Handloader magazine pdf download

The manufacture of a plastic hull can be described very simply. There is a long line of machinery. Large containers of plastic pellets are poured into a big hopper at one end, a few buttons are pushed, the machines rumble into operation and about 20 minutes later perfectly formed plastic hulls, ready for loading, pour out the other end.

Now compare that with the day period required to make a paper hull, from start to finish. For most of this time, the hulls are sitting Federal Gold Medal Paper tubes, waxed and ready for the next step. On strictly economic grounds, there is absolutely no excuse for Federal to continue to make Gold Medal Paper. So why bother? Some trapshooters love them, and believe they get better scores, and are willing to pay for them. So there is no nonsense about the romance, or the history, or the feel of a paper shell, or the aroma of the smoke, as there would be with people like me, for example.

The folks at Federal long ago stopped trying to figure out why some top trapshooters — and these guys are among the cream of the crop — demand paper; instead, they simply settled down to make sure they could still supply the demand. As with so many other things in modern life, the ascendancy of plastic hulls is almost completely economic, although ease of loading and reloading plays a Not Just 60 www. But we are getting ahead of ourselves. Paper hulls are made in a cluster of old buildings on the Federal grounds in Anoka, Minnesota, just outside Minneapolis.

The buildings are red brick, identified by the year they were constructed. Building number is the home of Federal Gold Medal Paper. That was a year in which the Grand was dominated by the Fluesmodel Ithaca, which gives you some idea. A paper hull begins with a roll of specially made paper, about three feet across, inked red on one side. How Federal keeps a tradition alive. This strip is 11 inches wide but comes from the paper mill in rolls a yard across. The paper is cut into sheets 11 by 12 inches and fed into the rolling machine.

First the paper is run through a skiving machine that tapers the edges, so there is no ridge when it is rolled and glued. Then, the paper is cut into pieces 11 inches by 12 inches, rolled into an inch tube and glued, and finally run through a sizing die to bring it to correct gauge diameter. These vats are filled with hulls, then molten paraffin common candle wax is added, the lids are clamped down tightly — and heat and pressure do the rest.

How special is it? There is only one paper mill left in America that produces such paper, and it stays in business purely to supply Federal Cartridge. The next stage is the waxing room, a warm, rather mysterious chamber of odd smells dominated by two huge vats that were new about the time Colonel Whelen When the tubes come out of the rolling machine, they are set aside to dry.

The tubes are placed in an oven to dry, in preparation for sizing. It takes several hours for the hulls to absorb the paraffin. They are then decanted into large cardboard cartons, each one about four feet square, and moved into the curing room. This may be the most mysterious stage of all, since it involves a process that is completely foreign to modern manufacturing techniques.

It is a process that cannot be hurried, no corners can be The tubes are forced through a die that sizes them to the exact diameter necessary to become a gauge shotshell. In the curing room, the hulls sit in about degree heat, with humidity controlled, for nine days. Not eight days, and not ten — nine. Paper hulls are made in a cluster of old buildings on the Federal grounds in Anoka.

At the end of that time, the wax will be completely absorbed by the layers of paper in the rolled hulls, distributed evenly, and hardened. The base wad of Federal Gold Medal Paper is also paper. It comes in brown rolls like masking tape and is then wound into a spool and inserted into the hull. With the base wad in place, the hull is headed up with a brass or steel head and finally primed. It is one thing to sum up the process in a few paragraphs but quite another to make it actually happen.

Tubes are produced on a collection of old machines that are operated, maintained and nursed Dry hulls are put in a large steel waxing vat with molten paraffin. Heat and pressure do the rest. The cut tubes are being inspected manually by Tim Ryman. Any with flaws are weeded out. Together, they operate all the machines and produce about 40, tubes a day. Keeping it all running requires a high degree of experience, skill and occasionally ingenuity.

The Federal line of paper shotshells is today limited to 12 gauge, since it is aimed primarily at trap- At this stage, manufacture of paper shotshells becomes familiar to any handloader, with the insertion of powder, wad and shot cup. Unlike paper cartridges of old, Federal Paper is given a pie-crimp rather than a roll crimp with an over-shot wad. For handloaders who intend to reload the paper with black powder, this is actually a blessing because it leaves room for trimming ragged ends before applying a roll crimp.

Paper cartridges are loaded on one of three machines Federal still has in place for the purpose. According to Goodlin, as demand for paper shells waxes and wanes, they can bring the unused machinery back into production. The final stage of paper-shell production is carried out by Mona Goetze, a veteran of 38 years with Federal.

As the finished cartridges roll down the line, each one is handled and inspected by Mona www. Not only do they have the physical capability but more importantly they have the expertise. The more consistent the rim thickness, the more consistent the ignition of the primer and the powder charge in the case. In other words, the firing pin will fall the same distance every time if the same rim thickness is used on every case being fired for a particular group.

