New to me Shiloh Sharps

[doug_bailey]

Great article, thank-you.

Buffalo Arms seems to have a hard time keeping bullets in stock, so when I found some suitable, I bought them - unfortunately 50 of each of 545grain
Creedmore and 520 grain RN something or other since they only had one pack of anything. If I use the method in your article to measure the chamber and set up the length, I think I'll get two different seating depths and so two different powder loads - with the smaller bullet getting more powder. It will be interesting to see which groups best and the difference between them on the target.

I bought a 4 location turret press with the idea that I can set up my three size, expand and seat dies plus a fourth compression die on the turret and leave them once they are nipped down with the lock ring - consistency. That stuff shows up mid week, so all I'll be waiting for is the primers - CCI-BR2 large rifle. Hard to come by and expensive... I standardized on Lee equipment - which was the budget-conscious choice, but hopefully good enough to start with.

If I follow your recipe with the measurements and the veggie wad, with 1.5g Swiss powder and the 458 bullets in 20:1 with SPG lube, what kind of cleaning regimen do I likely need between shots or sets of shots, or will I likely be able to keep shooting and not worry about fouling?

[doug_bailey]

Also, I'll be in Melbourne for Christmas and Cairns for New Year (family vacation - sightseeing, diving). Too bad we're skipping Sydney this trip or I'd try to work in a stop at Cooyal Links to see what's what. Aus is a haul from SF - 16 hours, plus or minus. Last time I made the trip was 1993 for an ISO standardization meeting for the MPEG image compression standard. Never dreamed that 30 nerds bullshitting hard math 10,000 miles from home could generate a video codec that is used pretty much everywhere for everything. Your standards bureau did a good thing...

[DeadEye]

Welcome to our obsession Doug,

If you haven't already got one I have scanned the Shiloh manual that can be found 'under' the foam in the case most times. Send me a PM with your email address and I'll send all 6 pages to you. The file size is too large to attach here.

Paul

[Gamerancher]

G'day Doug
Thanks for taking the time to look up the link. We are a small group but it makes for good times still.
I have the mold for the B/Arms 545gr Creedmoor bullet. I cast them at 20/1, lube with SPG and use them in a 45/90 on top of 73gr of 1.5F Swiss.
They work well for me for both silhouette and long rang out to 1000 yards despite it being a mild load. (3 shoulder surgeries limit my recoil tolerance).
The starter load method I described is just that, somewhere to start. There are a bunch of different ways to do it, that way has worked for me.
You wont find a big difference between those two bullets, 25 grains of lead don't make for a big increase in length.

Regards cleaning; I used to blow-tube but now I wipe between shots using the Buffalo Arms bore wipers.

[doug_bailey]

My press and other pieces arrived yesterday and it seems to be working fine, except that I will need to through-bolt it to my bench - it pulled the threaded inserts out of my bench top on the second de-priming try. Much more force to resize and deprime than I had anticipated

Also, there's a flow problem - the way it's set up I need to clean and lube, then de-prime, then clean again to get the pockets nice. I guess I need to hand deprime first - then the flow is a lot more linear.

Also, switched from vinegar (ascetic acid) to Lemi-Shine (citric acid) in the parts cleaner - wow - even better, shinier, brass. YouTube is a wonderful thing.

[Gamerancher]

I use a Lee universal de-capping die in a hand press to de-cap my brass before dropping the cases into white vinegar for a couple of minutes. I find the vinegar lifts out any grease residue and a lot of the powder residue. The cases are then rinsed and put in my pin tumbler with a squirt of dish soap and a 1/4 teaspoon of citric acid, I fill the barrel with water 'til it covers the cases and tumble for about 90 minutes. Rinse the cases in clean water and dry them in a rack. They come up like new, primer pockets and inside included.
I will say that the white vinegar we have down here is a lot stronger than any I've found when shooting over there. I find the vinegar rinse stops the cases getting dull in the first instance. I never de-cap at the range and put my cases into a soapy water mix like many seem to do. I did it when I first started and found that by the time I got home from a match my cases were badly tarnished and took a lot more tumbling to get clean.

[doug_bailey]

I'm making progress - slowly, carefully...

My latest connundrum is the bullet seating. I'm using 520 grain with the SPG lube from BACO. I have trimmed my cases to the same length, which happens to be 2.099 inches. When I seat a bullet gently into an empty case and push it into the chamber on the Shiloh, it goes in and stops with some sticking out. So I adjusted my seating die and did a "test/repeat" cycle of pushing the bullet further in and re-testing in the chamber.

