Anyone shooting 220 Russian?

Joe, here's the pic that you were trying to attach:

3c6acd25.jpg


We met back in 2003 and/or 2004 at Mainville, Pa. and Painted Post, N.Y. (maybe?). I've had a couple of opportunities to examine your CNC'd 30BR cases and the quality was superb....glad to hear you're still interested in BR accuracy stuff.

I've long been a proponent of taking case prep...especially on 30BR's made from 6BR cases...quite a bit further than the 'neck it up, turn it and shoot it' school of thought. Everything done to 'conventional' 30BR cases to get them to really work and last are all 'end runs' around hardness problems. Your approach addresses this from the other direction...fixing the brass before it's ever fired. :cool:

Good shootin'. :) -Al
 
One thing I'd throw into this discussion. The "shoulder bump" or "shoulder push-back" people talk about is really the body/shoulder junction of the case.

At one time I was enamored of Ackley designs -- just another long range benchrester trying to get a bit bigger case -- so had far too much experience sizing them. That little edge at the body/shoulder junction is the only thing that moves with sizing. And "moves" is a misleading term. Usually, you just round it a bit -- it doesn't take much for the case to now chamber easily.

The point, for what it's worth, is that head clearance is usually set by this junction, only. For the rest of the case, above the head, brass springback provides enough clearance.

The only exception is when the barrel wall is too thin over the chamber -- something like a 1.000 tenon & a .540+ diameter case can do this. Then, the elasticity of the steel allows that chamber to grow more at maximum pressure (hence the case grows too), and when the steel springs back, it can grab the case. Several cures, but the best is "don't use too thin a tenon," which usually doesn't come up with either a .30BR or PPC.
 
Hi Al, Been awhile. I've never lost my interest in accuracy stuff. Just allowed a thick layer of dust to aquire on the equipment.

Has there been any new methods of making 30BR's in the last six years?
 
Charles E said:
The point, for what it's worth, is that head clearance is usually set by this junction, only. For the rest of the case, above the head, brass springback provides enough clearance.
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Charles,
How did you determine this? In the case of a 6PPC, the case headspaces off the shoulder/neck junction, (at first). Do you mean FL sizing can create an interference problem at the body/shoulder junction?
 
Charles,
In the world of short range benchrest, it used to be common to hear of so called bump dies, that only sized the neck, and could be set to bump the shoulder, without reducing the diameter of the body of the case. There is a reason that these have mostly been replaced by close fitting FL dies, that do slightly reduce the diameter of the body of cases that have been subjected to firing hot loads. Cases don't just get tight at the shoulder...if the loads are hot. On the other hand, I have a friend that shoots loads that allow him to only use a bump die. It's all about the pressure level. Top node (and probably the one below it) = FL size.
Boyd
 
Joe Woosman said:
Charles,
How did you determine this? In the case of a 6PPC, the case headspaces off the shoulder/neck junction, (at first). Do you mean FL sizing can create an interference problem at the body/shoulder junction?
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By Looking at what got shiney -- or removed the black marker I put on a case before sizing. I suppose that's not proof, but I have no way of accurately miking just that very small radiused area.

Of course you are right that in the initial fireforming, where the final-size body/should joint isn't established, the case headspaces off the neck/shoulder -- or whatever first fits tightly. But once the case has the chamber dimensions, it seems to be it's the body/shoulder joint.

* * *

I guess, Boyd. I've always shot the middle & what, "lower-upper"? windows (about 29.5 grains of N-130) with the PPC. But in long-range cases, I've been known to tip the bottle a bit much. The case grows too much at the front of the web, & just a bit above the web, until the area where the chamber provides support. It also grows at the aforementioned body/shoulder junction.

BTW, when we had to size the base beyond where the shellholder normally let us, we just made a ring die & pushed the case all the way through. Thought that easier than grinding down a shellholder. Believe a.JR also uses this method. I'm informed -- hopefully reliably -- that some hot pistol cartridges are sometimes sized the same way...

Be interesting to find out from Michael Turner just what results with very hot loads in his .30-30. The way he cuts his chambers, the case is almost completely supported, and headspaces off the rim.
 
Thanks Charles. I think I understand now. I remember seeing the same shinny marks but that was back before I started making my own dies. I think it was also on some cases with steeper shoulder angles. I used to play with some Ackley cases and some based on the 220 jaybird.