This information about group reduction comes from the. All of the top shooters sort their shells into groups by checking rims and weighing the unfired cartridges.

While plastic shotshells and wads are a blessing in many ways, they are an environmental disaster in some places, particularly wild areas in which a lot of shooting takes place. There are spots in the Okavango Delta in Botswana, along the sand grouse flight paths, where you feel ankle-deep in used wads.

On shooting estates in the United Kingdom, where shooters have stood and shot for more than a century, buildup of wads can become a real problem, and some estates now insist on the use of biodegradable wads — in effect, going back to the old fiber wads used when paper was the standard.

This may well become an issue on some shooting preserves in the United States. The wads are not just unsightly. In some areas, they are ingested by wildlife with the predictable result, and this could become an environmental and wildlife issue just as lead shot did 30 years ago. In Britain, many estates contract with shotshell manufacturers to make special cartridges for them, using paper hulls, brass-washed steel heads and fiber wads — all biodegradable components — with the estate name printed on them.

Handloader son. The Federal line of paper shotshells is today limited to 12 gauge. Finished Gold Medal Paper shells are emerging from the loading machine. They insist that all shooters use these shells exclusively. Stranger things have happened, under the combined pressures of legislation and public demand.

Where lead is still legal, however, Federal Gold Medal Paper just as it sits is excellent ammunition for wingshooting. What could be better for bobwhites or ruffed grouse than an ounce of No. And, regardless of what Mona Goetze, a Federal employee for 38 years, inspects and handpacks the paper shells as they are loaded. After awhile I looked down to rest my eyes and spotted an eroded cartridge case sticking out of the dirt. Most likely he was also hunting antelope, or sage hens, and his rifle was a Winchester lever action or perhaps a Colt Lightning pump.

I put the. Y Since then I have wanted a. The Lightning was not in much better shape than the bones of that pioneer hunter. Its stock and exterior metal looked like it had bumped around in the box of a prairie schooner and then was left leaning against a cottonwood tree for a century.

The rifle was considerably used because the checkering on the forearm was nearly worn smooth. Hoary rust sprouted from the recesses of the receiver. Hours of scrubbing the metal with a toothbrush and sprays of Mirachem Gun Cleaner Degreaser mira chem. An hour scrubbing the bore with a brush and solvent sent a river of rust 66 www. After soaking the bore with solvent for a few days, more and more rust poured out.

Peering into the bore with a borescope showed the inside looked like a washboard red dirt road. There was a bit of encouragement when a lead slug pushed through the bore came out with fair marks from the lands and a diameter of.

Every time the bore is cleaned, though, I grimace when yet more rust comes out on the patches. All that cleaning unveiled a medium-frame Lightning made in , just three years after the. It was the first type of Lightning made by Colt. The small frame to followed in. My Lightning is the standard first model with a inch octagonal barrel, round magazine and no sliding breech cover over the bolt.

However, my rifle holds only 14 rounds in its magazine. August-September Left, the Colt Lightning. Below right, the patent date is My Lightning was built to withstand pressures from black powder. The circular locking brace in its action cams the bolt securely shut at that low pressure. However, rearward force resulting from firing a cartridge that develops higher pressure might well push the bolt back right over the top of the brace.

I have a handful of old, standardvelocity cartridges with headstamps that read W. Co 44 W. These loads averaged 1, fps from the Lightning. The headstamp is on some old W. The smokeless powder in these cartridges, circle-shaped kernels with a hole in the middle, also weighed However, the powder charge only filled the cases to below the The. The original name was the. Winchester Model 92 might withstand shooting a few of those loads, but they would tear my Colt Lightning apart at the seams.

Winchester introduced a highvelocity. These loads were intended for rifles with stronger actions, like the Winchester Model A warning was included not to fire the cartridges in a Winchester Model or revolver, but surely many of the cartridges were. The Lyman Reloading Handbook 48th Edition throttled back those loads considerably. It lists maximum loads for a grain jacketed bullet at 1, fps with Reloading manuals from 50 years ago and more also contained some rather hot loads.

For instance, the Lyman Reloading Handbook 43rd Edition, , lists. These are rather stiff. A A soft lead slug pushed through the bore of the Lightning came out measuring. The bore of the Colt Lightning was terribly rusted. If velocities were kept at 1, fps and slower, the rifle shot acceptably well. Lyman states those loads have a maximum pressure of 22, CUP and are suitable for rifles with relatively strong actions like the Winchester Model 92 and Marlin Model The newer Lyman book also lists lighter loads with a maximum pressure of 13, CUP for rifles with weaker actions like the Colt Lightning and Winchester Model The Speer Bullets Reloading Manual 14 also lists.

