meles meles

Well oomans, it was good to meet a few of you up at Eskdalemuir yesterday. We were mightily impressed by that .416 Barrett ! Rounds like milk churns and way more accurate than any .5 Browning we have seen. Tad noisy though, and the muzzle blast blew over all the spent 7.62x54R cases we had carefully lined up on our firing point even though we were 6 benches away ! We'll be very interested to see how it gets on at the King of 2 Miles competition.

Warm water will increase the rate of the reactions going on in the cleaning solution: not necessarily a bad thing. Arrhenius (google 'im) showed that increasing the temperature of a reaction by ten degrees doubles the rate at which it proceeds. Hence if you use boiling water to make tea you only need to have your tea floarting around in the pot for a few minutes before its ready to drink whereas if you use cold water it will take several hours to attain a decent strength brew. The process is reversible too, every 10 degree reduction in temperature halves the reaction rate, hence why we chill or even freeze food to slow down the decay. Using warm water when you clean cases will speed up the reaction between the acid and the brass, making the process faster. However, if you clean for the same length of time as you did with cold water then you'll potentially leach away a little of the zinc from the surface of the brass.

Any of you oomans popping up to Eskdalemuir this Sunday to perforate the 2 mile target? We'll be there, so come and say 'hello' if you see us and partake of a mince pie or two. Helen's promised good weather...

https://www.midwayusa.com/product/1018134176 Eley Contact...

Give 'im a chance, ooman. x47 is but a babe in arms whereas 6.5x55 Norsqueagian is into its third century of nailing the bull's eye...

We're currently listing 'Erosive/ corrosive wear of steel under extreme conditions of temperature and pressure' as a Master's Thesis at the Badgerkademy. If a student takes it up we'll be happy to share the results. Bald apes are a big brained species so we'd expect some good findings...

If you have access to them, Eley Contact are reliably subsonic and extremely accurate in all the rifles we have tried them in. In the UK at least they are low cost too !

Dear Popsbengo, Pertaining to muzzle wear, we wrote 'should it occur', not that it would occur. Muzzle wear is far less likely to occur than throat wear, accidental damage and corrosion being far more common but, as lapua says, it usually has a far greater effect. Most of the damage we have seen at the muzzle of a firearm tends to arise from botched attempts to fit or remove a moderator or muzzle brake (or bayonet), or poor cleaning - often due to a moderator being left in place and an accumulation of hygroscopic combustion products then giving rise to corrosion*. Yours, Professor Badger * We aren't a corrosion scientist or a tribologist either, but we do hang out with them occasionally...

Might we offer a few observations, ooman ? We'll begin with some caveats. First of all, we aren't a gunsmith; We may get shot down by those on here who don't have a pawful of metallurgy degrees; Our opinion is worth exactly what you paid for it. Technically the barrel life will be shorter as you've already used some of it up. Now the linguistic pedantry is out of the way, let's think about reality. Throat erosion occurs at the throat because that's the part of the barrel that sees the worst of the service conditions: basically high temperatures and pressures. The metal is, in a typical rifle, subject to pressures of 50,000 psi or more and temperatures in excess of 2,500 K. The weakest points of the iron from which the barrel is primarily made are the grain boundaries where there will be segregation of tramp elements as well as the intended, desirable, alloying elements. These, particularly phosphorus and sulphur compounds, will have lower melting points than iron and will try and melt. Probably succeed too. That's why the throat develops the 'crazy paving' look as it wears. This wear accelerates as the high temperature and pressure exploit these weaknesses, eventually causing metal grains to scab off. Once the throat is eroded, chopping it out and setting back the barrel brings fresher, less affected, steel into play again and the erosion has to re-start. Barrel life is thus prolonged in that sense. You may be able to set back the barrel several times depending on how long it was initially and what final velocity you require from it. Now consider this too. Maybe throat erosion doesn't matter as much as you think it does. Yes, throat erosion will increase the jump to the lands, and perhaps the initial pressure in the cartridge case and so forth. Somebody will be along in a moment to tell us all about that. They will probably be mostly correct too. However, if you aren't trying to eke out the highest possible muzzle velocity and aren't an Olympic marks'ooman, maybe the gun is still accurate enough for you. Wear and erosion at the muzzle, should it occur, is far worse than at the throat. Even with a worn throat, the bullet will still be gripped by the good rifling further up the bore, centred and rotated. It will still exit the muzzle and spin on its way to the target at a goodly speed. Paradox guns only had a few inches of rifling at the muzzle and were fit for purpose. *Bolts down into the sett, prepares for incoming...*

Many thanks for all these excellent contributions ! It seems as though we'll be full length sizing every time and "annealing" * very often... * Stress relieving

Now that a little time has elapsed, do you have any further thoughts on the.224 Valkyrie, Baldie? Which rifle do you prefer to use it with, this or the AR ?

Our 597 was tuned by Baldie and now eats almost anything and spits it out very accurately. Ely Contact and CCI Standard seem particularly accurate in it and neither are too expensive.

A few of us have engaged the 1000 yard target there with black powder Martini Henry .577s ! Cratered the ground all around it...

We've never yet missed the hill there ! Even hit the 1 mile target when we had a go with Popsbengo's rifle...

'Tis the law that prevails, not the whim of Mr Plod.

Excellent as ever, and we rather like the subtlety of that paint job too...

Creedmoor ? Raises ikkle snout and harrumphs. "Good old 6.5x55 Norsqueagian can use its extra case capacity and put that nouveau vite upstart in its place..."

The law requires the calibre to be stated, not the chamber dimensions.

Depending upon which forum or reloading manual one consults, either neck sizing only is the bee's knees, or full length sizing is the best thing for accuracy since sliced bread. Our thoughts are to neck size (.338 Lapua Magnum being the case in question) with an occasional full length size if cases start showing a reluctance to chamber. From what we have read, the arguments for neck sizing being more kind to the brass, and giving more consistent results because the case is formed to the chamber firing it, sound reasonable.

Statistically, three shots are really just a loose association, and five just about constitutes a gang.

It's a generally established fact that it's faster to go for the sidearm under such circumstances than try and reload, ooman. In places that let you have a sidearm, that is...

We use Hawkes on our .22 Winchester Magnum and .22LR rifles and have been very satisfied with them... Not up with the Zeiss and Pecar scopes we have on our centrefires, but then nowhere the price either and certainly good enough for the ranges and light conditions at which we shoot .22 rimfires

Bagsy ! 🙋‍♂️

Dolphin Guns offer Joe West riflestocks on their rifles and very good they are too !

In our M48 we prefer a gentler load as we tend to shoot it only at 300 and 600 mards. A 165 grain cast bullet with 18 grains of Alliant 2400 does the job nicely.