NEAL KNOX Editor and Publisher

DAVE WOLFE Executive Editor

RALPH TANNER, JR. Director of Sales

DAVE LeGATE Art Director

LYNDA RITTER Editorial Assistant

RICHARD L. ALDIS Staff Photographer

JOYCE BUETER Circulation Manager

TERRY B U ETER Circulation

WANDA HALL Accounting

BARBARA PlCKERlNG Production Supervisor

JANA KOSCO Executive Secretary

TECHNICAL E D I T O R S

BOB HAGEL CLAY HARVEY WALLACE LABISKY AL MILLER MAJ. GEORGE C. NONTE, JR. HOMER POWLEY KEN WATERS DON ZUTZ

P u b l i s h e d by Wolfe P u b l i s h i n g Co Inc Dave W o l f e P res iden t

Handloader The Journal of Ammunition Reloading

January-February 1978 Vol. 13 -No. 1 Box 30-30, Prescot t . Arizona 86302

FEATURES:

Plan for NRA Ranges.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Neal Knox Solving the 'Super' .38 Mystery. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Bill Corson Another View of the Mystery.. ........................ Dave LeGate Pet Loads for the .41 Magnum.. ....................... Ken Waters The Virginian, A New .44 Magnum. .................... Clay Harvey NL's New Magnum Shot.. ........................ Wallace Labisky Zinc Bullet Police Loads.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Leon Day .22 Short Krag - A Budget Wildcat.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . Stephen Hopkins Measuring Head Expansion.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Bob Hagel Analyzing Shotgun Patterns.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Lex Wilkinson

11 20 23 24 27 30 32 34 38 40

DEPARTMENTS: Editorial.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Tip toTip.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Reader By-Lines.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Answers Please.. . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Lock, Stock & Barrel.. . . . . . . . . 10 Cartridgeof the Month.. . . . . . . 53 Loading the Old Ones.. . . . . . . . 12 ProducTests.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62

Propellant Profiles.. . . . . . . . . . . 66

The Handloader, Copyright 1976. is published bimonthly by the Wolfe Publishing Company. Inc.. P.0 Box 3030, Prescott. Arizona 66302. (Also publisher of Rifle Magazme.) Telephone (602) 445-7610. Second Class Postage paid at Prescott, Arizona, and additional mailing offlces. Subscription prices: U.S. possessions and Canada - single issue, $1.50; 6 issues. $7.75; 12 issues, $13.00: 16 issues. $17.00. Foreigh - single issue. $1.75: 6 issues, $9.00: 12 issues, $15.00; 18 issues. $20.00. Advertlsing rates furnished on request. All rights reserved

Publisher of Handloader is not responsible for mishaps of any nature which might occur from use of published loading data. or from recornmendations by any member of The Staff. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written permission from the editor. Manuscnpts from free-lance writers must be accompanied by Stamped

F.

self-addressed envelope and the publisher cannot accept responsibility for lost or muttlated manuscripts.

Change of address' Please glve SIX weeks' notice Send both old and new address, plus mailing label If possible. to Circulation Dept.. Handloader Magazine, P.O. Box 3030, @ Prescott. Arizona 66302.

'..-,.++ D".l.l. ........

YOUR JANUARY-FEBRUARY COVER

The new lnterarrns Virginian Dragoon (center) is f lanked by two popular big-bores - the Model 57 S&W .41 Mag (top) and the Ruger Super Blackhawk .44 Magnum. The Virginian is the f i rst f i rearm bui l t i n the State of Virginia s ince the Civil War, and the .44 Magnum on the cover i s the f i rst 12-inch model of f the product ion line. See Clay Harvey's test report on page 27. Photo by Richard Aldis.

4 HANDLOADER Magazine

velocity levels, a gas-check isn’t redly necessary. Hence, I did little with either 311316 or 313359, which not only has a gas-check, but also a long pointed nose. If not carefully loaded, it can bring headaches.