Come to think of it, early on, Bob Green told me to make the radius at the body/shoulder junction in the die slightly larger than the chamber. I started doing that from the beginning and never had an issue.
 
Joe Woosman said:
Has there been any new methods of making 30BR's in the last six years?
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Joe, a good number of people are making 30BR cases by firing virgin 6BR cases down a 30BR barrel. This results in a more-or-less 'straight' neck o.d. w/o the 'lump' at the bottom of the case neck caused by traditional expanding methods. The 'blown out' 30BR cases also end up with longer necks than expanded 6BR cases.

Of course, this doesn't really fix any of the problems (real or imagined) of expanded up 30BR cases. With expanded up cases, the issues are split between the inside and outside of the neck. With blown out cases, the problems are now all on the inside. Out of sight and out of mind.....;)

There's still a good number of us experimenting and working on new ideas.

Good shootin'. :) -Al
 
Al Nyhus said:
...Of course, this doesn't really fix any of the problems (real or imagined) of expanded up 30BR cases. With expanded up cases, the issues are split between the inside and outside of the neck. With blown out cases, the problems are now all on the inside. Out of sight and out of mind.....;)
Good shootin'. :) -Al
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Al, since you're usually ahead of me, you probably already figured out that you can make a die with a hardened, ground, pilot bushing, to hold a chucking reamer dead true? Of course the reamer follows the hole, but it's the hole in the pilot bushing...

I made mine out of a Wilson seater blank, to get that nice straight starting hole already there.

For reasons I don't completely understand, some cases still come out showing runout, measured using points at the case web & neck, but most come out very, very true indeed.

TJ Jackson bored the inside of his necks with a lathe, but I never figured out how to get a setup true enough to satisfy me with the old Clausing-Colechester.

Jackson -- and Mr. Woosman may disagree -- felt that if the case head was true to the boldface, and if both the inside & outside of the neck were true to the bore, the rest of the case could "go fish," as Frank Burns would say...

* * *

BTW, following your hints, I now set the scope for a middle bull -- 2 or 5 -- during the warm up match, Then hammer out at least five shots before going to record, and never touch the knobs again. At least until the match is over. Does seem to help. 'Course you're such a subtle cuss I may not have taken the hints correctly & am doing it all wrong. Again...
 
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Charles, I use a similar setup to cut the neck i.d.'s. It's not piloted on the front but uses a hardened steel bushing with a shoulder at the rear as a stop for the reamer. The caveat on using this setup on virgin expanded up necks is that the case neck has to be dead true to the long (Z) axis of the case before cutting the inside. This does involve a few extra steps but isn't anything particularly cerebral or I wouldn't be able to do it. ;)

That these BR guns (PPC's and BR's) shoot to the levels they do with all sorts of case prep methods illustrates just how good these rigs really are. The extra case steps do pay off in consistency......not constantly 'chasing' what the brass case is doing as it's fired, sized, etc. during it's life.

Glad to hear you're having better success with your Score ventures. :) -Al
 
Charles E said:
Jackson -- and Mr. Woosman may disagree -- felt that if the case head was true to the boldface, and if both the inside & outside of the neck were true to the bore, the rest of the case could "go fish," as Frank Burns would say...
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Not at all Charles. That may very well be true. I wish I could prove it one way or another.

My personal feeling on what matters is holding the base and neck diameters closer than everything else in between. The last dies I made for myself provided about .001 clearance over the base diameters. The shoulder angle laid back a little from the angle in the chamber. The shoulder/body radius was slightly larger, (maybe .010). About .050 of the neck nearest the shoulder was stepped and very close to the chamber diameter, (possibly a slight press fit). My thought was to suspend the case between centers in the chamber and maintain those consistent contact points. Use the neck/shoulder junction as the headspace gage point. I like a little "feel" when closing the bolt to ensure contact here and help prevent the case from slapping forward and back between the firing pin and the explosion. I felt this would give consistency from shot to shot and align the bullet to the bore as best as could be.

If I'm off track with something here I’d appreciate some critiquing.
 
