The .277 Lee bullet mold arrived today, and I was casting bullets pretty quickly. That went quite well. Then it was simply a matter of cutting them to the right length to get a 70gr bullet; as cast the were 130gr. (They were also dead-on at .277 out of the mold.) Fortunately I Had a Cunning Plan.

The bullet cutter is an aluminum block with holes in it and a tool-steel blade attached. Put the cutter in the vice, drop the as-cast bullet in the hole and tap the cutter with a hammer. The end of the bullet shears off and goes back in the lead pot. The remaining bullet gets poked out from underneath with a 1/8″ punch. Works a treat. I bored two holes, one the correct length for a 70gr. bullet and one for a 60gr. bullet.

I made a number of 60 and 70gr bullets. I loaded the 60gr. bullets over 2.2gr of Unique, and the 70gr. bullets over 2.0gr of Red Dot. I set up my much-abused gel blocks, put the chronograph in front of them and fired some test shots and took an average of five shots. The results were, um, instructive.

70gr. Bullet / 2.0gr. of Red Dot

5 shots produced an average velocity of 996 fps. with an extreme spread of 44 fps. This makes 154 ft./lbs. Reasonably close to my 1100 fps. goal. Bullets penetrated 14-3/4″ average into the gel. Rifling marks were deep and clean. However I will not be developing this load. Of the five shots two primers got hole and one blew clean out of the case! Red Dot is not the right powder for this application; I used it because I am practically out of Unique.

60gr. Bullet / 2.2gr. of Unique

5 shots produced an average velocity of 1163 fps. with an extreme spread of 31 fps. This produces 180 ft./lbs. This is very close to my target of 188 ft./lbs. Bullets penetrated 14-15″ into the gel. Rifling marks were deep and clean. Good load; shame I’m almost out of Unique. Primers were fine.

Both loads locked the slide back on the empty magazine; I loaded one round at a time because of the lack of an extractor-spring. More load development will be forthcoming, but powder supplies are limited and I’m almost out of small pistol primers.

So it looks like I will have no trouble making my power target. The jury is out on whether I will be able to do it with a 70gr. bullet. Have to try some other powders when or if they become available. Until then I will be jealously guard my few remaining primers to that end.

Stay safe and take care,

Michael Tinker Pearce, 6 May 2022

I have never cast bullets before today. After trying various ways of producing 6.8mm bullets- successful but stupidly labor intensive and expensive- I decided casting was the only way to get what I needed. Reluctantly. Very, very reluctantly. I’ve always used cast bullets, but never wanted to open the can of worms that is casting them myself.

Amazon had the mold I needed and it will arrive tomorrow. At Pinto’s today I came across a used Lee .452/130gr. mold for $20. I snagged it and my pal Steve offered a surplus Lee Production lead pot. Naturally I had to try it out.

I had some bullets I’d bought that tended to keyhole and some .36-caliber balls I got cheap. I tossed them in with some lead-free solder (tin, antimony and a whiff of silver) and…

…realized that I had no idea what heat setting I should use on the lead pot. I set it to 5 and waited to see what happened. What happened was the lead and solder melted. OK, working as intended. I had a stick to tap the sprue-cutter and knock out any sticky bullets.

I tried some pours to heat the mold and it seemed to work. I would pour, whack the sprue-cutter to cut the sprue off and opened the mold over a bucket of water. After a while the things coming out of the mold looked like bullets. I made a couple dozen and shut things down.

I fished the bullets out of the water and looked them over. Hmm…

OK, that’s not right. I checked with folks online and this is, as I suspected, symptomatic of either the mold or the lead being too cold. I bet on the lead; it seems like the mold would have been hot enough at some point. After dinner I turned on the lead pot and set the temp at 9 out of ten and waited for the lead to melt. Taking another suggestion from friends online I also set the mold on the edge of the pot to pre-heat.

I made several pours to heat the mold, then made about thirty bullets. 19 of them were fine, but the ones that weren’t displayed issues similar but less severe than the earlier bullets. I expect that as the lead continued to heat the bullets got better and better.

