Lee Loader

Glad you found ways to bring and old rifle back to life.

Nice work! I'm glad you kept with it.

I'm wondering about that 8" horizontal string. Do you think the rounds are hitting the side of the chamber and bending? Have you extracted a chambered round and then measured run out? Have you tweaked the mag feed lips? Not trying to be critical, but just throwing out some ideas.

Interesting that a few cork pads could make that much difference. The Mosin rifle guys swear by cork pads at certain points. My son did his and it's a tack driver.

Your success has motivated me to get back on my Enfield project. I epoxy bedded the stock and then lost interest before firing a shot. I keep looking for a major flaw, but likely the devil is in the details as you have shown.

Great pic with the hog. That rifle looks small, light, and handy.

klr wrote:Nice work! I'm glad you kept with it.

I'm wondering about that 8" horizontal string. Do you think the rounds are hitting the side of the chamber and bending? Have you extracted a chambered round and then measured run out? Have you tweaked the mag feed lips? Not trying to be critical, but just throwing out some ideas.

I have no doubt that runout is being induced by chambering but as the target suggests, it is something that happens about 50% of the time so it would be a lengthy process of loading, extracting, measuring, reloading, and shooting. There is no doubt that the magazine feed lips might cure it but the problem is how little of the bullet is seated in the case.



As the image indicates, only .215" of the Speer is seated vs. .309" of the PPU. Increasing the seating depth of the Speer increases the feed issues and even when chambered by hand, increases the group MOA as the gap the bullet jumps increases. The best fix if there were no other options would be to mess with the magazine. I've shot 185 of the Speer bullets I have and want to save the rest for my No. 4 when it returns so will limit further development with this rifle to cast. As I typed the above it caused me to remember something I read or was told concerning bullet seating depth as it relates to cast bullets in that you tend to slide the bullet forward to gain bore/ogive contact; "bullets needs to be seated at least a caliber". Even though it is a jacketed bullet. I wonder if that is in play here.

klr wrote:Great pic with the hog. That rifle looks small, light, and handy.

Thanks! Off to try to get on that hunt!

Ranch Dog wrote:Thanks! Off to try to get on that hunt!

Well, that didn't work out. Wasn't drawn but I enjoyed the drive over and back as I crossed some of favorite country hear in South Texas. So that's it, hunting season is over. Didn't kill a deer this year. All I saw on my place were too young to shoot.

Ranch Dog wrote:

Ranch Dog wrote:Thanks! Off to try to get on that hunt!

Well, that didn't work out. Wasn't drawn but I enjoyed the drive over and back as I crossed some of favorite country hear in South Texas. So that's it, hunting season is over. Didn't kill a deer this year. All I saw on my place were too young to shoot.

That stinks. I was so busy this past year that I didn't even go hunting once.

The only deer I got was a huge buck - But it was with my car.

Anyway, I wouldn't want to rely on that .215 seating depth either. When I chamber those 150 gr rounds I have to work the bolt quickly or else the round goes nose up and catches the chamber.

I'll be interested to see how those long cast bullets do with your improved bedding.