I found the point where the bullet was touching the lands and the case just cleared the block when I closed it, so I gave the seating die a slight tweak and called it good. The bullet probably has a couple of mils clearance to the rifling.

My observation is that the end of the case covers only half of the last grease groove. Completed ammo length overall when it's done this way is 2.867 inches, bullet protudes 0.768 inches from the case and is seated 0.565 inches deep (bullet is 1.333 inches long). Does this sound right to you all?

That leaves 1.534 inches for powder and the 0.060 veggie wad.

How am I doing? Have I messed anything up here? I want to "check in" before I actually start measuring/drop-tubing and compressing powder.

Thanks...

[Randy Bohannon]

Sounds about right, now go shoot them and see what the target says,

[doug_bailey]

Thanks.

So I started working on charging the cases with powder. I decided to use the same "try, measure, repeat" process to find the right amount - the goal being to get the top of the vegie wad to 0.565 below the neck. I started with 65 grains of 1.5fg and could not get more than .037 of gap, even with the compression die and quite a lot of force. Simple proportions would indicate the most I can get into the cartridge with the bullet that I'm using is 58 grains, which seems low compared to what I've been seeing in the books.

I also found that the powder was sticking to the plastic parts (funnel) of the drop tube. Any sage advice on how to eliminate static from the process and make all of the grains go where they're supposed to be?

And one more thing - I sample-weighed the bullets (probably about 25% or so). The lightest was 521.5 grains, the heaviest 528.5. That's more than 1% in a game where we're counting fractions. What does everyone do? Disguard the outliers? Sand the heavy ones down a bit? Correct with a little more powder?

[Minerat]

Try using a used dryer sheet to wipe the funnel. I just get them from the boss before she throws them away. I use them on my powder measure tubes too.

[DeadEye]

Doug,

Many of us find that engaging the first band 0.030" in the rifling works best. This centers up the bullet instead of laying at the bottom of the bore.

Most of us will also stay within a one gram variance when casting. The others go back in the pot. Tests have shown that as much as three grams shows no effect on accuracy.

Keep on having fun.

Paul

[DeadEye]

Also with respect to exposed grease grooves it's just the way it is for target loads. I have one bullet with two reduced bands which then exposes three grooves. Care has to be taken to keep grit from getting in the lube on the line. For a hunting load I would want all the grooves covered. Having said that I question myself because in the field I would carry the gun with a round in the chamber and only cock the hammer when a target is spotted. Therefore it cannot be contaminated with grit, can it? Clearly I have never hunted with my BPCR guns.

Paul

[gunlaker]

Doug I use a heavier bullet than you, but a pretty similar amount of the bullet is in the case so our powder capacities should be pretty similar.

I'm using 68gr of Swiss 1.5 or OE 1.5 and a 0.060" LDPE wad. Regardless of the brand of powder, there is a fair bit of compression involved. Don't be afraid to mash it down a bit. Just don't compress it with the bullet. Anything from no compression all the way up to 0.3" can work quite well. Don't worry too much about the specific weight of powder right now. I've had good shooting loads with as light as 64gr of powder in a 45-70, although for me, more is better as the distance increases.

As far as seating depth goes, I like to engrave just little bit of the first driving band with the rifling. You don't want it seated out so far that you have to put a lot of pressure on the lever to chamber the cartridge though.

Chris.

[doug_bailey]

I took your advice and whaled on the compression die a bit harder. I now have 20 rounds ready to fire with the 520 grain bullet and 67 grains of 1.5FG Swiss.

I weighed all of the bullets and it looks like BACO made them in a 2 chamber mould. There's a population from 527 to 528 grain and another from 524.5 to 525.8. And three weird outliers at less than 523, which I disguarded - a void perhaps? I'll end up with 20 rounds of each of the "light" and "heavy", so that will be interesting to compare. I'll make up the other 20 after lunch.

I managed to strip my bullet seating/crimping die. I was trying to get a slight crimp and correct seat depth, and that meant unscrewing the bullet seat depth adjustment quite a bit, and it stripped under pressure from the press. I screwed it in further - which means I had to forego the crimp and eyeball the bullet depth - which gives me more overall variation than I wanted - 2.860 to 2.875. I'll get to find out if that matters at the range. I'll see if I can mod the bullet seat die by grinding a little off the top where it meets the screw adjuster.

The process of working through this is very interesting. Thanks all for your help.

[Lumpy Grits]

How much neck tension are you using?
When seating, pause for a slow 5 count to let the air out.
Don't crimp, if anything, just bump the case in a size die to close the mouth just enough to allow to chamber.