What sort of report did the targets give? I find the idea of a slightly different angle in the die interesting. I have a neck turner that has its cutter angled at 30 degrees, wide enough to cut across the entire shoulder of a PPC. The other day I was turning some cases down from .0086 to .0079 and I noticed that on one case, the sholder was slightly cut near its outside diameter. It may be that since the area of greatest resistence to sizing is at the point of the shoulder, that spring back could leave the shoulder of the sized case at a greater angle than the chamber, and the fit in the chamber with more case to case variation than if the fit was closer near the neck. Was this sort of thought why you built in the intentional mismatch?
 
Well Boyd, I'd be lying if I said you could see it on the target. At the level of accuracy we are shooting, and all the variables to overcome, I'm not sure you could prove much of anything with targets. I imagine many of our theories would require a test bed outside of benchrest.

The intentional mismatch was solely to ensure clearance. The holding of a part between centers is a machining technique used to measure or machine a part about a known axis of rotation. In this case that axis should be the centerline of the bullet and we want that on the centerline of the barrel bore.
 
I like the idea of a stepped neck in a sizing die for a couple of reasons, the first, as you have mentioned, being centering. The other is a little farther afield, and would require a step in the chamber as well....to sidestep the whole doughnut issue. On the latter, I had thought that I might have come up with something new, but a conversation with Dave Kiff disabused me of that idea. IMO designing a die so that the case is suspended,in the chamber, between the back and the neck is a good idea. As for refining beyond what can bee seen from a good rifle,with a well tuned load, on a good day goes, If I cant see the difference, that is what tells me I should be working on something that really needs fixing... a long list, most of which deals with the operator, rather than the machinery.
 
Boyd Allen said:
If I cant see the difference, that is what tells me I should be working on something that really needs fixing
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That is certainly a different perspective than I have. I'll have to direct you to rules number 1,6,11 and 12 on the list of Peter's Laws that I have pretty much lived by.

1.If anything can go wrong, fix it! (To hell with Murphy!)
2.When given a choice, take both.
3.Multiple projects lead to multiple successes.
4.Start at the top and work your way up.
5.Do it by the book... but be the author.
6.When forced to compromise, ask for more.
7.If you can't beat them, join them, and then beat them.
8.If it's worth doing, it's got to be done now!
9.If you can't win, change the rules.
10.If you can't change the rules, then ignore them.
11.Perfection is not optional.
12.When faced without a challenge, make one.
13."No" simply means begin again at one level higher.
14.Don't walk when you can run.
15.Bureaucracy is a challenge to be conquered with a righteous attitude, a tolerance for stupidity, and a bulldozer when necessary.
16.When in doubt, THINK!
17.Patience is a virtue, but persistence to the point of success is a blessing.
18.The squeaky wheel gets replaced.
19.The faster you move, the slower time passes, the longer you live!
 
kinda like #16, probably because I'm always in doubt...Only wished the thinking helped more. Those of you who can think better, please chime in.

I try to use "similar-but-different" models to put things in perspective. One of my favorites is a muzzle loader. Done right. Paper patched bullet, false muzzle, etc.

Points out all we want the case to do. Now suppose you didn't care about case life, only accuracy.

If the bullet is in the bore, perfectly centered, do we care about the shape of the barrel behind the bullet? 10-year-old could have taken out the breech plug & gone at the inside of the back end of the barrel with a Dremel (well, Foredom). As long as the plug still works and the bullet is ahead of the mess, so what?

I'd think everything's still fine. Could be wrong, we're talking about a low level of pressure, a different kind & burn rate of powder, but still, I'd think no problem.

The job of the case then, is to (1) center the bullet in the bore, (2) seal the chamber, and (3) not introduce anything that could make accuracy worse. Number three is the killer, and why Joe Woosman's approach may well be very important.

For example & just a thought: How the case comes back on the locking lugs probably has an effect on barrel vibrations. If not frequency spectrum (and it may not, even if the "thrust vs. time" curve varies from shot to shot), then surely on amplitude.

Anyway, that's how I think about cases, and why I believe TJ Jackson was on to something. Neck, base, & I'll add "gotta fit precisely, time after time."

If I had Joe's machining skills, I would have made steel cases. Not to do the job better, but to last longer.

Joe, care to tell us why you stayed with brass?
 
Joe,

Harrell's makes acceptable dies in PPC/BR cases and now the new 6.5X47L case and some "Dashers" (this term has evolved 'wayyy beyond Dan's brainchild.) This is a very functional die for under 80 bucks at your door.

