Post by Bullshop on Apr 10, 2018 14:12:53 GMT -7
Here I hope to ramble on hopefully coherently enough for folks to possibly gain something from my long experience with a particularly peculiar design of bullet designed to be paper patched and either by design or accident I am not sure perfectly suited to use in lever guns.
Through a mutual friend I have cyberly met a man named Mike Nesbit who is now the editor of the quarterly publication " The American Sharps Shooter" published by C. Sharps Arms of Big Timber Montana. Through chatting with mike I learned that the credit for creating this bullet design that I am speaking off goes jointly to himself and the machining genius of the late Walt Melander of the then NEI Tooldine Co. of Ell Paso Texas.
I seriously doubt that even Mike has used this bullet to the extent that I have over the last 30 or so years. This bullet coupled with B00 my first year production Marlin model 1895 rifle in 45-70 were my go to dead serious no BS get it done combo for putting meat on the table for our 9 children. I affectionately refer to this rifle as B00 because the serial numbers of all the first year production guns started with B- zero-zero thus B00.
Me and ol B00 have been through a lot together and there were a few times in our history together where it seems maybe I was too slow in responding to a threat and ol B00 seemed to just snap to the situation and get me out of a tight spot. I remember the time when B00 was leaning on a tree and I was down on one knee inspecting a dead moose calf I came upon when suddenly a very live protective moose mother trotted onto the scene and seemed hell bent on stomping me into a bloody paste. It all happened so fast and I am not sure but it seemed like ol B00 just jumped from that tree right into my hands just in time and aligned itself with the center of that mad cow moose's forehead and fired the shot that saved me all before I even had time to think about it. That right there is a good old friend !
Then there was the time I was in the cabin having some lunch when the phone rang and when Tina answered it from across the room I could hear the neighbors wife screaming that there was a bear coming into their house. I jumped up grabbed ol B00 from the gun rack on the wall were it was resting with 3 rounds of this very bullet these meanderings are about the NEI 500gn paper patch cast in a soft BHN-8 alloy in its magazine.
This story starts out funny but turned badly dangerous fast. It was spring and the winter past we had very deep snow so the wolves were coming in closer than usual. They had killed a bison in the road and left when the school buss arrived to pick up the kids on our road. The bison carcass had the narrow road blocked so the buss couldn't get by. The buss driver radioed in and the game warden was sent out. He hooked a chain on the bison and dragged it to the neighbors in question because at that time they had more kids than we had and there was lots of meat that could be salvaged. The unusable parts were put on a garbage pile and forgotten, until spring. When spring came and the hungry bears wander looking for easy pickings a three year old sow as it turns out honed in on those meat scraps. The neighbor showed me a video taken from their living room window of this bear bending over at the waist reaching into a garbage bin trying to fish out the bison scraps. They had a little yappy poodle dog that was going nuts so they let it out and it ran directly to the bear that had its upper body in the garbage bin and jumped up and bit the bear, grizzly bear mind you right on the butt, OUCH !! Then it got interesting, the bear weald around to confront its antagonizer and the dog did an about face and headed back to the front door with bear in hot pursuit. That was the moment I received the phone call with the bear trying to enter. The neighbor husband met the bear at the door with a 300 win mag and managed to put a 150gn factory Federal into the bears shoulder. The bear thankfully retreated and a second shot was fired at the retreating bear to no effect. This now was getting bad because the 150gn 300 mag load was too close and too fast so did not penetrate but stopped in the shoulder thought that shoulder was broken.
At that point the bear took refuge in a 5 acre patch of permafrost timber between our homes. The neighbor husband was obviously terrified as he was sweeting profusely. He suggested just leaving it alone and it MIGHT DIE. I told him no way!!!! that bear had to be killed and it had to be killed now!!! I was scarred too but wasn't showing it and I wanted him to at least stay behind me incase the bear got the drop on me. I decided to circle the patch of timber to see if the bear exited the far side and it apparently did not. I then decided the only way to find that bear in that thick timber was to begin to circle the patch and continually make smaller and smaller circles until we make contact. Anyone that know what permafrost timber looks like knows what we were up against. The trees though only a couple inches in diameter are very old with very dense growth rings and grow about as thick as grass. Visibility is a few yards and mobility at times is near zero so swinging a rifle might be near impossible.