The came out at .452″ diameter and an average weight of .188 grains and look pretty good. They are hard; I have no way of measuring how hard they actually are beyond saying they’re very hard.

It’s a learning experience

So I now know to set the temp higher and give the lead more time to fully heat. Pre-heating the mold also seems to have been useful. Tomorrow night after the 6.8mm bullet molds arrive I can start casting and see how that goes. It will be interesting if nothing else…

Stay safe and take care,

Michael Tinker Pearce, 5 May 2022

I know, I know, but I’m having fun. OK, last week I ordered a .270 Winchester rifle barrel (which has a .277″ bore) and I ordered .278″ and .315″ reamers. Yesterday the barrel and .315″ reamer arrived and I headed into the shop. I worked on it until 10PM before retiring for the night.

Now, when I was working on the 7.8mm conversion I had issues with the liner, so I figured the less I had to line the better. I put the barrel from the Maadi Helwan in the lathe and bored the first two inches from the breech to .432″. I cut the barrel at the end of the locking block and called it a night.

When I picked it up this afternoon I cut a section of the .270 barrel, chucked it up in the lathe and turned the barrel down to .590″ (about the diameter of the original barrel) then turned down one end to .432 to fit into the breech. I pressed it onto the breech/locking block with red Loctite, then bored through the block and pinned the barrel in place. I cleaned it up and blued the result with Oxpho Blue. The locking lugs had peened (as they seem to do on all Helwans sooner or later,) but this is meant to be a straight-blowback so I simply ground them off and filed them flat to the sides of the breech.

I put the .315″ reamer in the hand-drill and ram it against the belt-sander to create a reduced section to act as a pilot and then bored the chamber on the drill-press, checking carefully to make sure I got the depth of the chamber right. I also cut a feed-ramp into the breech with a stone grinder in a Dremel. Finally I cut and filed the barrel flush with the end of the slide because I like the look. I crowned the barrel afterwards of course.

I assembled the gun, inserted the magazine, hit the slide release and it neatly chambered a round! I was as gobsmacked as I was grateful; knowing it should work in theory is one thing; seeing it do it is another. As I expected the extractor is a bit short to pull cases from the chamber reliably, but allowing for that it was able to hand-cycle rounds from the magazine. YES! I’ll be making a new extractor to accommodate the narrower cartridge. Hopefully I won’t need to modify the breech-face.

One thing left to try. I chambered a round, aimed at the ballistic gel block and…

…click. Crap. I re-struck the primer and got another click for my trouble. Full of misgivings with worst-case scenarios racing through my mind I pulled the round and checked the primer. Nice, deep dimple. Bad primer. With palpable trepidation I loaded another round, pulled the trigger.

BANG!

Whew! The slide recoiled far enough to cock the hammer and tried to load another round. It couldn’t of course, as the fired case was still in the chamber. OK, I knew I needed to fix that extractor. Polishing the chamber is also on the agenda… it’s a bit sticky on the fired brass.

So, it’s almost there.

So how did the 58gr. bullet over 2.2gr. of Unique do? Well, it had a significant bang and seemed to make the slide work- two more shots seem to verify this. It feeds from the magazine so that’s another milestone passed.

So What’s Next?

First thing will be the new extractor; I plan to make it out of tool steel and give it a spring-temper. Polishing the chamber after that. I expect I’ll need to modify the ejector; I’ll probably also have to alter the slide to accommodate that.

The next thing to address is ammo. I’ve got a set-up to cobble together ammo, but that’s not going to work for producing enough for ballistic testing. I also need bullets; I’ll probably convert some rifle-bullets. I also have a pal making me some molds for casting bullets. With the bullets cast hard they ought to be alright.

The smart thing to do would be to start with 5.7×28 reloading dies and work from there, so I’ll see about that. They aren’t common and can be pretty expensive, but hopefully I can come up with some.

The barrel is currently 4-1/4″ long; I intend the cartridge for more compact pistols but I have to work with what I have. I examined the possibility of shortening this gun to 3-1/2″ long, but I don’t like the odds of that working out.

Anyway, that’s where I’m at this evening. Good progress, but some distance to go.

Stay safe and take care,

Michael Tinker Pearce, 1 May 2022