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Old September 26, 2013, 11:35 AM   #1
Jim March
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Any guess on a starting point for a 9mmPara 100gr full wadcutter load!?

Folks,

I'm looking for a weird load for a weird gun - Maurice of course .

I'm also looking at this bullet in particular sized .356":

http://www.pennbullets.com/38/38100dbbwc.html

Maurice is a magazine-fed and auto-shell-ejecting revolver. It started out as a Ruger New Vaquero in 357Magnum. It now sports a 3.25" Douglas Premium barrel in true .355", and the cylinder is based on a Bowen blank properly set up as a 9mmPara with long .3555" throats done with a chucking reamer.

Since the magazines are tubular and cram rounds in from the rear, the mags I have now that feed 9rds of standard JHP can probably take 10rds using 9mm wadcutters. Because the feed path is dead straight into the back of the cylinder I don't need to worry about OAL of the loaded round, so I'll probably seat these bad boys to a depth where they just poke out of the shells.

Elsewhere on the site Penn Bullets says that "match grade" alloy is good to 1,600fps and I don't plan to hit that! But...I might be able to come fairly close. That Bowen Chromoly cylinder can be chambered as big as 45LC or as strong as 41Magnum (as a six-shot) and the six 9mm bores are hence surrounded by massive meat; while I'm running small chamfers at the rear of each cylinder bore, the net chamber support is excellent. Chambers were hand-reamed with a Dave Manson finish reamer and are tight, smooth and uniform. +P and +P+ loads don't scare me a bit here...this may be among the strongest 9mmPara guns ever built, of any type.

So my plan is, work my way up dead slow and stop at around 1,400fps. I will also try for a load that makes 1,000fps so I can shoot it (purely for fun!) at cowboy action matches, assuming I'll have enough gas pressure to work the shell ejector! (Yeah, it pops empties out under gas pressure tapped at the muzzle and routed back through a copper line!)

Does anybody have any idea what a starting load might look like? Powder type? I doubt there's anything in any manual for a load like this. I won't have a lot of case capacity here so...fast burn powder of some kind?

Right now the Steel Challenge rules say you need a six shot cylinder. I have to start with hammer on empty but stacking a 10rd mag on five in the cylinder I have 15 rounds continuous fire, then a reload and another 10. Suddenly a single action revolver looks downright competitive, no? Until they change the rules STAT to deal with this monstrosity .
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Old September 26, 2013, 11:46 AM   #2
Brian Pfleuger
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If you know the length of the bullet, we can get some sort of guesstimate from QuickLoad.

I put some guesses into QuickLoad and it doesn't think you can even reach 1,000fps at +P pressures but with the guesses I have and the "barely longer than the case" OAL, you've only got 0.223cc of usable space.
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Old September 26, 2013, 11:49 AM   #3
Jim Watson
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Speer shows .38 S&W with a 110 gr JHP and 3.0 to 3.2 grains of Bullseye, 4.8-5.1 grains Unique, etc. 1000 fps with the maximum load of Unique,

Will that get you in the ball park?
.38 S&W is not much longer than 9mm P and runs at much lower pressure.

What OAL do you plan for those wadcutters? Seat to the crimp groove or the lube groove, or other?
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Old September 26, 2013, 04:45 PM   #4
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I ordered 1000 of that very bullet from Penn on July 3rd.

Still waiting for them. And yes, my patience is wearing thin. The credit card was charged on 7/3 - they did that part fast.

Done ranting now.

Anyway, I want to load them in 38 Special and 38 Short Colt. The Special loads, I'll just look at 110g data for Bullseye and start somewhere in that neighborhood.

For the 38 Short Colt, I'll use Bullseye and just take a guess - literally. They're going to be shot in Smith 686, so there's no danger of gun damage.
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Old September 26, 2013, 04:55 PM   #5
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Quote:
Jim Watson: "Speer shows .38 S&W with a 110 gr JHP and 3.0 to 3.2 grains of Bullseye. . .
Come to think of it Jim, that is the data I looked at when speculating a recipe for 38 Short Colt - From the Speer #14.

Of course, at this point, I'm only speculating on a load recipe because they have yet to send me the darn bullets!

BTW, they make them in different sizes. I ordered them in .358 for my application. (In case someone thought I was going to shoot .356's through a .357.)
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Old September 26, 2013, 08:13 PM   #6
Jim March
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Just looking at the picture, the length is just a hair more than the width. We know the width, so...looks to me like I can get about as much case capacity as I would with 147gr JHPs, right? It's as if you took a 147 and lopped the nose off, more or less? (In fact, I *could* actually do that with some kind of small lathe made out of a hand drill...)

Also: I do NOT have to back the slug into the shell completely to get an extra round in my 9rd mags. I can and should have the slug stick out a bit, so that'll help with case capacity too.

So anyways, I'm not convinced there's too little case capacity to get real performance, not yet anyhow. I might be wrong.
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Old September 26, 2013, 08:22 PM   #7
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You need to tell us the exact seating depth you're gonna use then we can crunch the numbers for you. Or I think you can just use a compressed load of Blue Dot or Herco, and they are bulky enough to keep you out of trouble, but you're on your own there.
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Last edited by zxcvbob; September 28, 2013 at 09:18 PM.
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Old September 27, 2013, 03:09 AM   #8
Jim March
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Ah. OK, so...get some boolits, seat 'em dry, take measurements, come back and report. Got it.
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Old September 28, 2013, 08:20 PM   #9
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Lets see some photos of the firearm, while you wait on the bullets.
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Old September 28, 2013, 11:26 PM   #10
Brian Pfleuger
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If the picture is to scale, I'd estimate that the bullet is somewhere near 0.43" long.

A bullet that length seated to a depth that leaves 0.050 outside the case leaves about 0.239cc of usable space.

