im getting veral smith to make me a mould for my 375 H&H ....now, im wondering why is it so important that in rifle cartriges the base of the cast bullet with it grease grooves not protrude below the case neck
thanks daniel

Daniel, it's not that important provided the boolit exits the case quickly enough immediately after ignition. As normal, just work up an accurate load with the boolit seated where you want it. In the long run, you might be more satisfied with your rifle's throat made longer and shaped to fit that boolit to a tee. Best to make the boolit fit the gun to a tee when the boolit size to be made is required. ... felix

felix
i will be getting the bullets made to fit the chamber as veral smith suggests
daniel

M98,
In theory, if the gas check were protruding into the powder space, and if the gas check were to come off while it was down there, then in theory, it could act as an obstruction and cause damage to the barrel. Some people worry about that. As far as I know, there is not one single documented case of a barrel being damaged due to a gas check coming off. It seems to me that if the check did come off, it would likely be swept out of the barrel. I have shot 1000's of deep seated bullets without incident.

A more practical concern is that soft lube may contaminate the powder, or visa versa. Again, I have never noticed a problem.

The only time I've tried a cast bullet in a rifle that had the gas check seated well into the case body, ie below the neck, was the bator 358 260 gr in my 350 Rigby. That bullet had a relatively short ogive, and was full caliber in the nose. Accuracy with the bullet seated to a normal COL was abismal. I seated the bullets out long to get the gas check in the neck, and accuracy was much better. The problem was the bullet nose was well and goodly jammed into the lands, and was difficult to chamber. I ended up trading that mold for a Lyman 358009, which has a .350" nose, and could be seated with the gas check in the neck, while easily chambered. Accuracy has been even better.

I did try a few 600 gr cast bullets deep seated in my 500 Jeffrey and accuracy was poor. I haven't had a chance to try seating them with the gas checks in the neck to see if accuracy improves.

The base of the cast bullet should never enter the case below the neck. Melted lube on a hot day does not work well for any accuracy work, and pressures can vary because of that. The perfect cast bullet for the bottle neck case, would be one that was flush with the base of the neck and extend to fit the throat of the chamber correctly. Taking a chamber cast and sending it to a top mould maker would be the ultimate way of getting THE bullet mould for your particular rifle. Letting your chamber determine the bullet shape, hence, weight. Spending a little time at the range with cast bullet shooters can be both a great education as well as amusing. Good shootin'

First loaded cast bullet cartridges shouldn't be kept a long time. Ideal is to load them and after not long take them out and shoot them. Also, trying kind of anal with my cast loads I always store my cartridges in boxes bullet down. That way not a chance of lube getting into the powder. With that said some of my finer accuracy and results were with shooting bullets that loaded way below the neck. One example is a 7mm-08 Sako that has an extremely short throat. Until I bought a mold specific to that rifle I was shooting 1/2 inch groups at 100 yards with the a Lyman 150 gr Loverin style bullet. Quite a bit of that bullet was below the neck. I use a filler and my gaschecks are on good and tight too.

Don't store bullets lubed for a long time. A lot of lubes cause the bullets to corrode in addition to the lube drying out...depending of course on type of lube you use. I speak mainly of the NRA 50/50 Alox/Beeswax

quote:

Originally posted by DWright:
Taking a chamber cast and sending it to a top mould maker would be the ultimate way of getting THE bullet mould for your particular rifle. Letting your chamber determine the bullet shape, hence, weight.

Or, if you are going to use pretty much the same bullet mould design all the time, you could just go to a gunsmith who has a throating reamer of a diameter and angle you like, and have him deepen the throat of your chamber to fit a dummy round provided to him by you.

That's what Dave Lee, Mel Harris, Gary Long, and some others who shot pretty well over the years in competition at Springfield did....

Throating reamers are not quite as expensive as chamber reamers, so you could even buy your own throater so that you could have future barrrels or guns opened up too, if required. Over the long haul that might be considerably less expensive than having a custom mould made for every future rifle.