Home Forums Reloading Bullet Casting 35 Whelen and 286 Gr RNs

Here is the issue as i see it from my experience.

you need to get your bullets a tad harder, I would water drop them from the mould and that should do the trick.

I had the same problem with my 35 whelen, tried lots of stuff. Turns out my alloy was a bit soft. I water quenched them and went from 4" groups to 1" groups with that being the ONLY thing I changed.

I bought the 286's. When I setup for casting an Accurate mold will be ordered. Thinking a .400 length gas check to crimp groove to keep the check in the neck, then bore riding forward with a big flat point. Not fixed on 286 gr maybe 250/255 gr.

The 286s will get paperpatched to 9.3 for my TCR barrel in 9.3X74 Longer neck, 1/14 twist, a smidge smaller case capacity.

Send em to me, my Whelen has a 10" twist and loves long heavy boolits.

Have you checked the throat on your rifle? I'm pretty sure when Remington standardized the 35 Whelen they gave it a long throat. Cast bullets generally don't work well with a long jump to the rifling, so you might try to seat out the bullets to get them closer to the rifling. From memory the throat length was around 3/8". As you have a Rem 700 you should have plenty of mag length to play with.

Covered that in detaii. Anything short of crimped over the top groove WILL NOT CHAMBER. That is the issue! A reversed gas checked bullet throat gauge I made stops with half of the gas check in and half out of the case neck.
My gun seems to be nearly without a throat! The gun is a stock 1988 Classic M-700. Shoots jacketed and pistol bullets really well, just not the Berthas, they seem pretty hard most probably WWs did not ask the alloy, as I bought them from our Guru Lee Stoner.

Did I ever tell you about my grandpa's mules? Can't imagine why that sprang to mind.