'Blunderbuss' Blog

Metallic Silhouette Shooting, Reloading Bench, Ammunition, Firearms Maintenance & Marksmanship Techniques

Category Archives: Firearm Maintenance

New Season, New Brass

New Season New Brass

With a new shooting season beginning I decided to spend a couple of hours during the weekend preparing some once fired brass for my 6.5×55.

The first step in my brass preparation was to anneal all the case necks. A demonstration on how this was done can be found here. Once annealed and dried off I Neck Sized and Deprimed the cases before dropping them into my case tumbler for a few hours to brighten them up. Three hours later and a few mugs of tea drunk my cases were clean and ready for their next step. The final six stages of case preparation involved cleaning the primer pocket, deburring the flash hole, squaring of the primer pocket, ensuring the case length was not exceeding the recommended published limit and finally chamfering and deburring the case mouth for bullet seating. I now have an additional 35 Lapua 6.5×55 ‘Once Fired Cases’ ready for reloading.

This is a preview of New Season, New Brass. Read the full post (204 words, 5 images, estimated 49 secs reading time)

Realigning Steyr Action Bushings

Action Bushings

Whilst using the Sinclair Action Cleaning Kit with a cotton swab attached in the Action of my Steyr Pro Hunter Rifle, I discovered that when I am turning the cleaning swab in and around the Action the swab ‘due to its size and tight fit’ will snag onto the Action Bushing and actually turn the Bushings in the Rifles Action out of alignment.

Once out of alignment the Bolt will not fully slide into the Action as the Bolt Locking Lugs are hitting against the Bushings that have now become misaligned.

This is a preview of Realigning Steyr Action Bushings. Read the full post (277 words, estimated 1:06 mins reading time)

Barrel Maintenance – Bore Cleaning

Cleaning Is Not Always A Bore

I have watched and read many Barrel Cleaning Regime’s that are offered up online and on the printed page.  Some I have been happy with and others I was not so impressed with due to the lack of care with the Firearm.  Some cleaning methods were even said to take up to and beyond 24 hrs to clean a barrel, with a first clean at the range and for the second or third cleaning solvents were left to soak in the barrel overnight and brushed and patched out the next day.  ‘When would you find the time to shoot if you were using these exhaustive cleaning programs!!!’ I wanted a complete refined cleaning regime that allowed me to clean my rifle both inside and out with minimal interuption to my range visit and shooting time.

This is a preview of Barrel Maintenance – Bore Cleaning. Read the full post (366 words, estimated 1:28 mins reading time)

Sooted and Booted Part III

Have I Found A Solution To My Dirty Cases?

You may recall two articles that I wrote in June 201o called Sooted and Booted Part I followed by Sooted and Booted Part II where I had encountered problems of carbon fouling covering the entire body of my once fired Full Length Sized Lapua Cases for my 6.5×55 Calibre.

I had a number of suggestions, from a number of different sources put to me with reasons as to why this could be happening.  Therefore I compiled a short list and decided to give each suggestion a trial to see if any of those suggestions did in fact solve my Sooted Cases problem.

This is a preview of Sooted and Booted Part III. Read the full post (861 words, estimated 3:27 mins reading time)