zebdeming











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Joined: Oct. 2006 Posted: May 30 2010,23:26 I've been waiting on a new bolthead from Sharp Shooter Supply, It came on thursday, so I got the bug to get working on this again. I replaced the bolthead to a controled round feed bolthead, it's got what looks to be a normal savage extractor, but the bottom of the boltface recess is cut away like a mauser, It also has a slot cut in the bottom for the ejector. I installed the bolthead to find that I needed to take a bit off the front receiver face to allow the Lug extension to move about .020 to the rear as the bolt wouldn't turn into battery. I thought I took pics of the process but I didn't, I'll try to get it taken apart tomorrow and snap some pics of the new bolt head. That did cure my extraction problem, but I'll now have to figure out an ejector, it shouldn't be a real big deal.



I'm real close to having the gun functional, a little welding and I need to shorten the firing pin, and I could shoot it (it wouldn't eject the emptys, but I could shoot it). I decided I better get in gear and get some ammo made up. I started by cutting down some 7mm WSM brass (all the 404 jeffery based brass can be used, the Remington UltraMags, short action ultra mags, the Winchester Short Mag's , and the super short mags, brass should be easy to find) in my chop saw a little long, then chucking them in my lathe, I cut them to length. After wards the ID of the brass close to the base is smaller than .510, so I turned a mandrel that's .509 and used the tailstock center to push the brass on the mandrel to expand it.







After this is done, it leaves an expanded outside diameter, this is then turned down to a straight walled cartridge, once I get the distance set I don't move the cutter in or out so as to make for sure that all brass afterwards is the same diameter. I then use the tailstock chuck and a Lee case trimming shellholder to pull the case from the mandrel.







It's slow going switching from the center to the drill chuck, but after you get a rythym going you can get faster. Here's some .510 Deming Destroyer brass all done.







After the brass was done I really need something to shoot out of it. I've got the swaging dies to make jacketed bullets, but they're a bit time consuming to make, and I've really got to make some jigs to keep everything uniform lengths. I figured I'd make a mold to cast some boolits. I started with a Lee mold that I had that casted some .309 130 grain slugs. The mold halves are blind pinned to the handles, a little bit of measureing and a drill of the proper size and the pins now have a hole to come out of.

I needed a cutter to cut the ID of the mold, but it isn't a job that can just be run in from the rear and cut the mold, there's grease grooves in there. The big companies make cutters that are spun and the mold halves are brought into the cutter. I have no mill so this really isn't an option for me. I had pondered on this for a long time and for a while I had thought that I'd just have to wait to make my own molds. Then I saw a post that made things click for me ( http://garagegunsmithing.com/index.p....p&t=186 ) He used a mill to do it, but I knew that I could use the cutter in my tool post and the mold halves in my four jaw and cut the mold.

I first needed a cutter, I spun this up out of O1, I just eyeballed the proportions and diameters, It get's ground down to under the finished size anyways so no need to be too precise here.







I then ground down most of the piece to make basicly one side of a reamer. I then hardened and stoned it sharp. You should be able to see the general idea in the next pic, which is the mold halves centered up on the ID in my 4 jaw.







I then drilled out most of the aluminum, ran the cutter in and started backing the cross slide out, the lathe was running at it's slowest speed, I noticed some chatter, but a little heavier cut took care of that. I would back the cross slide out so as to cut about .015, run the cross slide in, so as to clear the grooves and the pull it out, blow chips, measure, oil and repeat, untill the base was .511. Here are some chips on the cutter to show how it was cutting.







It really turned out well. I cut the forward portion to be just a bit over bore diameter and just one lube groove, as this won't be a high velocity round. I'll fire up the lead pot tomorrow and see if it works as well as it looks.







This has been probably one of my most satisfying projects of this whole big project, I'm really happy with how the mold turned out, the pics don't do it justice. Hopefully the boolits come out looking as good. I may just be shooting this next week, then it's on to finshing thanks for watching



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