With that possibility we inched forward. When we were running out of timber to search somewhere near the center of the thicket I stepped on a stick that snapped and with that sound the bear let out a roar that I was surprised failed to cause me to wet my pants. At that point I looked at Dave the neighbor and all I could see of him was his rapidly departing posterior. That actually made me feel better because in his state of mind I was as afraid of being shot in the back as I was of getting my face chewed off.
Now even though I still couldn't see it I at least had the bear located. With 4 in the mag and one in the chamber and the hammer back and yes my finger on the trigger I eased forward one tiny baby step at a time. After a few baby steps through some peep holes in the trees I was able to see some brown hair but I still could not tell what part of the bear I was seeing. Then looking down I noticed a rabbit road made by the snow shoe hares that live in these thickets. They are like tiny cleared trails through the brush. I put my left foot in the rabbit trail then quickly stepped over so I could use the trail as a visual corridor. That worked good for me and the bear because when I could see her she could see me and at that instant the bear leaped from the depression it was in and once again ol B00 took over the fight and put one of those big 45 cal 500 grain soft paper patched bullets right under that bears chin. At the crack of that shot that bears lights were out like right now! Somehow though ol B00 didn't think so and a second of those big bullets was right on the heels of the first and so fast did this happen that I think maybe B00 had both those bullets if its barrel at the same time. The bear was dead and the threat was over and a darn good thing too as my knees got so wabbable I had to sit down.
That has pretty much been the way the combination of lever gun and bullet design has worked for me just rock solid dependability. Over the years I have taken so much big game with this combination it is beyond counting everything I hunted all those years moose, caribou, black and brown bear, elk deer and even small game. I went on a trip with a doctor friend that had a small plain and he would fly us over the Brooks range to hunt caribou. On our first trip he asked what I was using for a gun and I showed him B00 with the 500gn PP bullets. His response was less than encouraging and stated flatly that " you cant kill caribou with that " . By the time our hunt was over I had killed my two caribou with one shot each and finished the two he had wounded with his 300 win mag. He had this idea he would shoot half way around the world so he sighted his rifle for 500 yards so was always over shooting and holding off wasn't working so good for him.
A kind of funny experience there was that when we were leaving with four caribou we were to heavy to get off the short pond we had for a runway so a plan was formulated to shuttle our gear to a longer pond about 20 miles away then reload the gear and see if we had enough distance on this longer pond to get the air speed we needed to fly. He told me to leave my gun and he would bring it when he returned with the remaining gear. I said where my gun is so am I and he got a little ticked because he wasn't used to any objections. Turns out that right where he had to drop me off at the longer pond a mama grizzly and two cubs just happened to be foraging and a quick glance accompanied by an I told you so brought him to my reality.
Anyway that's just a little of the history I have using this bullet in a lever gun so now I should explain why this particular design is so well suited to lever guns when other more traditional paper patch designs are not. I hope to have Tine add some pictures so folks can see what I am trying to explain so be patient and those should come along soon.
Anyway describing this bullet I would call the nose shape a semi spitzer that begins its ogive at a full caliber shoulder at .458" then just behind the full caliber shoulder a straight shank of bore diameter for the rest of the length of the bullet ending with enough bevel base it could almost be called a boat tail. The straight shank portion of the bullet where the paper patch goes there are some shallow grooves that seem to help hold the patch in place when seating the bullets in the cartridge cases. The full caliber shoulder has a couple benefits in that it makes it very easy to align the patch to the bullet without any jigs or measuring plates. Secondly and very importantly this full caliber shoulder takes the lead into the rifling when fired and acts as a protective shield to the leading edge of the patch being first engraved and eliminating the possibility of the patch being torn at this critical point. All other paper patch designs have the leading edge of the patch larger in diameter than the actual bullet so are susceptible to damage at this point. All other smooth sided designs weather tapered or parallel sided weather designed to be patched to groove diameter or to bore diameter are this way as they are designed for single shot rifles where the cartridge OAL is immaterial but in lever actions is critical. With conventional paper patch designs the cartridge oal is such that it already has the patch started into the rifling but with a lever action with a limited cartridge OAL that condition may be impossible and is exactly why this design is so well suited to lever guns.
