What seems like ages ago I began another one of my experimental efforts... It began with a discussion with Dave Fricke, owner of Lehigh Defense. We were generally discussing shooting full bore bullets and knurling them. He suggested the name of a German, Lutz Moeller, who builds bullets and the fact that some of his rifle bullets ride up the bore on very thing rails/barbs, quite different than we often think is necessary. After reading Mr. Moeller's thoughts and listening to Dave I really wanted to try the Knurling thing that a lot of others are into and ahead of me...
This thread shows/describes my initial attempt with knurling a full bore .500 cal x 350 grain bullet that Lehigh builds...
http://www.huntingnet.com/forum/black-powder/387544-experiment-continues-50-cal-sabotless.htmlYou can see that is was quite awhile ago that I accomplished the first part of the experiment. Yesterday I was finally able to make some time to go shoot the experiment. Between hunting season and coaching time became a crunch - in fact I believe I had more spare time when I was working than I do now that I am retired.
When talking to Grouse about this experiment one of his big concerns was how do you be uniform in the amount of knurling and the resulting diameter change of the bullet. I was really un-concerned until he mentioned it - then I began to really worry about what the results of the different diameters might mean in the terms of accuracy. Yet if Moeller were correct may not much at all.
Well yesterday afternoon became the moment of truth... I took my box of knurled Lehigh's to the farm, set up the bench and the chrono and got ready to work the experiment. So right away things go downhill... The battery in the chrono is dead and the spare battery in the battery compartment is not there because the owner operator of the chrono forgot to replace it that last time he need a battery!!!!
With the failure of that aspect of the shoot I moved the target to 100 yards and began the experiment... The rifle a Knight Ultra-Lite has already been sighted in with a .458x300 gr. Bloodline so I assumed the group location might change a bit but the group should remain consistent through the shoot.
And as Grouse had predicted... not all of the 15 knurled bullets went down with the same amount of pressure - none of them were loose enough that I was worried about the bullet coming off the powder in any instance while I might be hunting. Others took or needed a punch with a short started to get them through the crown. From that description you can see there was a wide variance in diameters, however most were loaded with just thumb pressure and a decent push down with the range rod. Really most felt like I was loading a bullet in a sabot.
During the shoot I did make one adjustment in the scope after the first 3 shots. After that everything pretty much went as planned. I believe the target indicates the variance in diameters really is not having a profound effect on POI from shot-to-shot. Also remember the powder loads are thrown on site into a volume measure... Also, remember that are better shots out than me and I am interested in hunting accuracy not as much as a one-hole group although I would take if I got it. I do very little fooling around with different powder loads to tighten a group. I just want the rifle to shoot what I want to shoot.
Yet in all fairness I know some of you could shoot this same rifle with the same load and tighten things up...
Remember I only had 15 bullets with me so these 6 shots on target were enough for me - I wanted to see thing break so I took out 5 orange elk hearts and placed them in the stubble in the field at 96 to 115 yards. Then I began to systematically shoot elk hearts. after I shoot the first three a friend of mine who has never shot a ML but is a big rifle shooter, asked if he could shoot one just for grins. He did then he did the second one and yet that wasn't enough he could still see pieces through the scope so I shot pieces until we ran out of bullets.
We are going back next week with a working chrono - I really want to know the velocity of the 350 grain GOLD bullets... cuz they sure shoot good!