I stayed with these lighter loads for my old Colt. Groove diameter measured a somewhat standard. The rust-cankered bore, though, had very shallow lands, and cast lead alloy bullets fired at over 1, fps must have lost their grip on the lands, because accuracy sailed out the window at that and higher velocities. Some of them hit the target sideways, but mostly they did not hit the paper at 25 yards.

I was hoping this relatively soft alloy with a Brinell hardness number BHN of around 10 would These are some of the powders that worked well with grain bullets in the. The Lyman bullet dropped from the mould with a diameter of. I ran the bullets through an RCBS. The bullets failed to hit four sheets of paper when fired with That amount of Pyrodex was compressed by the bullet, and the velocity spread was only 15 fps.

That was about a 10th of the spread of most of the other powders. Accuracy was also dismal with Unique and Accurate Its average speed was fps, and three of the bullets landed in 1. The Laser-Cast bullet has a BHN of 24, and it failed to shoot well with three powders that pushed the bullet about fps. Perhaps the hard bullets failed to obturate in the bore. Perhaps nothing can be explained with such an eroded bore. Perhaps a bit larger diameter bullet might shoot better.

However, a. Once again, accuracy suffered when velocities exceeded 1, fps. I stepped up a bit more in bullet diameter with. The Hornady bullet required a bit more force to seat in a case, and the first bullet I seated slightly bulged the case at the junction of shoulder and body.

An ever so slight amount of case sizing lubricant on the circumference of the bullets reduced the force to seat them and no hump appeared on the cases. The Hornady bullets shot pretty well, but then again their speed was kept below 1, fps.

Right, accuracy suffered when velocities passed 1, fps. Evidently they read about crumpled case mouths, collapsed shoulders, misaligned bullets and such on the Internet and consider it gospel. Manfacturer of hard cast pistol bullets. Cowboy Action Shooting bullets. I never had any problems. I made sure the bullets were fairly straight in the cases before seating them and raised the press ram slowly to make sure the cases were straight when they entered the seating die.

The interior of the seating die of the RCBS Cowboy dies meshed closely with the case diameter, because when I removed a case with a partially seated bullet, the bullet was completely straight with the case mouth.

The seating stem was also aligned tightly with the wall of the seating die, since not one bullet of the proper diameter bulged the thin necks of the. To ensure the thin necks and case mouths did not buckle, I intended to seat and crimp bullets in separate steps, but there was no need. Of the Starline cases I started with, I have lost only one. That case was lost when I took the Lightning hunting. A homesteader living in a sod hut on the prairie or a log cabin in the mountain foothills was flush and lucky if he owned one firearm, and he used that gun for all his hunting.

In that vein I set out on a mountain trail on a blue-sky September morning, balancing the Lightning with the forearm in the palm of my hand.

The rifle was loaded with four. The trail led past Fool Hen Springs. I shot all three of the grouse within a few seconds.

The following night at home we ate them with applesauce made of apples from our tree out back. The Colt ejected the spent cases over my shoulder, and I could not find where one landed in the clumps of beargrass. Perhaps someone will find that case years from now and wonder what game some hunter had been seeking with such an old-time cartridge. This was two years after the French military had introduced the 8mm Lebel, the first mass-produced cartridge loaded with smokeless powder, and the same year Germany adopted the Model Mauser and the smokeless 8x57J cartridge.

So they produced a cartridge and rifle that could easily be converted to smokeless powder, and in cordite upped the velocity of the grain. Aside from the hassle of stuffing its spaghetti-like strands inside cartridges, cordite was highly erosive.

The shallow Metford rifling worked well with black powder but eroded quickly 74 www. One source estimates that around 17 million LeeEnfield. Even then the. Hunters immediately took to the. Though most hunters automatically connect W. Once in Africa Bell discovered that his fine rifle had its faults.

I would have to shoot mighty close and carefully as I could not count on a second shot in a hurry. To this early training much of my later success was probably due. The No. Case capacities are slightly less than the. In recent years Ruger has been chambering its No. In Ruger announced it would soon be making some No. My friend Tom Brownlee was working the gun counter, and he silently grabbed a No.

Larry gave me the. Owning a pair of. The first step was to scope the No. Unlike the old 3x, the new model has multicoated lenses and click adjustments. Mark 4 No. It has two different serial numbers, indicating it was cobbled together from parts produced by separate British factories: Fazakerley, a suburb of Liverpool, and Shirley in Warwickshire.

Slugging the barrel came up with a bore diameter of. The bar- A wide variety of. Plus, my loading room already held everything required to shoot a. This was because I already owned a Mark 4 No. I hacksawed that section off, then recrowned the muzzle using a Brownells hand tool, whereupon accuracy improved considerably.

August-September The Ruger barrel is six groove with the standard American righthand twist, the bore slugging. Like other recent Ruger bores, it appears to be lapped, though this particular barrel is even smoother than most.