My thanks to Mr. Waters for an article I really enjoyed.

Donaldson Book .a2 Long Lover

and have only read a couple of Donaldson’s “Yours truly’’ columns, but I liked what I read. Please let us know what to expect.

Greenville, Pennsylvania

expeclotions, and we me now working on the book. It will contain all of the “Yours truly” columns, plus many letters of a technical natwre that have never been puMished. Watch for a pre-publication announcement. - DR W

reliable 31 48, used i 313492 (of course), Reader response has exceeded 3359 and , 6,

Clinton H. Wallace Mazomanie, Wisconsin

Cast Bullets Need Help

The article “Seating Cast Bullets” by A1 Miller in Handloader No. 70 is excellent and covers most of the pitfalls; however, there are some seating tools that help alleviate the problems. I use a tool made by Con Schmitt in the 30’s in which the case enters the die completely before the bullet is seated by a floating plunger. Bonanza’s Bench Rest seating die is constructed much the same way and works in a conventional bench press. Lyman’s Deluxe seating dies have a floating collar that keeps the case and bullet in alignment while being pushed into the seating die. Cast bullets are fun, but they need all the help and care that we can give them.

Thanks for an excellent magazine on handloading.

Walter Y. Eakeman Saint Paul, Minnesota

Saved: One Sizing Die Some years back in his Handloader

column, Major George Noate suggested that a burred sizing die might be returned to useful service by spinning a strip of crocus cloth through the die with a Mot0 Tool.

That advice came to mind last weekend. I was running some .38 Special cases through a carbide sizing die when I noticed that deep scratches were showing up. I used a four-inch piece of a spoke from a bicycle wheel and a % by 1 inch strip of extra fine emery cloth. I let the strip spin over the carbide insert for a few seconds. It worked fine. The cases came from the die with a fine professional burnish.

I am guessing that the insert picked up particles from the nickel on the cases and when the accumulation was deep enough, the residue left the deep scratches in the case. At any rate, I figure that Handloader and Major Nonte saved me the cost of a three year subscription to Handloader, and that’s where it will go.

Hugh E. Lashlee Phoenix, Arizona

HANDLOADER Magazine

Recordiny and Bnalyziny J + IID ifferenf Sysfem -

circle. Also it seemed desirable to have just a few significant numbers that would describe the performance of a given load and barrel combination. So I slowly developed my method of dividing the 30- inch circle into 36 separate and equal areas for recording and evaluating the shot holes in these areas. Figure 1 shows the way my circles are divided, and Table 1 gives the dimensions that are pertinent in the Figure. The numbers in the 36 areas in Figure 2 represent shot holes from one of my actual trials.

The area of each of the 36 fields is 19.64 square inches, and is equal to a circle exactly five inches in diameter. This area bears a good relationship to the area of a game animal or bird normally bagged with the shotgun; being probably about the area presented by a squirrel, ruffed grouse or a medium sized duck. So it has significance for the hunter. The design of the 36 fields is such that the dimensions of

of course, the same treatment of the outer annulus. The fourth column, to the right of the equal signs, gives the sum of the pellet counts on a sectorial basis and the sum below this column shows the total pellet count within the 30-inch circle and is used to calculate the percent of the total charge that it encloses. The other three quantities below the first three columns are averages of the pellet counts for the fields in these columns. Their ratios indicate how much of the shot charge is concentrated toward the center of the circle.

The fourth column (sectorial sums) when analyzed over a significant number of trials may indicate that a given barrel and load combination tends to place more shot in one part of the target than in the other, or that conversely some particular portion may not, on the average, be getting its fair share of the pellets.

ATTERN TESTING of shotguns is P rarely thought of as a hobby or as being an end in itself, but it is possible to become quite hooked on it. Over the past few years I have kept the records of 478 such tests. Also, there were some tests where records were not kept and some tests made for visual evaluation only. This amounts to nearly a case of shotshells fired at sheets of paper.

