A Colts carbine saga .

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RBHarter
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A Colts carbine saga .

Post by RBHarter »

This is a complex story ,so if you nod off I understand completely.
Many years ago I owned a Marlin 1895C in 38/357 and it shot everything the old S&W M10 and Ruger Sec 6 shot well even better and 400fps faster . It did this out as far as I ever tried to shoot it ........it would appear that it was unique and I was just lucky.

2013 February .
After 10 yr of " are there never any 45 Colts rifles around when I have money " it all came together. A brand new shiny Braztec M92' 16" . I asked if there was perhaps another with more bbl and learned that the Browning sister with 20" was $200 more than I was willing to pay and nearly 500 more than the Rosschester I took home .
My lay off road trek adventures were to start in a few days so I didn't get to fool with it but just loaded 100 Colts classic with 452-252 SWC and the 452-255 RNFP and grabbed the BlackHawk hunting loads and I was off with plans to meet Ms at hog camp .
I shot the rifle the 1st time at another forum Rondy and with a sight bump the Colts deference loads were good to go . I banged all the steel , it was all under 75 yd but I was shooting a zero round count strange to me gun off hand and thrilled to be drilling the little 6" plates .
I get to hog camp a month later and slap the Ruger start loads with the huge SWC in it and check the sights ......... 5 rounds in a 2ft arc a foot off the bull........ The deference loads loads shot 2" and I figured that at 800 from the 7.5" Ruger I should get over 1100 fps so that would do. It did 3x from powder burn to 47 yd .

Back home I loaded up several different loads and found that the 252 just wasn't going to play well . As good fortune would have it a 454424 Lyman fell in my lap and it shot very well in in the rifle and as well as I do in the Ruger .
We had tags so the handy little carbine got shelved until hog camp was coming up along with 2 spring shoots . The shoots found me using up the pistol odds and ends to empty boxes and brass to clean up the shelves . I had about a 75 yd hog shot on a pretty good pig but missed blaming my blind mate for leaving me in the dark .
At the 2nd spring shoot I found that at 75 yd my groups just weren't what they should be but my shooting was off also , you know good days and bad days ,it was a horrible weekend .

2016
Hogs died at the business end of the little carbine and the new to us 20" as well.

At the 2nd spring shoot it was hot , but so was I . So I boldly stepped up to the Mystery range target and played the Ky windage and the shots were going bizarrely high at what would turn out to be 197 yd . I moved to the 400yd berm ,what the heck I've got like 4ft of free hold over .... Shots were unmarkable .
I went back to the 100 yd range and borrowed a rest . 25,50 were little clusters , not match grade but well inside 3" . At 75 yd even palmed on a sand bag teacup saucers were in a lot of trouble . At about 78 yd everything goes sideways and the results are the same in both rifles . Well that was the 1st weekend June it took me until late July to not be cussing every time I thought about them .

Apparently the Marlin 38/357 has a faster twist like 1-16 and being only a 357 diameter and starting out at almost 1600 fps has something to do with being able to hit an 8" plate at 325 yd .
Back to the Colts 1300 fps is as good as it gets and .14-.18 BC don't help . According to the Strelok app and live Chrony numbers 1150 fps hits at about 70 yd and so by 80 yd the bullets are in full curve ball tumble .
Why did the deference loads shoot ? Because they were never super sonic and as it turns out only just into the fringe from the 20" bbl . The supersonic loads would shoot better if the twist were say 1-20 but it is 1-30 so we do what we have to work with .

The solution is to push the aerodynamics or the rifling to its limits . Those familiar with large caliber know that some things just can't happen to a 45 cal bullet. Like a spire point under 350 gr and of course the Colts low pressure rating helps (sarcasm) .

I was gifted a 458-340 RNFP . It drops at 353 gr from my pistol alloy . Now data is nonexistent for anything over 325 . So I adopted if it's too slow to burn 100% you can't blow it up . ......... A fellow elsewhere took my numbers and ran my powders through Quick Load also . Turns out I was on the right track ....... Rather ironic that s super heavyweight Colts could end up shooting the same load and powder as the 6.8 Rem in an AR.....

This is still under investigation but I may be able to get over 1000 fps with the 353gr bullet keep it stable and be under the Colts maximum pressure . The current work up has round holes at 25 yd but was well under the 100% load and without the Chrony numbers 600 fps is only a guess.

At the end if all of the numbers hold up I should be able to shoot a 100 yd group group with either of the rifles ,which is actually all I wanted anyway , and have a real bone crusher as a bonus .

Stay tuned for more .
Just a Red neck,White boy, Blue blood American.....
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Re: A Colts carbine saga .

Post by RBHarter »

The Strelok prediction with details .
This is actually a nice graphic but when it gets converted it is just print and the headers and lines just become a single line rather than columns.

