Shot the Henry today

[gman]

So Ian, yours will cycle the LEE 300? I tried a 310 from an Accurate mold that was just a tad too long. Good shooter in my Bisley. I'm sure that 280 would be an in and out.

 

[Ian]

I have to cast some and see, oddly there's not a single bullet from that mould around here that isn't already loaded, and I was loading it long for revolvers.

 

[freebullet]

I'd love to see what the mp454-308k hp would do from those rifles. Next cast session I'll try to make some extras for yall to try.

 

[Ian]

Well, the MP 270 SAA bullet binds a little bit going into the chamber due to the long front driving band. The throat swallows it fine. Not sure what the nose and front band is like on the 308 Keith, maybe about the same as the 270?

I went ahead and pulled down a couple of my loaded Lee 305s and worked out the OAL. Looks like if the brass is trimmed to 1.275" and crimped as high in the rear crimp groove as possible for an OAL of 1.625" they shuffle and shuck just fine. At 1.630" the nose gets a big scrape on it as the elevator flips it up toward the chamber.

 

[9.3X62AL]

When Buckshot and I were messing around with the HBB in his garage yesterday, he tried to feed it a cartridge with a long wide flatnose, an 180 grainer of unknown provenance. It was a no-go, fed loosely into the ejection port. I got a major case of The Lazies today, and didn't get a lot done with war toys or their chow. Maybe tomorrow I will get some initiative.

ETA--The Owner's Manual text does not specifically require that cartridges feed only from the magazine into the chamber, but only makes mention of that method in the loading instructions. Among the testing will be roll-in of cartridges from the ejection port to fill the chamber, and factory W-W 158 JHP ammo will be a part of that as a "baseline". Maybe the Henry is like a Mauser CRF bolt rifle--to be fed from the magazine only. I'll assess that and report back.