Well, fears, consternation and befuddlement are behind me. Before the report on today's experience I want to relate some background on the learning curve.

Firstly, choreographing dimensions has be a challenge. Case in point would be the first round of brass cases which were not going to work regardless. There is a heeled bullet involved and this requires harmony on several levels. Another point goes to the very small rim as relates to a shell holder and the functions normally associated with the loading process. End of the day, it needs to chamber in the firearm, fire and extract normally. Bullets were knurled, seated by finger pressure and then lubed. Primer pockets were uniformed with an old Lyman tool intended for that purpose, removing a very small quantity of "dust". Though the shell holder pictured previously will work for removing spent primers, the tolerance for a full size bore hole to accommodate a primer ram left questionable margins, thus was not so engineered. Exercising my barbarian mindset I placed a primer on a robust piece of brass, inserted a brass ram in the case and pulled out the hammer. Tap, tap, tap, job done, and thinking cap still in place. It was easy, but not my preferred approach.

Next on the table is powder choice. In this case I took a shotgun approach with 3 styles of powder and made my best guess on a starting point. Bullseye, 700X and Red Dot, one shot each at .7 and .8 grains for initial evaluation. Did I say that being a test pilot is never boring?

Steve Brooks made the mould with his usual attention to specs and quality, form based on a Wolf MT bullet I forwarded for consideration. You have seen the photo above and it's fair to say he did that as well and anyone could, likely better is my guess. They are cast with 30:1 alloy at 775*F and quite literally rained from the mould without encouragement. I declined to request a grease groove, mostly because production RF ammo does not have one, and relies on a variety of strategies to include copper wash, graphite/wax, grease etc. I went the knurl and grease route with an open mind.

In the following image there are 5 groups, all shot at 20 yards. Precision was not expected with the CF rounds, this was an exercise of initial evaluation of function. Starting at the top left is a series of 5 Wolf MT used to verify zero and foul the barrel. The single outlier was the first shot thru a clean barrel. Average velocity was 1056 fps with an ES of 22. Subsequent shots were grouped by powder style and fired in order of increasing charge.

Bullseye
.7 grains - 791 fps
.8 grains - 836 fps

700X
.7 grains - 877 fps
.8 grains - 924 fps

Red Dot
.7 grains - 808 fps
.8 grains - 976 fps

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After shooting the loads I saw no evidence of leading in any regard, but with intent to verify that fired 5 more rounds of Wolf MT at the center bull. Avg 1061, ES of 15 and one ragged hole made me smile. A patch thru the barrel after the session revealed powder residue but not a single spec of lead. Yes, I'm smiling.

Extraction was normal and after the fact examination tells me the cases can be reloaded without the use of size/crimp dies, though I'm uncertain of how many cycles will allow that.

Next up will come a series of 5 shot groups over the chrony with an eye on evaluating precision and a bit more velocity. My imagination tells me that something around .9-1.0 grains of powder will put this in the velocity realm of workaday match or subsonic production ammo. Likely .9 grains for the 700X and Red Dot, maybe 1.0 on the Bullseye.

On point of the powder, when I broke down the factory cases I found all with a very fine grained powder that resembled Bullseye in granulation, but with a different appearance, mostly a light green color for the Euro ammo and grey to black for US production. They were all very uniform at 1.0 grains of charge except the CCI Quiet which was .6 grains. I am reasonably certain I am using powders that are a bit slower in burn rate, but where the factory stuff was ballpark 50-60% load density, I found the Bullseye at about the same and the other powders at .8 grains to be about 80% load density. I don't know this will play on potential for precision or not, but found it somewhat interesting.

This is so simple a caveman can do it, though if you have 5 thumbs you might wind up mildly frustrated.

That is all, will be back after the next round.

DD

I am..........disturbed.

Concerning the difference between man and the jackass: some observers hold that there isn't any. But this wrongs the jackass. -Twain