Still in use and the mold used to cast the bullets seen here the first paper patch mold I ever used I bought at a gun show at least 30 years ago. This design was my first step into paper patching. Since then I have acquired many PP molds all smooth sided some tapered some not some cup base some not some for patching to groove and some for patching to bore diameter. All have given good results when properly loaded in single shot rifles. The one that started me on the road to PP is still the one I like the most especially for lever guns. I liked this design so much in fact for lever guns that when I finally got a 50 caliber lever gun I bought the same design in 50 caliber.
One nice feature of this design is that a patch of 1" height is perfect for both the 45 and the 50 cal as both have the same length straight shank though the 50 caliber design is over 600gn. I should also mention here the easiest fastest way I have ever found to cut precision paper patches. For this I have to say if your going to paper patch go to an office max or any office supply store and get a platform type paper cutter. They are fairly inexpensive and make the job of cutting patches fast, precise, and easy. The platform has a measuring scale so it is a very simple matter to first cut your paper sheets into strips which is the first step. Then with a template mark one strip and use it as a guide to cut several strips at a time into patches. The paper I use is 11" tall and takes about 1 minute to cut into 11 - 1" strips. Each strip allows two patches at 45 or 50 caliber so one sheet of paper yields 22 precision cut patches. With this paper cutter it only takes about ten minutes to cut 100 patches.
As for making your template its simple. I first cut one from a soft material like a butter tub lit or some such. Then I slowly adjust its length so it produces a patch the gives two wraps without overlapping a third. Start out long and keep trimming with scissors until its just right. Once I have the length of my soft template just right I then transfer that length to a hard material. For this I have used brass shim stock, steel shim stock and have even peened out tin cans flat and used that material so it doesn't have to be too complicated or expensive there. You can even just keep and use the soft template for that matter.
Well there ya go you have now wasted a substantial segment of your life reading through my reminiscing, or perhaps not !
Through a mutual friend I have cyberly met a man named Mike Nesbit who is now the editor of the quarterly publication " The American Sharps Shooter" published by C. Sharps Arms of Big Timber Montana. Through chatting with mike I learned that the credit for creating this bullet design that I am speaking off goes jointly to himself and the machining genius of the late Walt Melander of the then NEI Tooldine Co. of Ell Paso Texas.
I seriously doubt that even Mike has used this bullet to the extent that I have over the last 30 or so years. This bullet coupled with B00 my first year production Marlin model 1895 rifle in 45-70 were my go to dead serious no BS get it done combo for putting meat on the table for our 9 children. I affectionately refer to this rifle as B00 because the serial numbers of all the first year production guns started with B- zero-zero thus B00.
Me and ol B00 have been through a lot together and there were a few times in our history together where it seems maybe I was too slow in responding to a threat and ol B00 seemed to just snap to the situation and get me out of a tight spot. I remember the time when B00 was leaning on a tree and I was down on one knee inspecting a dead moose calf I came upon when suddenly a very live protective moose mother trotted onto the scene and seemed hell bent on stomping me into a bloody paste. It all happened so fast and I am not sure but it seemed like ol B00 just jumped from that tree right into my hands just in time and aligned itself with the center of that mad cow moose's forehead and fired the shot that saved me all before I even had time to think about it. That right there is a good old friend !
Then there was the time I was in the cabin having some lunch when the phone rang and when Tina answered it from across the room I could hear the neighbors wife screaming that there was a bear coming into their house. I jumped up grabbed ol B00 from the gun rack on the wall were it was resting with 3 rounds of this very bullet these meanderings are about the NEI 500gn paper patch cast in a soft BHN-8 alloy in its magazine.