As anyone who has made such tests will know, this represents a considerable number of man hours. Do I have anything to show for these efforts? I think so. I have learned some interesting things and have become quite well acquainted with my shotguns. And my performance on game is better as a result of these tests. My score on doves has improved by 20 percent since I started pattern testing.

Most of the work was done to find the shotshell loads which perform the way I consider “desirable” in my particular the boundaries are about equal. In other I do my counting using a transparent shotgun barrels. So most of the trials have words, their shapes are as nearly square as plastic 30-inch circle that is divided as been made with shells which I have ispossible. shown by Figure 1. It is laid over the handloaded, and a limited number of Table 2 shows my method for recording target sheet and moved about until it factory loads for comparison purposes. the pellet count from the pattern shown in appears to cover the maximum numbei‘of

All of my tests have used a 30-inch Figure 2; the first column in parenthesis is holes, then aligned SO that one of the circle on a four-foot square sheet of the count for the inner circle beginning at major lines forms a vertical division of the paper, and most of the targets were a the top and proceeding clockwise around pattern. A dot is marked through a measured 40 yards from the gun,s muzzle. this circle. The second column enclosed by

parentheses is the count for the middle Early in these endeavors I realized the annulus also beginning at the top and

desirability of getting more information proceeding in a clockwise direction than the percent of shot in the 30-inch around this annulus. The third column is,

Mlddle Outer

12.25” 21.21” 30.00”

Inner Mlddlo Outer Annulus Annulus

Sector Width Boundary Dimensions 6.12” 3.21”’

*Length of Curved or Arc Boundary. Area of Each Field = 19.64 square inches.

40 HANDLOADER Magazine

Shofyun Paffern TestsJ By LEX WILKINSON

small hole in its center and the vertical line is marked at the bottom and the counting is done through this transparent overlay with the results recorded in the form shown in Table 2.

Most shotgun literature stresses the need for at least four pellet hits on most small game in order to insure a quick kill. Some sources go further and claim that five pellets are needed to produce a high rate of quick kills. Certainly larger game will require more hits than the smaller species. So I assumed that any less than four pellets in a field this size would constitute a bad field. However, five pellets per field could just as easily be used in this system.

This suggested a possible way to analyze load performance based on the fractional part of the total fields that were bad. However, this approach would assume that all bad fields are equally bad, and this may not be correct. From the standpoint of wounding game, it could be argued that a complete miss is more desirable than wounds that do not kill quickly. However, it seems a lot to ask of a shotgun, not to put Q ~ Y pellets into a field if it is not going

to put at least four pellets there. In actual hunting, the game may come between two fields where one, two or three pellets from a bad field may be augmented by three, two or one pellets from the adjacent field to give adequate killing coverage. So I assumed that bad fields are graded in badness from a three-pellet field to a zero- pellet field, and that the latter is the worst possible.

At first I considered that a field with more than eight pellets is a bad field. It seemed quite undesirable to mangle the game more than was needed for a humane kill. This approach has since been dropped as it tends to complicate things and can be partially controlled by the proper choice of choke. The gun and load that gives the lowest pattern percentage without too many bad fields is the best choice for the range under consideration.

To get back to analyzing bad fields, if we could use the fractional part of the total fields that are bad, adjusted by some factor to indicate how bad they are, we would have a measure of the load and barrel’s performance. To assess degree of badness, let’s think in terms of deficient

pellets instead of actual pellets in the bad fields. One with no pellets has a deficiency of four, and another with one pellet has a deficiency of three, etc.

