450Bushmaster.net

Special thanks to Ben and Carter at BK Guns N Stuff up in Michigan for their hard work on this little beast.
See Video. http://youtu.be/NCtoHXuLj5k
This is my first gun video since I had my cancer surgery. You'll be able to tell that the medications have taken their toll on me. So watch this video and understand, I'm not quite back up to speed yet. And Hoot. You'll definitely want to see the chrony data here.

sweet rig dawg!!

Texas Sheepdawg wrote:Special thanks to Ben and Carter at BK Guns N Stuff up in Michigan for their hard work on this little beast.
See Video. http://youtu.be/NCtoHXuLj5k
This is my first gun video since I had my cancer surgery. You'll be able to tell that the medications have taken their toll on me. So watch this video and understand, I'm not quite back up to speed yet. And Hoot. You'll definitely want to see the chrony data here.

That's a spicy meatball!

How old or new as the case may be, is your lot of Lil Gun? The bottle or jug should have a date code on it. If you stick your nose near the bottle when you first open it, does it smell faintly like buttermilk or more of an alcohol / solvent smell? I have something like 15 kinds of powder and they all smell like alcohol / solvent when you open them up, except the Lil Gun.

Hoot

Hoot wrote:

Texas Sheepdawg wrote:Special thanks to Ben and Carter at BK Guns N Stuff up in Michigan for their hard work on this little beast.
See Video. http://youtu.be/NCtoHXuLj5k
This is my first gun video since I had my cancer surgery. You'll be able to tell that the medications have taken their toll on me. So watch this video and understand, I'm not quite back up to speed yet. And Hoot. You'll definitely want to see the chrony data here.

That's a spicy meatball!

How old or new as the case may be, is your lot of Lil Gun? The bottle or jug should have a date code on it. If you stick your nose near the bottle when you first open it, does it smell faintly like buttermilk or more of an alcohol / solvent smell? I have something like 15 kinds of powder and they all smell like alcohol / solvent when you open them up, except the Lil Gun.

Hoot

Umm. The powder I used for the 250 shockwaves has a nitro solvent aroma.
The FMJs I really don't know. I loaded them 2 years ago and that jug is gone now.

Texas Sheepdawg wrote:Umm. The powder I used for the 250 shockwaves has a nitro solvent aroma.
The FMJs I really don't know. I loaded them 2 years ago and that jug is gone now.

Not to get too far off topic, but this has bothered me long enough. I just picked up a pound of Nov 2015 (=fresh as possible) Lil Gun during my lunch break and will definitely put this to rest once and for all. I opened it and while there is a minor note of the same odor my 4 pounder has, it is far overshadowed by what I referred to as the "alcohol / solvent" smell. This could just be me. My nose is not a calibrated test instrument. I've got some more 450 load tests coming up and I can certainly do an A/B one as well.
To be continued in the Reloading for the 450b sub-forum, when I get to it.

Hoot

It could just be a byproduct of the plastic used to make the jugs that causes variations in odor but IDK. I remember one time at work when I was in the home improvement/lumber business we had a huge delivery of plastic lawn edging come in. We put it on a huge center display at the front of the store. Not very long after that I walked past it and I smelled rotten egg smell like you smell from natural gas. I kinda stopped and looked around and started sniffing around the front of the store and I could smell it really strong. About two minutes later, a cashier noticed it. Then a manager noticed it. And I'm walking around trying to figure out what's going on. So I call the manager. He calls 911 and we evac the store. Fire dept came in. Checked everything out then took off their SCBA and even they smelled it. But their gas detectors picked up zero, nada. Not even CO or Methane. So we all started sniffing around and the odor was strongest at the lawn edging display. They checked it with a gas meter.... Nothing. But even the battalion chief said it definitely was the plastic in that black lawn edging. Go figure.

I just got a jug of Lil' Gun recently...popped the top, and it smells, to me, very faintly of some sort of solvent...anyone out there work in a chem lab that has a bomb calorimeter we could borrow?

Also, Dawg's tale of the foul-smelling black plastic edging has provided me with a good excuse next time I get blamed by my wife for "ruining the atmosphere" in the house...now I just need to go buy some black plastic edging!

While I have smelled some strange by-product outgassing from plastics, including those Xcelite nut driver handles that smell like vomit if you bump them with a soldering iron, but if that was the contributing factor, I would have expected to encounter it in my bottle of Hodgdon H322, Benchmark, H335, H4895, H1000, H4350, etc, especially the double base ball powders. When I got home, I whiffed on charging pans of each the new and old Lil Gun and they are distinctly different. Rest assured, I will load up some 38gr under 250 FTX loads and something lighter, like 200 FTX to see how they track.
+1 on the Bomb Calorimeter. That's the right way to assess this stuff. We used one in college chemistry class, to measure the calorie content of sucrose, just to get a feel for how one works. That was like a couple of light years ago!

Hoot

Bro...I've got several pairs of jeans that are probably older than you...whipper-snapper! I know a college organic chem professor...should ask him about a calorimeter.

I think Dawg should use his 2700+ fps 230gr flat-points the next time he's out for whitetails...let a couple of 'em get lined up for a Quigley! That's a Go-Pro vid I'd like to see...

Guys. That 2700fps shot was nuts. And the pressure signs were a very clear message that I absolutely must back it down at least by 4.0 grains. Being a single shot and not needing the gas to cycle, I'm thinking 40.0-41.5 would be much safer. I'll post some pics of that case and you'll see what I mean.