Below is a new PB mold I had Tom at Accurate cut for me hoping I can finally get a plain base bullet to shoot in a fixed cartridge. I haven't had much in the way of luck with the two previous attempts I made with bullets sans gas check so decided to design my own with the hope of success. I plan on using this mold in a 30-06 Win Model 670. What I did was download a print of Tom's clone of the Saeco 315 and went at it with a Photoshop program I have. My print was a little rougher than Tom's cataloged print pictured below, 31-190B, but the design was there.
Using a chamber print I figured the 06 throat tapers .001 for every .020 in length, or thereabouts. Using that as my starting guide I made the .050 wide front band .303, dropped back .100 from the front of that band to the front of the next and drew that at .308 by .100 wide. I finished up with two .310 bands. One .070 wide and the base band at .100 wide. The grease grooves are all .050 to be able to use one or more if needed without flooding the thing with grease.
The bore ride section is drawn at .300 but in this gun I needed .301 or a bit more. Tom's tolerances are -.000,+.0015 on the body and +.000,-.0015 on the bore ride section. My experience has been that he runs close to the minimum on the bore ride section and right on on the the body so I ordered my mold “Body As Drawn, .3025 Bore Ride Section” and got a bore ride section at .301 and the rest right on the money.
I don't plan on trying a lot of powders right off the bat and for the moment am sticking with Bluedot for the simple reason that I have a pound and a half of it and there's no reason it shouldn't work if everything else is right. P-wads seem like a good idea and I'm using Wilson dies and a single case for loading so my kit will be minimal. I have some ready to go with one lube groove filled with LBT Blue which should be more than enough lube. Alloy consists of water dropped WW. Some people might say that's too hard but I use water dropped WWs in my 32 S&W Long and don't have a problem. Will try the gun tomorrow morning and report back.
The whole purpose of this little project is to take a minimalist approach to shooting in the new Hunting Rifle Class while being competitive. I was a big advocate of this class and hopefully can get something together to show that you can get by with the bare minimum in equipment and work and use something you already have sitting in the cabinet. The gun is as sold with nothing at all done to it except adding a 36x Weaver scope and the equipment used to get the bullet ready is next to nothing. I'm using a lubesizer with an oversized die for lubing convenience but wouldn't have any trouble at all pan lubing. I'm also using a Lee push through die to size to .3095 but don't know if that's necessary or not considering the bullet casts at .310. I just like to size bullets for some reason and had a die laying there that sizes to .3095 when using water dropped WWs. Everything I need to shoot a match fits in a small tool box and either clamps or sits on the bench when shooting.
Print and bullet are below.
