Throwing good money after bad

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Throwing good money after bad

Postby Hoot » Wed Feb 15, 2017 8:47 pm

OK, everyone gets a bright idea that upon execution, loses some of the brightness.

Despite lackluster results accuracy-wise loading up various 300gr bullets from my 1:24 barrel, I had one of those late night ideas to try going up to 325gr bullets. I could never get 1680 cooking hard enough to reach the sweet zone, even after the extreme effort of loading 300gr XTP Mags into the lands! Sill not turned on. Figured perhaps a 325 might just make it there. I fell to temptation when I needed a few more items to round out a Midway order so I bought a box of the Hornady .458 325 FTX Factory 2nds they just had on sale. I have a .452 Lee Sizing Die from another past bust idea, but that's another story.
Those are tough bullets, but experimenting with some of the many types of greases I was able to muscle through 4 of them before it dawned on me to measure the resulting diameter. Remember springback? Yeah, it happens. I wound up with four .453 bullets and 46 unsized ones. This kind of start is usually a bad omen, so I am trying to decide whether to trade or sell the remaining 46 bullets, or buy an additional .451 sizing die to finish the job. They were cheap back when I bought my first one. Second omen, they now cost more than I paid for the bullets in the first place. I'm hard headed despite the Clifton Strengths Assessment I had to suffer through today, saying I'm not. Anyway, This is one I need to take for the team and I hate losing, even to a less than thoroughly thought out idea.

To that end, does anyone have a Lee .451 sizing die I can borrow for a weekend? I'll pay the shipping and of course I'll be responsible for taking loving care of it and returning either it, in the same condition I borrowed it in or a brand new one in its place. Siringo, your local. You have one? Call me if you do. No rush for the rest of you to answer until I hear from Siringo.

Thanks,

Hoot
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Re: Throwing good money after bad

Postby Pig_Popper » Thu Feb 16, 2017 6:09 am

Dang it I just ordered a 452 sizing die

I hope the projectiles i resize don't spring back!

Best of luck with your project.

I paid 23.00 shipped for the die on EBay brand new in case that saves a couple dollars if you need to buy the 451 die
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Re: Throwing good money after bad

Postby Hoot » Thu Feb 16, 2017 11:07 am

Pig_Popper wrote:Dang it I just ordered a 452 sizing die

I hope the projectiles i resize don't spring back!

Best of luck with your project.

I paid 23.00 shipped for the die on Ebay brand new in case that saves a couple dollars if you need to buy the 451 die


Thanks for the tip. The springback may be a non-event if the lead has somewhere to easily be displaced to. I used my .452 die to swage-form some homebrew bullets once. They mic'd at .452 but they were open on the top so that the displaced lead could ooze out, relieving the internal pressure on the formed bullet. Hard to say.

Like their slightly lighter 300gr cousins, the 325's are of no useful hunting purpose where I live. I dabble in them for esoteric reasons and to enlighten and possibly interest others here who might be able to benefit from them. I do enjoy occasionally walking The Road Not Taken. Point is, if I were seriously interested in this end of the weight spectrum, I'd have bought the .451 sizing die as soon as I realized my dilemma. Given it is a one-off project, I didn't want to invest in one. Siringo is back in town tomorrow and since he dabbles in cast boolits, he is going to see if he has one I can borrow. He also has an intermediate step die between .458 and .453 that I can borrow to lessen the strain on Rocky.

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Re: Throwing good money after bad

Postby Bmt85 » Thu Feb 16, 2017 3:20 pm

If you can't find one, I have .454 , .452 , and .451 Lee sizers.

I resized 350gr Interlocks using the .454 and .451 sizers. I want to say they all sprung back to .4515. I'd have to re-check em to tell you for sure.

Edit - I just checked the 350's and 300's, all came in between .451 and .452, with most readings .4515. However I did find one that had a spot of .4525, but all other measurements were fine. Maybe it needs another run through the .451 die.
Last edited by Bmt85 on Thu Feb 16, 2017 6:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Throwing good money after bad

Postby Hoot » Thu Feb 16, 2017 4:42 pm

Bmt85 wrote:If you can't find one, I have .454 , .452 , and .451 Lee sizers.

I resized 350gr Interlocks using the .454 and .451 sizers. I want to say they all sprung back to .4515. I'd have to re-check em to tell you for sure.


Man that must have been a slow moving train! How did they perform for you? What barrel? By perform, I mean group. Not concerned as much about speed as the .451-2 bullets are already a killer on the loose. ;)

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Re: Throwing good money after bad

Postby Bmt85 » Thu Feb 16, 2017 5:01 pm

Never shot em. I was getting em ready to, and that was about the time the 275 TSX came out and went that direction for my bear hunt. I want to say others were getting something like 18-1900 fps.

I also have some .458 Speer 300gr that I resized, haven't shot those either.
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Re: Throwing good money after bad

Postby Hoot » Thu Feb 16, 2017 10:06 pm

Nothing is new anymore. All you have to do is listen to contemporary music and put up with all the redux, re-samples, remixes and lets not forget the selfless claims of re-interpretations to realize originality is hard to come by. Turns out this endeavor I embarked upon was also already done back in 2012 by TacoTaco. I miss his participation since he moved on to other interests back in 2013. Anyway, I was rooting through my drawer of reference bullets and lo and behold, I found a resized 325 FTX I believe he sent me for my collection. At first I thought I knew why the Factory Seconds I bought were factory seconds when I spotted a second cannelure on the one he sent me. The ones I got had only 1 cannelure. While researching his past contributions to the cause, I stumbled upon a thread or two where he talked about getting a cannelure tool. I'm getting off track here. Naw, never happens with Hoot... :roll:

To answer my own question, the resized .458 325 grainers do get physically longer as they get narrower. Its not due to the ballistic tip popping out as I measured them to a datum point on the ogive. On average, they grow .008 longer when down to .453. The one TacoTaco sent me, which mics precisely at .452, was .010 longer. Good to know the displaced lead is not being consumed by a black hole in the center of the bullet. This caliber already feels like it warps space and time when you touch off those heavy weights. ;)

As impressive as it sounds shooting the 325gr out of this caliber, he also resized 350 grain Hornady Interloks down and got some impressive speeds out of them. Good expansion too into water jugs!

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