'Blunderbuss' Blog

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

Category Archives: Tools & Equipment

Flipping Primers Using A Lee Safety Primer Feed

Primed & Ready

There are a number of makes and models of priming tools on the market for both manual and automated priming of a case.  I prefer to use a priming tool than to manually handle the primer.

At all costs I try to avoid touching the live primers with my hands mostly for safety reasons as these little babies could cause you severe damage if one were to explode.

As I use the Lee Safety Primer Feed that attaches to my Lee Press I thought I would put this little video together to demonstrate how you can flip the primers over to have them presented the correct way up before seating them into your cases.

Permanent link to this post (119 words, estimated 29 secs reading time)

Lapua .22lr Electronic Batch Testing

Lapua .22lr Electronic Batch Testing At Dungannon Rifle Club

On March 24th at Dungannon Rifle Club, I had my Anschutz 1710 tested by one of the ammunition testing staff from the German Lapua factory. Andre from Lapua had around 17 batches of Lapua Centre X available to see if he could pin point a specific batch that suited my barrel. With a 50 Metre protected tunnel in place, ‘constructed from timber and plastic sheeting’ the results of each shot would be as accurate as they could be with no interference from the wind. Firstly my rifle with stock attached was clamped into a heavy duty vice and the rifle details were entered into the Meyton Electronic GmbH software program that also measured the bullet groups as they were shot and tested. Each 10 shot group was recorded and with a visual diagram and accurate reading it was easy to distinguish which batch of ammunition gave the better group. With the synthetic stock attached and clamped it looked like results were somewhat inconclusive ‘although one batch did show signs of grouping well’ as the stock continued to vibrate in the vice. Due to the stock being synthetic it could not be clamped to its tightest tolerance or it would either crack or become squeezed too tight against the barrel and that would affect the free floating setup of the barrel and stock.

This is a preview of Lapua .22lr Electronic Batch Testing. Read the full post (422 words, 2 images, estimated 1:41 mins reading time)

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)

16 Seconds To Anneal One Case

Time To Anneal

During the Christmas holidays I decided I would put my annealing workstation to good use and anneal the 60+ cases that I was gifted a few months back.  After the initial setup to ensure the case neck was alligned properly and a test case run through the flame, I got the annealing process underway.

It took approximately 16 seconds per case for the 6.5×55 to anneal before I dumped the case into a pan of cold water.  In 25 minutes I had completed the annealing process and now I had to find a method to dry the brass without applying any additional extreme heat to the case.

This is a preview of 16 Seconds To Anneal One Case. Read the full post (211 words, 1 image, estimated 51 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)