Loading for a Wild Cat Cartridge – The Real Gunsmith

I've had a number of people ask me what do I do to load for a wildcat cartridge what do I do parse powder charges go how do I do this well it's really pretty simple all the ball makers make public cell loading manuals if you've got a wildcat cartridge the very simplest thing for you to do is check the capacity of that case what I do to check the capacity of the case I use a fairly dense ball powder to check that case capacity one of the best things for you to use would be like winchester 760 ball powder fill that Wildcat case that there's no load data for up to the neck with powder dump that powder charge in the pan on a scale and weigh that powder charge once you've done that write it down there's a lot of loading data or standardized cartridges there's no doubt a cartridge that has a capacity that's very very close to that wildcat cartridge let's say for instance that there's no load data for a 25 Watts exactly improved but there's load data for a 25 watt 6 take the Winchester 760 powder fill that case up to the neck and see what the difference is you got like around four or five greens difference in powder capacity 25 lost exactly improved over the standard 25 watt six I'm talking about a standard cartridge but I'm still using it as a comparison and I'm showing you that you can use this and it bears out what I'm trying to tell you by checking the capacity of the case once you've determined that take the bullet weight that you want to use look at the powders that are listed in your loading manual invariably the slower burning powders for a given cartridge and in this instance the 25 watt six which is we're trying to find a load for 25 watts exactly improved we go to the densest charges in other words something around 70 828 is going to give you the highest velocities in a 25 off six let's say that the loading manual lists 56 greens of 78 28 with a hundred and ten green Nosler a cue bond in the 25 watt six well you want to shoot that bullet in your 25 Watts exactly improved and by the way it's unless a tremendous bullet that's tremendously accurate and it does a tremendous job killing deer size game sheep antelope deer and so forth anyway you know that the manual lists 56 greens is a maximum charge you've got this improved case according to the the charge that you filled that improved case with about four more greens capacity for instance well you know you can up the charge I would simply load about one more green than the maximum listed charged in the book I'd shoot that low I'd shoot that load and I would chronograph it I would see how close my velocity variations were along with that as I've explained previously to do and loading we all need to be using a one-inch a 1 inch micrometer a 1 inch micrometer to measure the case head of the fired case and what we do here I happen to have in my hand it's a belted case but the theory is still the same and the measurement is still taken in the same place on the belt of cases that there's a nun belted case so what we want to do before we fire those cases we fire those cases in the improve chamber we need to measure the cases to see what the case f measures and you you use this one-inch micrometer and you measure right here right here just on the edge of where the extractor groove is machined into the head of the case you write that dimension down you fired around in the improve chamber with a grain more case you've got cases that you properly fire form with a little bit lower load for the particular 25 Watts exactly improved you've got no you've got no expansion here on the head that tells you that you can go up in your powder charge I worked up a half a grain of the time and I'll work my load up I have to the time until with my micrometer reading I get a half a thousandth of expansion here on the case let's see if that case measured let's say that that case measured the 25 Watts X the 25 Watts exactly improved case measured 466 I went up by half of green and stayed the same I went up another half a green another half of the green perhaps another half of them green finally I got a little bit of expansion I picked up say about 310 thousandths of an inch of expansion on the head of this case measurement with micro micrometer well I I feel that 1/2 of thousands case that expansion is permissible and you can probably reload that case 10 or 15 times with a load to the case that only expands a half of a thousand and we just measured it was 3/10 well we can probably go up about another half of a green but that's probably absolutely all we go up a half a green yeah it's exactly a half of a thousand expansion at the same time we're chronic graphing our load and we're paying attention to our velocity variation say that we've got a tight velocity variation we've got a tight group we've got three books you know that you're inside of a half of an inch at a hundred yards or pretty well they're the only thing left really left to do is maybe change the primer change that bullet sitting depth just a little bit maybe a little 10,000 deep or ten thousands longer to see if we can actually tighten that group up by going to another primer or the bullet seating depth we've got what we feel is pretty much the powder charge say we switched your primer to pick up a little bit more expansion well you went just a little bit too far with the load with that primer it worked with the previous primer go back to the primary you use before probably if things haven't improved and you can do this with any with almost any cartridge you can design a cartridge yourself i've designed about seven different cartridges over my lifetime things that i shoot things that i've built rifles for for people I built a lot of rifles in in odd not off-the-shelf Wildcat chamberings improve chamberings and so forth it's nothing for me to work up these loads have done these things so many times but it's also very easy for the average hand loader to load for a wildcat cartridge and you just simply follow those guidelines figure out what the case capacity is compare it to something that's known and knowing loading that and compare maybe several manuals for loading Daniel data and see what they say they both say well about 56 grains as you know a maximum with a given bolt weight or whatever it might happen to be with a particular powder go ahead and run with that and but at the same time using this micrometer because this gives you pressure reading your chronograph gives you the velocity readings and the the close velocity readings that you're looking for for accuracy if you've got if you've got for instance a a standard deviation in the single digits and you've been able to repeat that three or four times you've got a pretty good load and you load this down in the single digits it's probably going to perform fairly well but if you've got a load that's up there around 20 standard deviation 30 40 50 60 standard deviation like a lot of our factory ammunition that you'll buy and shoot in our you know standardized calibers most of that ammunition won't have a very close standard deviation and the accuracy won't be there especially won't be there as you get a little further down range once I worked up a load at a hundred yards I moved to three hundred yards and I'll verify that little stiff it's still shooting up to the potential that I think that it needs to needs needs to be what I'm looking for if I'm shooting the half inch of the hundred I certainly want to shoot inside an inch and a half of 300 provided I've got good optics and I properly bench that rifle and if it's not shooting out there at that distance you probably need to need to change a few things and it may be the seating depth there again and maybe the primer you might need to change bullets maybe you need to try another brand of bullet a different bullet wait until you get that load get that load that works with your cartridge and there's no easier way there's no easier way to determine what you can load in one of these cartridges maybe you don't even know what it is maybe you've inherited a rifle that's chambered for four for something rather you've determined what the caliber is and you've been able you know you maybe maybe also inherited some some ammunition or some cases or one thing another well I wouldn't particularly go with what might have been loaded in that at ammunition specialist you inherited it I think that I'd do a little bit of checking to see that everything worked right but there's there there's a lot of there's a lot of situations where we've got to determine these things without really any information for that Pacific specific round but there's still information for something there are so many cartridges in so many different calibers that have got to be very very close to what you've got you can come within just you know a few grains probably capacity wise to determine where to load and loading dies for Wildcat cartridges and improve cartridges and whatnot are available from from our CBS they're available from Redding they're available from quantity and you know reading reading and Hornady we'll make you some custom dies only listed calibers from our CBS are available at one time he used to be able to get almost anything you wanted they'd quit that a number of years ago only listed cartridges for these odd odd situations is what's available from from our CBS so you've got you've got really quite into Vantage there and it's really wonderful that these various entities have offered this opportunity so you can load ammunition for some of these things you can design around yourself you can go to one or two of these entities Harned ear we're ready have them make you a custom dies by sending you some fired cases and so forth and maybe some other information that they might request from you and your you're pretty well on free but it's always been this question just keeps coming back how do I know what to load well that's that's what you have to do you

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Keywords: Randys Custom Rifles, wild cat cartridge, wild cat caliber, custom rifle, gunsmith, randy selby, load development, wildcat rifle, wildcat caliber, rifle build, long range rifle, long range shooting, target shooting, winchester, ruger, remington, custom ammunition

Id: FKA5I4d0dls

Length: 13min 57sec (837 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 23 2018