In fact, through a Hawkeye borescope, it looks almost as good as many custom barrels, with only the faintest hint of reamer marks visible.

Ruger factory triggers have also improved considerably in recent years, and on my Timney trigger scale, the No. The long, two- stage trigger of the Lee-Enfield averaged 4 pounds, 4 ounces, varying about half a pound. Along with handloads in new Winchester brass and the Federal grain factory loads, I also had some rounds of fairly old but well-preserved British Mark VII ammunition, the standard military load from onward, with a grain, full-metal-jacket spitzer at a nominal 2, fps.

Another experiment involved shooting. His rifle shot Nosler grain Partitions into about an inch, using IMR powder, though that was the only. Many years ago I was on a prairie dog shoot with some of the Nosler boys, and one evening several of us sat around talking rifles surprise!

Also Fluxes and Ladles. Technical support. We are a refinery with low prices. Art Green, S. Robertson Blvd. Some of the best current data for s is from Australian Defense Industries www. Australian handloaders used these for years before the Extreme line appeared in America, and since the Aussies load the. While some Mark 4 No. Send for our free brochure! Using the yard aperture, the Federal grain factory and the Mark VII military ammunition were dead-on for elevation at yards — though the Mark VII rounds proved to be somewhat unreliable.

Fortunately, the Lee-Enfield can be recocked manually, like the Springfield. On the second try, the round went bang, though it was a definite hangfire. The third round the last shot was also a hangfire, but all three formed a decent group and averaged pretty close to the specified 2, fps. The front sight had to be drifted slightly in its dovetail to center the Handloader Essentially, the old rifle shoots to the sights with any ammunition approximating the Mark VII ballistics.

The holes from the first three grain Sierra ProHunters were all touching! The same grain load The lone shot on right is a sighter. Saturday: 9 a. A few of the loads were increased enough to approximate. Still, the standard. Handloader Tom Brownlee took a Mark 4 No. Tom restocked the rifle himself. The Lee-Enfield has a generous chamber, typical of rifles built during World War II, and some cases showed considerable stretching near the head after firing.

One of the virtues of the Lee-Enfield is an interchangeable bolt head, to August-September compensate for wear. This rifle has the number 0 bolt head, so headspace could be shortened by replacing it with a number 1, 2 or 3 bolt head. Cases fired in the Ruger expanded. Instead of finding another bolt head, the case-stretching prob- lem was fixed by loading the rounds for the SMLE slightly on the mild side, then partially sizing the cases thereafter.

The cases loaded with. This resulted in necks with an inside diameter of. At around 2, fps, the Nosler grain Partition will do nicely for Alaskan moose or African eland at moderate ranges, and the other loads will do for any smaller big game, just as they have for over a century. European collectors say there are others. Good heavens! Most calibers and twist rates. The average hunter was confused, so he simply went back to where he bought his rifle to get ammunition. There he would hopefully get the right thing.

The British gun trade engaged in this to some extent as well. It was a good way to guarantee ammunition sales, I guess. Try this exciting new sport and you will become a better handgun shooter. You will shoot at animal-shaped metal targets from 25 to yards.

Any target or hunting handgun is all that is needed. Classes for both Centerfire and. For more information and to find a range near you offering Practical Hunter Silhouette contact us at: www. PHP: 7. Previous Thread. Next Thread. Let's Go Brandon! So true! When I first saw that hat, I had to stop and find out what it was all about! Great info, thanks. Joined: Dec Posts: 25, W.

Joined: Jan Posts: 1, eastern nc blindshooter Campfire Ranger. I have the book!! Found it in a used book store in Placerville, CA when I lived there till 5 years ago. And thanks for posting the links. I've got a few and when I have time and inclination I'll add any I have not included above. Used to be bobski, member since ' Double tag. Joined: Nov Posts: 63, N. Joined: Nov Posts: 19, Annapolis, Md. A very beneficial post! Thanks for putting this up. Switch to Threaded Mode. Hunter's Campfire.

Hunting Optics. Ask The Gunwriters. General Big Game. Deer Hunting. Elk Hunting. Backpack Hunting. Long Range Hunting. Hunting Rifles.

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An important work by one of the great authorities on the subject. Almost half the book , comprising the fourteen chapters of part 2, deals with marksmanship. Small Arms Design and Ballistics. Erlmeier and This one is a fooler and is far better than it looks.

Vol 5. Victory and Aftermath , January - June , by A. Spaceflight 12 : Apr '70 1 German Reunification , by P. There were still some bugs to be worked out, but most every army in the world was throwing money at ammunition problems until they were solved.

After considerable pressure from shooters and dealers, Colt has reintroduced its famous Python chambered in. At a glance, it resembles the original Python. Password Forgot your password? Remember me.