington hunting roungs or Privi Partizan. Don't know which this was.
Interesting about the Privi, a number of the old primers had been punctured by the firing pin. They shot fine, and the bolt head was decently clean, but it happened on maybe 50% of the rounds. Strange.
Never happened on the Remington.
How old was the Privi? The reason that i ask is because gunpowder tends to amalgamate over a period of years, especially if it is exposed to moisture or cold, and when it does, it can increase pressures tenfold in your gun.
My buddy blew up the action in his '03 rock island springfield because he had some powder rock up on him.
Usually, punching holes in the primer, unseating the primer, or cratering the primer in any way at all is a sign of WAAAAAAAAYYYYYY overpressure conditions in the gun.
I'm wondering if one of your partisan rounds overpressured the first time you shot it and you had microcracking in the case that let loose with shot #2.
So my advice is to shitcan all the brass from that partisan stock (after you fire off what you reloaded). Since you aren't using it for hunting dangerous game, if you have another separation it won't be a life threatening thing, just annoying.
But yeah, I'd jettison that patrisan stuff.
It should not have been doing that.
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