Neil Jones still makes a very good die altho I don't like his new 'containment style' n/s bushings. IMO his is the best bang for buck if you need something other than the above.

I've had one die made by Hornady. It cost over $200.00 and is a perfectly AWFUL design but it does fit correctly, first try. Their seater is even more stupid with an annoying hangie dangling thing that's supposed to "contain" the case as you seat the bullet. The seater also comes with a squishy rubber gasket thingie on top that causes my nethers to quiver upon looking at it so I have to be careful and not. Sometimes my fingers get caught up by the hangie thing......

Other than that, buy a sizer die reamer from Kiff, figger out a way to chuck up your die blanks true in three dimensions (unless you can bore and hone them yourself?? in one setup?? suhWHEEETness that!!!) and when you gotter all done send off to be melonited. Or CNC and melonite... (my point is that meloniting is getting good reviews so far as a hardening process)

hth

al
 
Charles E said:
I try to use "similar-but-different" models to put things in perspective.
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Me too. I usually apply the scientific method of problem solving. Peter's Laws only sum up my personality disorder.

Charles E said:
Joe, care to tell us why you stayed with brass?
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Because of a conversation I had with Jim Borden. Apparently he has blown up quite a few barreled actions while recording pressures. I also saw some pictures of some blown rifles that were quite scary to say the least. I'm sure it can be done safely with some tighter controls, but then again, "things" happen. I was once being severely distracted by a guy while reloading and instead of waiting, I dumped a full case of 4198 into a .243 sized case. I was quite impressed with how the case head separated and swelled the bolt nose into the action while effectively dispatching the excess pressure somewhere other than at my skull.

The second reason was I had way too many irons in the fire at the time. I WOULD be interested in your thoughts on this though.
 
alinwa said:
and when you gotter all done send off to be melonited. Or CNC and melonite... (my point is that meloniting is getting good reviews so far as a hardening process)
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I wasn't sure what melonite was so I had to look it up. Turns out it is a patented name brand process which is why I probably haven't come across it. I'm more familiar with the term nitriding which would also describe the melonite process. Melonite I understand to be a solution dipped system. Nitriding can be done with a gas or plasma method which they claim causes less part distortion.

Regardless, I'm not sure how hard your dies need to be. I made mine from a 17-4PH stainless hardened to around 40RC. This hardening is done at 900 degrees f and doesn't cause dimensional changes. I see the melonite process is a little over 1000 degrees which probably also causes minimal distortion depending on your material. Certainly a nitrided die will last longer. The heat treating cost though would probably be twice the cost of a new die if only doing one.
 
Joe, I've inquired, but never done anything about steel or steelheads. I did make a post on the 1,000 yard forum a while back. For me, the most interesting general answer was posted by Don in Redondo

I used to shoot with a guy, decades ago, that made his own steel head cases for his 1000 yard competition rifle in 30-06, which would chrono to maximum 300 Winchester Mag. velocities. Very impressive and accurate for the amount of powder and recoil.

If I remember correctly, he started out by purchasing his steel heads from a company called Ramshot or some such, back in Indiana, which subsequently disappeard, so he started making his own out of both 12L14 and 416 stainless round stock.

After awhile he began making the entire cases out of steel in 2 separate pieces, the head and the body-shoulder-neck, which were threaded to each other.

The most impressive thing about the all steel cases is that they required no sizing after firing, due to not exceeding the elasticity limits of steel and staying within the rebound capabilities of the material.......... just re-prime, re-powder, and seat a new bullet. Also, the cases lasted forever, he would make 20 for the rifle and that was all that was ever needed for that caliber case.

I do remember him saying that he prefered to use boat tail bullets in the all steel cases because the steel necks had a tendency to shave the heel of a flat base bullet and caused subsequent inaccuracy. I think he also stated the steel necks had to be considerably thinner than brass necks in order to get proper release properties.

The only limitations in the velocities that he could run in the rifles that used steel cases were the primers when they would start to blank. And, this was well before the small firing pin diameter fad, which I am sure would have increased the velocity capabilities considerably................Don
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It's a long thread, with some nuts amongst the hulls if you're interested.

http://benchrest.com/showthread.php?65962-Making-steelhead-cases/page2&highlight=steelhead
 
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