Shiloh Rifle Forums

Well, shes finally done! I can't remember a build that took more fiddling around to get completed. Even the aperture sight staff had to have the hemispheres at the bottom of the staff, to clear the mount orbit, milled back about .015.
Had to make a new extractor from scratch and front globe sight as well. It just kept going and going.
It needs checkering as well but the owner didn't want to do it .

OFS
How does it compare in size to a full-sized '74
Gary

80 percent the full size. Chamber is 30-30. Got up this morning and got to thinking I don't like the light colored stock wood in the forearm and should strip it, stain darker and refinish. I tried to match the stock wood by staining the oil on the forearm and was some what effective but it needs to be several shades darker to look right.

How does it look in Sun light?
G.

I'm, going to chemically strip the forearm oil finish and stain the wood darker. No sense going to all this detail on the rest of the gun and not getting the stock wood to match better. The owner called me back and decided to wait a bit more to have it right.

What stain brand, and color will you use?
G.

Well the Mini 84 Dakota is showing real promise with some MOA groups to 100 yards. The owner is pleased but wants me to make him a lighter bullet so he dropped off some small caliber molds for me to bore out. Been a while since I made any molds so it will be fun to dust off the neurons and see if I still can.
I'll post some pictures of the project and the tools needed to be made to form the new bullet. I'll show it failure or success so we all can learn something from the exercise. I often learn as much about what not to do as what works and turns our successfully.

I calculated I need to make the mold about .001 larger than finish bullet diameter to allow for alloy shrinkage in this diameter. How I arrived at this was measuring other 30 caliber bullets I have cast and then micing the mold diameters they came from.

My rule-of-thumb for shrinkage in bullet moulds is that common alloys shrink about 0.6%. That gets about as close as I can cut, keeping my chew in the middle of my mouth and my fingers crossed. There is some dependence, of course in the different metals moulds are made from.

CHRIS
RGChristensen

My rule-of-thumb for shrinkage in bullet moulds is that common alloys shrink about 0.6%. That gets about as close as I can cut, keeping my chew in the middle of my mouth and my fingers crossed. There is some dependence, of course in the different metals moulds are made from.

CHRIS
RGChristensen

So in .308 diameter doesn't that work out to something like .0018 ? Huh, my caliper rough measurements showed just a scoach shy of .001. I'll get out my ID mic before I do any cutting and do a more careful mold measurement. Course my alloy has some antimony and that causes less shrinkage.