how not to

[trevort]

Brad, Shane cleans his barrels with sweets. he put me onto it. Its very popular on the BR cleaning benches. Jugs carries a bottle of metho and after patching out his sweets he runs a metho soaked patch to neutralise any left. I dont know if any other br shooters do it but since he seems to win a few I copied him.

[Brad Y]

Ned, just did it and I only had to do one application of sweets to remove all copper (99%) the brush thing worked well. I did a second run to see if there was any more but it came back with stuff all on it. Cheers mate, will remember to do it more often.

Trev, I was told to get a bottle of shellite and do the same. Apparently any alcohol sort of liquid neutralises the sweets residue and it evaporates itself. I use a patch sprayed with tetra cleaner and lube spray- if you spray it on your hands its cold like metho, so must have the same properties, plus it will also protect the barrel a bit. Then a good rub with tetra oil and its ready for storage. This has worked for me so far.

[Brad Y]

Going further on the fireforming, and apologies if im hijacking your thread trev but im learning off it,

Ive just looked at the ADI data and taking what you have mentioned ned, i will be fireforming with 35gr 2206H and i will get some bulk highland 55gr soft points to shoot with them. I know this charge is very warm as the primer is just starting to develop a crater with 55gr vmax. What i find a bit worrying, is that you seat the bullets onto the lands. I would think that with the primers like they are, and the bullets seated on the lands, pressure might get a bit much. Do you wear a full face mask when doing it or secure the rifle with sandbags and sit 10m away with a bit of string on the trigger???

I think a second load up and firing may be a safer way of doing it

EDIT I suppose i can use up my shitty varmint grenades with 36.5gr of 2206H too as i dont want them for anything.

[Ned Kelly]

G'Day Brad,
I would assume (for safety) that ALL reloading manuals assume jumping bullets i.e. not have them touching the rifling.

If the ADI data says 35.5gns max of 2206h for the 22-250, I would use the 55gn bullets with 34.5gns WITH the bullets well into the lands.

Bullets into the rifling will, as a rule, increase the pressure spike, whereas, jumping bullets, upon ignition, the bullet begins to move forward with a little bit of momentum before it engraves the rifling, this forward movement helps to overcome the force needed to start the bullet in the rifling and as the pressure continues to build, with this "soft start" the bullet will continue to move along the barrel as the pressure builds.

Engraved bullets have no "soft start" and as a consequence must have a higher pressure spike in order to move the bullet AND engrave it into the rifling at the same time. It needs more pressure to overcome that inertia of the bullet plus the force needed to start it in the bore. Once it starts moving, and pressure increase in the chamber it continues on it way in the normal sequence of events.

Never use the manuals data with bullets seated long or you do risk blown primers. It is prudent to drop the charge by 1 gn. With the ppc, I know what I can get away with after 10's of thousands of rounds and many years of reloading the case.

If I mislead you i'm sorry and will go back and edit my previous reply, again sorry to cause confusion!

Hope this helps more than before!

Cheerio Ned

[Brad Y]

No mate you didnt mislead me, its actually a rare moment that i thought ahead. Ok truth be told i was on a random site before where a bloke was doing the trick with the string.

I will load up those varmint grenades onto the rifling with 35.5gr of 2206H then and with brand new brass.

Thanks mate. This might have saved me stuffing up brass (not as valuable as trevs 17fb i know) or from blowing my head off.

Cheers

[Rinso]

Brad,

Use the shellite its good for many things ie cleaning solvents from the bore, cleaning jags and bronze brushes, a tablespoon in your tumbler media will keep dust down and put a nice shine on the brass, great for cleaning dies and other reloading tools.

cheers
rinso

[Sam Walker]

Just to clarify - my earlier post was a bit brief, I don't believe that Sweets will ruin your barrel if you leave it in for a bit longer than the instructions state. I have done the same thing as Ned many times. I'm no BR shooter though. What I should have said was that you shouldn't leave it in the barrel until next time you shoot.
The last thing I wanted to do was to perpetuate an internet old wives tale !

Sam

[trevort]

Brad, Hijack away. the point of the post is a bit a self depracating humour but more importantly to help others avoid what i did. Glad its helped you.

By the way, the brass is Rem so its not the $ value that was important it was the bloody time invested in it!

[Ned Kelly]

G"day Sam,
no harm done mate!
many posts are usally writen fast and posted...........and some of us go off half cocked too when we read them

I try to read mine over and over so I write exactly what I mean only to have someone point out i haven't been clear enough!

You're right though, I wouldn't leave sweets in the barrel till the next time I used it. Ammonia absorbs water so that can't be good in a barrel for a long time, who knows it may become more reactive but in a bad way.

Any industrial chemists out there who want to way in?

I remove the sweets by dry patching, then apply a little hoppes which leaves a nice protective film when it dries out.

Cheerio Ned

[Brad Y]

Agreed trev, it looked like you spent alot of time at it. My mate here has ordered the fb as well and is going to be paying for factory ammo as he has never reloaded before, let alone necked down cases, worked out fireforming etc. Hes getting there tho, gotta give it a go with bloody ammo prices these days.

BTW mate is your nosler custom brass any good? Im thinking of going down that path with the ackley, but the remmies give you twice the brass with the same money investment.

[trevort]

I've got Nosler custom and norma, no accuracy difference between them, fired 3 times and neck sized. trimmed to uniform length after first firing. So far cant tell a difference.

I started my post with the correct way to form the brass from 221. Its easy. My adventure should show that a relative newb can still still get there after stuffing it but if you are told what to do its easy. If he wants he can send me a fired case and 100 221 fb brass and I can form some for him with a template to measure from (now that I know how to!). at 2,50 a shot I refused to buy factory ammo.

[Brad Y]

well he is on here, but doenst post. If he sees this offer and is interested, he may take you up on it. I might just stick with the remmys, I have all the tools to prep them, just dont bother neck turning as im not using the gun for BR, just wanna smack foxes out to 400m.