The
weather! It has finally cooled off here and even has been raining - so it is only natural that I made the jump this morning to go shooting and experimenting...
What I have been trying to do is to shoot a full bore conical other than a pure lead concial. With the advent of the 50 caliber pistols, there are some really nice 50 cal. bullets on the market. Of course these are not designed for a ML so some work on the bullets is needed. What I have been trying to do is to create a knurling on the bullet that increases the diameter of the bullet from .500 to .5015-.502.
As it turns out the Barnes and Speer bullets are very easy to knurl and create the lift needed. On the other hand the brass Lehigh bullets are more difficult - they are harder. Yet they are no harder on the barrel bore than a copper bullet as both copper and brass are self lubricating metals.
Anyway this week I changed up my knurling method in an effort to get more lift on the brass bullets. With the copper Barnes and Speer's a simple use of two mil files creates plenty of lift. The mil files will not create enough lift on the brass bullets. I have been using two general purpose files to get this done. But, this week I added a thick piece of leather under the bottom file to give a form of cushion as I roll the bullet across the surface of the files.
This shows my basic older operation...
With the addition of the leather as a partial cushion under the bottom file I was able to easily get the lift that I needed for consistent knurling.
Testing this morning confirmed my progress... The two bullets that I used this morning were both built by Lehigh Defense. The first one I used was a Bloodline 50x325 grain bullet packaged with a purple 50x54 sabots for shooting from a 54 caliber rifle. The second bullet was a Lehigh 50x350 grain bullet built for the #500-200 (350 grain) was designed to provide advanced terminal performance for the new .500 cartridges including the .500 Cyrus, .500 S&W(Encore rifle), and .50 Beowulf.
This composite shows some of the shooting accomplished this morning...
