sabotloader

I have no real reason why but today I decided I wanted to do some Western Shooting, open sights, percussion caps, and full bore conicals.

I chose to use some Bloodline .500x325 gr. bullets. The bullets are slightly to small to fit the bore of the Ultra-Lite, so I do have to knurl them by hand to create enough lift on the bullet to have it hold in the barrel. But the best part is without sabots I really did not have to worry that much about the ambient temperatures and/or the heat of the barrel.

When I got to the Rock Pit, I set up 6 birds on the Basalt rock wall 100 yards down the pit. The rifle had already been sighted in so I was confident of its ability to hit the birds.

Here is a few pictures that show the shoot. It was so much fun I did end up setting a second set of birds and picking them off also. One thing I need to work on is my knurling. Some bullets loaded with much less pressure than others so I would like to come up with a more equal method of knurling. I was not concerned about gas pressure as I was loading the bullet on top of a MMP sub-bridge to act as a wad. The bridges have worked very well for me with any conical that I shoot including full bore lead conicals.



It was fun morning and I did get to shoot!!

Semisane

Sabotloader, I would imagine that 110 grains T7 3F with that bullet gives you a pretty respectable shove on the shoulder.

You might check with some of your local machine shops. One of them may have a knurling machine. I doubt they would charge much to knurl a bunch of bullets.

super_hunt54

Or you can pick up a hand crank knurling machine. It aint cheap but it does a great job. Not sure what the brand is, I think it starts with a C but again I'm not sure. Couple of old timers I know that mold their own conni's use it. But I don't know if it will work for a copper jacketed bullet.

Gm54-120

Corbins knurling tool is insanely expensive AND would require the hardened steel roller upgrade for this application. A spare set of bearings would also be advisable. Corbin actually does NOT recommend using the HCT-2 for jacketed bullets.

http://www.corbins.com/hct-2.htm
HCT-2 --------- Lead Bullet Knurling Tool (22-72 cal) --------- 179.00
HCT-2HC ------- Custom hard roller knurling tool -------------- 350.00

sabotloader

Yes, I had check both of them out and a couple of others. All designed for lead applications.

Need to check out Semi's suggestion around here.

Gm54-120

Absolutely, a machine shop should have knurling attachments. Ive seen the parts available online from several vendors.

Triple Se7en

I wear medium-strength bifocals and have always devoted one centerfire and one ML to open sights hunting. I have harvested out to 150 yards with ML (cheap Buffalo SSB) and 220 yards (cheap Federal 130 grain SP) using my .270, both off-handed using non fiber-optics and non-peep.

If my shaky hands can do it without knurling bullets or buying custom bullets, I reckon most-others can also. Give it some practice time first, before spending money to fix what ain't broke yet.

sabotloader

Really not sure what you are talking about here... the bullets are knurled so that they grip the bore going down and especially on the way out of the bore to get the rotation they need. Without the additional knurling they would just drop to the bottom of the barrel.

So I am not sure what eyesight has to do with that process at all????

Gm54-120

You got me too. Im not sure what it has to do with shooting a 50cal bullet in a 50cal ML without a sabot (obviously).

sabotloader

I guess I never said sabotlessly in the original post, just assumed people would know what I was doing - so maybe it is my error.