Slope angle, degrees: 0.0

Cartridge: 45 Colts heavy

Bullet weight, grains: 353.0

Bullet speed, f/s: 1050.0
at temperature, °F: 85.0
Temperature coefficient, %: 2.5

Ballistic coefficient (G1): 0.2539

Rifle: Rosschester

Zero Distance, yards: 50.0

Scope height, inches: 0.8

Vert. click, inch@100yards: 0.262 (0.25 MOA)

Hor. click, inch@100yards: 0.262 (0.25 MOA)

Zeroing weather. Disabled

Weather

Altitude, feet: 4000.0

Temperature, °F: 90.0

Pressure, inHg: 25.45

Wind speed, mph: 0.0

Wind direction, degrees: 90.0

1050 muzzle velocity
Yards. Speed. FTLBS POI. Drift
25.0 1036.7 842.7. -0.63. 0.0
50.0. 1019.7 815.2. 0.00. 0.0
75.0 1003.6 789.7. 2.72. 0.0
100.0 988.8 766.6. 7.52. 0.0
125.0 974.7 744.9. 14.57. 0.0
150.0 961.3. 724.5 23.94. 0.0
175.0. 948.5 705.3. 35.71. 0.0
200.0 936.4 687.4 49.88. 0.0

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Re: A Colts carbine saga .

Post by Steve »

Too early for me to jump into this one. Looks like you spent some time on it and I will be back.
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Re: A Colts carbine saga .

Post by RBHarter »

Well the new phone won't let me resize the pictures so they can be posted .....

I shot the load today at
20.0 H322
Winchester neck sized brass
CCI Lg Pistol Magnum
CCI Lg Pistol Standard

The Chrony shows
791,758,785,846,882,820,728 .

This lends itself to needing to do a batch of brass just for this ,maybe some of that new brass I've been hording . Mag primers are in order also it appears . There were few "mummies" in the Magnum primed cases which were also faster . I have room for 22 gr so there's room and pressure left to grow .
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Re: A Colts carbine saga .

Post by Ranch Dog »

RBHarter wrote:Well the new phone won't let me resize the pictures so they can be posted .....
What phone do you have?
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Re: A Colts carbine saga .

Post by RBHarter »

A brand new Droid Z ...... It simply lacks the resize function of the Samsung and Droid predecessors . I'll have to take pics from farther away and crop more off of them is all . I hope .
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Re: A Colts carbine saga .

Post by Ranch Dog »

RBHarter wrote:A brand new Droid Z ...... It simply lacks the resize function of the Samsung and Droid predecessors . I'll have to take pics from farther away and crop more off of them is all . I hope .
Yeah, most of the new phones with HD cameras have a 2MiB minimum size so you have to use any of the photo album apps to control images. That's not a bad thing because most of us are not going to print pictures and your phone will experience the same problem as the forum, storage, unless you are downloading the images off of it.

The image size restrictions on the forum where put in place to save money. As it was going, images were being taken at a HD phone's typical max size of 5Mib and posted. Heck, there were many 5Mib avatars! It doesn't take long to break the bank as storage has a cost.

For the forum financially, the sizing of pictures has done the trick. We are close to making budget through donations but we are not going to quite need the full budget for the year as sizing down pictures has worked and will remain in place. Of course, any donation funds not used this year will be directly applied to next year's operation.

My phone has the 2Mib minimum size so I got an app but ended up bringing my last stand alone digital camera out of retirement. I keep it in my reloading room, range bag, or hunting pack. It takes better pictures than even my HD phone can but it takes them at the output size I desire.

Oh, the forum's photo size limit is 240Kib. I think that is listed in the forum information I posted.
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Re: A Colts carbine saga .

Post by GasGuzzler »

I have several operational cameras with less resolution than my iPhone 6 and one DSLR with more that seems useless. I use hosting.
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Re: A Colts carbine saga .

Post by RBHarter »

Picture success . This is Winchester 45 Colts brass trimmed to 1.284 with a Lee 457-340 that drops from 75/25 WW /1-20 at 353 gr .
IMG_20160911_095512309_HDR.jpg
I'm using Win LPP in place of a preferred CCI large pistol magnum .
The load data program help says Unique to 8.0 gr will only run 20 kpsi . I preferred to keep the pressure down closer to Colts level in case someone slips 1 of these in a revolver ,the BlackHawk would handle it ok .

On to results .
The first loads were behind the 340 cast of 80/20 , 1-20/WW and water dropped ( mostly because I dropped a pound of WW in my BP pot ) top loads suggest cutting and leading from the last load buried the lands at the muzzle but was streaked back 12" or so. So the new batch is my rifle alloy 75/25 WW-1-20 . Water cooled this yields an 18 bhn that settles down to a hard 16 .
Initial loads were run up in .5 gr of H322 starting at 19 and ending at 23 gr . 22.5 was the last load that would meet and keep the OAL limit without a crimp .
19.5 .......... 855 fps
20.0 .......... 875
21.0 .........1195
21.5..........1225
22.0..........1255
22.5..........1275
23.0..........1280

This batch is loaded with the harder bullet and hopefully will give me what I'm looking for. +guns
Nice round holes on a target at 100 yd . I'll take a dice group of 5 touching at 50 for the moment .
The new batch is just 3 loads of 5 at 20.5,20.8 and 21.1 .
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