QuickLoad thinks a 107% compressed charge of RamShot Zip would get you just over 1,000fps from a 3.25 inch barrel with a 38,500 psi limit.

If we assume 0.40, you might get 1,080fps.

If we got to 0.375, it thinks a heavily compressed charge of W231 would get you to 1,125fps.

As a point of comparison, QuickLoad thinks a normal 100gr bullet, seated 0.26 deep for an OAL of 1.00" leaves you at 0.439cc of space and could do about 1,240fps.
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Old September 28, 2013, 11:40 PM   #11
Jim March
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For those who haven't seen Maurice:

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8216/8...90b3c4d8_b.jpg

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8504/8...b101a8f2_b.jpg

Video proof that it works - low quality because unfortunately the range banned photography so I had to do a really cheesy placement on a cellphone . More coming once I get some more practice ammo together:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4XtVldNbO4

Since that video was taken I have improved the magazine latches for the 9rd foot long jobbies so that they swap in faster and more accurately. I have also built a double-mag carrier out of leather and kydex.

Here's some of the build details posted to the Youtube link:

Well here we go. Gas-powered auto-ejection was just the start. Converting it to 9mmPara was a prelude. Here we have the real deal: a magazine-fed revolver handgun that takes standard cartridges. "Neva Been Dun Befoa!" It HAS been done in 20mm and 30mm autocannons for aircraft - see also the US M39 series cannons and the gun the Nazis never put into production, the Mauser MG 213. The US version seems to have used gas pressure in at least part of the cycle? I didn't deliberately try to clone these designs, I found out about them halfway through doing my critter.

Watch carefully for the flying empty shells, and count the shots as I go. There is NO editing here of any sort. Once shot #7 from the cylinder and first mag is fired, it leaves an empty shell under the hammer. No problem: stick a new mag in, it injects a live round just left of the hammer, cock it, it puts the live in front of the hammer and the empty in the auto-eject spot, fire, kicks out that empty. So you can go from mag to mag to mag without having to "reset" anything.

Yes, the video quality isn't the best - I'll do an improved version as soon as I can.

The manual ejector is gone. The barrel is multi-part: the rifled core is a 3.25" section of Douglas Premium .355" barrel threaded into the frame and with another thread at the muzzle. There's a muzzle-end nut that compresses the stainless steel sleeve, pulling the barrel forward much like a Dan Wesson revolver and like a DW, the barrel/cylinder gap can be finger-adjusted. On top of the barrel nut is a gas trap that can be spun to adjust windage as it doubles as the front sight base. The gas trap bolts to the muzzle nut with a series of set screws. The gas trap dumps ejection gasses to the rear through the original frame mount for the ejector rod. On ejection shells hit a hammer-mounted deflector instead of my right cheek as in early tests . The magazines use Wolff coil springs meant for a 32-20 levergun. Cylinder blank is by Bowen Arms, David Manson made my finish chamber reamer (wonderful smooth results!), the compression barrel sleeve is a section of handlebar from a 1980 Honda CB900c . Copper and brass bits from a local Ace Hardware . The magazine flat springs for retention are modified hacksaw blades with the teeth polished off.

The only tuning left is to the magazine latch system, and I think that will be easily fixed. The latch for the 2rd "carry mag" is already working as it is shorter than the one needed for the 9rd mags, which have to run across the face of the top shell as a retainer.

Feed and ejection reliability is now 100%!!! The only issue left is a slight slow-down in engaging the latch on the 9rd mags and I think I know how to fix that. With minor tuning and building a second 9rd mag, I will have 25rds capacity on tap reloaded at least as fast as a modern double-action revolver - probably faster if the new latch works like I think it will. This thing will be an absolute hoot and a half at a Steel Challenge or ICORE match where the rules don't yet categorically ban mag-fed revolvers, and showing up with it at a SASS match should be hilarious.

Here's the weird part: this did NOT actually start as a "Steampunk project". It just..."went there on it's own". Anybody know where I can score some brass goggles for cheap?

BIG SHOUT-OUT to http://xerocraft.org - Xerocraft in Tucson is a Hackerspace/Makerspace where you can rent shop time - as in $40/mo for nearly unlimited. They have a lathe, mill, welding bay, grinders, woodworking stuff for miles, computer geekery of every sort including a 3D printer(!) plus experiments with casting, beer-making and much, much more. "Maurice" would not have got to this point with 'em.
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Old September 30, 2013, 04:57 PM   #12
slugoo
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Jim, I've got the lead wad cutter 100gr for the 357 not the 9mm but unless it gets longer with the smaller sizeing by .002 this is what mine are length wise.
3 at 0.404
6 at 0.403
5 at 0.402
3 at 0.401
I took and spun the bullet as I measured it to get the actual size as the ends are a little bit lumpy. I got mine from pen bullets about 3 months ago so I'd call them fresh. Load mine into 357 and they are tack drivers, no leading and I crimp in the first cut. Charlie
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Old September 30, 2013, 06:26 PM   #13
Jim March
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OK, so they're basically 10mm long - like I said, just a fraction longer than their width (9mm).

Sooo...yeah. I can seat 'em a little bit "out" to get more case capacity, in which case 1,200fps *might* be possible. That would give me a power factor of 120, the minimum for Steel Challenge. And I *need* to race this weird critter against modern DA wheelguns somehow and Steel Challenge has the loosest set of rules that won't choke on Maurice right away...

Worst case if I can't run the rounds short enough to get 10 into my foot-long mags, I can run it seven first (two round mag on top of five in the cylinder) and then two mag swaps of 9rd each. 10rd mags would give me 15 out of the holster and 10 on the swap, so 25 rounds downrange with only one mag swap instead of two, a nice advantage if I can get it .
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