Let’s assume that we have just completed a test consisting of 10 trials giving a total of 360 fields and after counting these patterns we can show the information concerning the bad fields as in Table 3. Now let’s set up a calculation using this information as follows:

(61360) (4-0) = (.0167) (4) = .0668 (151360) (4-1) = (.0417) (3) = .1251 (36/360) (4-2) = (.1000) (2) = .2000 (751360) (4-3) = (.2083) (1) = .2083

Sum .6002

Looking at this calculation we see that 6/360 or .0167 is the fractional amount of the total fields that had a pellet count of zero and we have weighted this fraction by multiplying it by four, which is its deficient pellet count. The same treatment is given to the other grades of bad fields and the sum of these products (0.60) is our deficiency index of this load and barrel’s performance.

It is obvious that in using such an index, the smaller the value the better the performance.

It can be shown that the number of f Pellet Counts for Bad Fields

January-February 1978 41

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deficient pellets per field on a total fields basis is mathematically identical to the index of barrel and load performance as derived above. The following equation presents an easy way to calculate the value for deficient pellets per field (D.P./F.) on a total fields basis:

4(No. of Bad Fields)-Total Bad Pellets

Total No. of Fields in Test D.P./F. =

It is very unlikely that a set of numbers or-even multiple sets of numbers can be made to completely describe a shotgun pattern or the summation of a group of patterns, but this D.P./F. quantity comes as close to evaluating a load and barrel as any single simple value that I have come across. As mentioned earlier, if two combinations are giving equal or nearly equal D.P./F. values at a given range, I will choose the combination that gives the lower pattern percentage for use up to that range. By so choosing, the game will be shot up less and the effective killing area will be larger.

D.P./F. values have been plotted against their pattern percent values for quite a number of tests and there is a rough relationship between these two values even for different chokes. This would reasonably be expected, as the more pellets that go into the 30-inch circle, the fewer bad fields there should be. One thing that was evident from the plotting was that the relationships only apply for individual shot sizes in the same charge weight. There were spreads of as much as 10 percent in pattern percentages

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for the same value of D.P./F. Spreads of 2 percent are common, but here we are getting into the area of how many trials are needed to demonstrate a significant change in values.

What we are actually talking about, with reference to these spreads in pattern percentages for the same D.P./F. value or more correctly, spreads in D.P./F. values for the same pattern percentage value, is pattern uniformity. Some load and barrel combinations will give more uniform results than others. One load with No. 8 shot gave an equal or better D.P./F. value than half a dozen loads with 7% shot at about a 10 percent less pattern percentage value. This means that the No. 8 load had a somewhat larger killing area, because it had more pellets in total, but was putting about the same number of pellets into the 30-inch circle as the No. 71/2 loads and with better pattern uniformity. If a certain barrel shoots a certain load to 60 percent pattern density with No. 7% shot, the same charge weight only needs to give 48 percent pattern density for No. 8 shot, to have the same number of pellets in the 30- inch circle. Both of these loads could give the same D.P./F. value. Of course, it is desirable to use shot of the proper size for the game being sought.

Although this D.P./F. quantity is intended only as a relative figure to be used in comparing loads from a given barrel or in comparing barrels with a given load, it could be assigned more or less standard values. For instance, one bad field of zero pellet count in each pattern would give a D.P./F. value of 0.11, three of these zero-count fields could give 0.33, and 12 bad fields of three pellet count each would also be 0.33. From a practical performance standpoint, any load .and barrel combination giving a D.P./F. value of less than about 0.4 could be considered an acceptable combination for that shooting range. It is possible for the average gunner to put too much of his shot into the center of the 30-inch target, thus creating bad fields in the outer annulus and limiting the effective killing area of his pattern.

With enough experience using this load and barrel performance index it is even possible that a correlation between D.P./F. values for a 40-yard range and other ranges could be developed. Such a relationship might indicate that a D.P./F. value of say 0.6 at 40 yards would then give 0.35 D.P./F. at 25 yards or at 30 yards, and so be very useful in choosing loads for other ranges for this barrel.

I'm sure that variations and additions can be made to this pattern testing method, changes designed for specific types of shotgun shooting. The experimenting is time consuming, yet very rewarding for the persons who take scattergunning seriously. 0

HANDLOADER Magazine 42