I cast up about 100 bullets with my friend Paul’s Lee 324-175 mold. GC was machined away so the bullets weigh about 180 gr and measure 0.326. I weighed the 100 I cast and ended up with about 89 that were within 1 grain. I used 30:1 alloy per my buddy Craig’s recommendation.
I sized and lubed 30 of them yesterday using a nose punch for a larger RN bullet. Because the punch did not fit that well, it mooshed the noses just a tiny bit. Really hard to see but I knew they were mooshed. So, today, I made a new nose punch to fit the bullet and sized and lubed another 24 bullets. Plan was to shoot the perfect bullets first and then later, shoot the mooshed ones to see if they shot as well or to the same point of aim, assuming the good ones shot decent. Then I was cutting a piece of foam to put into my ammo box to keep the bullets in the little tray I made and my finger caught the edge of the box, flipped it up enough to launch half the bullets out of their respective locations. DAMN! So, now had a mixed batch of bullets to shoot. I did try to sort them out by looking at the noses. But like I said, you could hardly tell. So, I really had no idea how many got mixed into each group. Oh well…
It was so nice, I decided to head to W’vliet club which is only about 6 or 7 miles from the house to shoot at 100 yds. I loaded 4 test loads. 12.2, 12.3, 12.4, and 12.5 gr of 2400, 10 rounds each. All rounds would be breech seated.
I started with 12.3 because that is where the sights were set from last Wed at Wilton. First shot was off the target. I remembered the last shots at Wilton were all high so I came down about 4 MOA. Hit the bottom of the target. Up 2 MOA and in the 9 ring. Right 2 MOA and in the 10 ring below the bullseye. Close enough. I was using a 50 yd replacement center so much easier to see at 100 yds. I had my smallest aperture in the 17A. My Merit would not fit in this Lyman sight so was stuck with the porthole sized rear aperture in the tang sight.
I had a pretty clear sight picture, even though the setting sun was in my eyes. Ball cap was mandatory equipment. I used up 5 round sighting. I ended up putting last 5 rounds into a group that measured 0.688 and 4 of those were in a group that measured 0.500. Needless to say, I was happy.
MV averaged 1435 fps with an ES of 64 and SD of 24. Not great numbers, but not bad. And target tells a better story. Here’s the target.
I then moved to 12.2 gr of 2400. Never touched the sights. I had the gun AD while setting the trigger on one round. I had put it on target and then reached in to set the trigger and it went bang when I let go. Put the round into the 8 ring at 9:00. So, that is the round you see below in the target. Otherwise, the target is 3 sets of touching pairs and 1 outlier making a vertical string group of 2.938”. Avg. MV was 1415 fps. ES was 81 and SD was 22. So very similar to the first load shot. Here’s the target. And yes, I adjusted the set trigger.
I ran out of light so I went home. Plan to go back in the morning and shoot the other two test loads.
Things are looking much better for this rifle.
Now, there is another revelation about this rifle. I don’t think that the barrel is original to the action. I say that because the barrel is cut for a flat spring. I know from reading Vol 1 of The Winchester Single Shot Rifle, that all the barrels had the dovetail machined in them right up until the end. So, a coil spring action with a dovetail for a flat mainspring is normal. But, the dovetail in this rifle has been used at some point. The metal is raised on the edges and the blue is scrubbed off on the flat. There is also a circular polished area between the spring dovetail and the forend screw dovetail like another screw had rubbed on the barrel. Yet there is nothing in that area of the forend that could have done that. I suspect that this barrel came off another rifle, and was freshened in the process. I know that flat spring guns were shipped during the period that coil spring guns were made. So, although I have not confirmed the address on the barrel as being from the correct period as the action, if it is correct, that does not mean that the barrel came originally on that action. I need to dig deeper into this. This may have been a take-off barrel from the varmint craze days and was later put onto this action to make it appear original again.