This story starts out funny but turned badly dangerous fast. It was spring and the winter past we had very deep snow so the wolves were coming in closer than usual. They had killed a bison in the road and left when the school buss arrived to pick up the kids on our road. The bison carcass had the narrow road blocked so the buss couldn't get by. The buss driver radioed in and the game warden was sent out. He hooked a chain on the bison and dragged it to the neighbors in question because at that time they had more kids than we had and there was lots of meat that could be salvaged. The unusable parts were put on a garbage pile and forgotten, until spring. When spring came and the hungry bears wander looking for easy pickings a three year old sow as it turns out honed in on those meat scraps. The neighbor showed me a video taken from their living room window of this bear bending over at the waist reaching into a garbage bin trying to fish out the bison scraps. They had a little yappy poodle dog that was going nuts so they let it out and it ran directly to the bear that had its upper body in the garbage bin and jumped up and bit the bear, grizzly bear mind you right on the butt, OUCH !! Then it got interesting, the bear weald around to confront its antagonizer and the dog did an about face and headed back to the front door with bear in hot pursuit. That was the moment I received the phone call with the bear trying to enter. The neighbor husband met the bear at the door with a 300 win mag and managed to put a 150gn factory Federal into the bears shoulder. The bear thankfully retreated and a second shot was fired at the retreating bear to no effect. This now was getting bad because the 150gn 300 mag load was too close and too fast so did not penetrate but stopped in the shoulder thought that shoulder was broken.
At that point the bear took refuge in a 5 acre patch of permafrost timber between our homes. The neighbor husband was obviously terrified as he was sweeting profusely. He suggested just leaving it alone and it MIGHT DIE. I told him no way!!!! that bear had to be killed and it had to be killed now!!! I was scarred too but wasn't showing it and I wanted him to at least stay behind me incase the bear got the drop on me. I decided to circle the patch of timber to see if the bear exited the far side and it apparently did not. I then decided the only way to find that bear in that thick timber was to begin to circle the patch and continually make smaller and smaller circles until we make contact. Anyone that know what permafrost timber looks like knows what we were up against. The trees though only a couple inches in diameter are very old with very dense growth rings and grow about as thick as grass. Visibility is a few yards and mobility at times is near zero so swinging a rifle might be near impossible.
With that possibility we inched forward. When we were running out of timber to search somewhere near the center of the thicket I stepped on a stick that snapped and with that sound the bear let out a roar that I was surprised failed to cause me to wet my pants. At that point I looked at Dave the neighbor and all I could see of him was his rapidly departing posterior. That actually made me feel better because in his state of mind I was as afraid of being shot in the back as I was of getting my face chewed off.
Now even though I still couldn't see it I at least had the bear located. With 4 in the mag and one in the chamber and the hammer back and yes my finger on the trigger I eased forward one tiny baby step at a time. After a few baby steps through some peep holes in the trees I was able to see some brown hair but I still could not tell what part of the bear I was seeing. Then looking down I noticed a rabbit road made by the snow shoe hares that live in these thickets. They are like tiny cleared trails through the brush. I put my left foot in the rabbit trail then quickly stepped over so I could use the trail as a visual corridor. That worked good for me and the bear because when I could see her she could see me and at that instant the bear leaped from the depression it was in and once again ol B00 took over the fight and put one of those big 45 cal 500 grain soft paper patched bullets right under that bears chin. At the crack of that shot that bears lights were out like right now! Somehow though ol B00 didn't think so and a second of those big bullets was right on the heels of the first and so fast did this happen that I think maybe B00 had both those bullets if its barrel at the same time. The bear was dead and the threat was over and a darn good thing too as my knees got so wabbable I had to sit down.
That has pretty much been the way the combination of lever gun and bullet design has worked for me just rock solid dependability. Over the years I have taken so much big game with this combination it is beyond counting everything I hunted all those years moose, caribou, black and brown bear, elk deer and even small game. I went on a trip with a doctor friend that had a small plain and he would fly us over the Brooks range to hunt caribou. On our first trip he asked what I was using for a gun and I showed him B00 with the 500gn PP bullets. His response was less than encouraging and stated flatly that " you cant kill caribou with that " . By the time our hunt was over I had killed my two caribou with one shot each and finished the two he had wounded with his 300 win mag. He had this idea he would shoot half way around the world so he sighted his rifle for 500 yards so was always over shooting and holding off wasn't working so good for him.
A kind of funny experience there was that when we were leaving with four caribou we were to heavy to get off the short pond we had for a runway so a plan was formulated to shuttle our gear to a longer pond about 20 miles away then reload the gear and see if we had enough distance on this longer pond to get the air speed we needed to fly. He told me to leave my gun and he would bring it when he returned with the remaining gear. I said where my gun is so am I and he got a little ticked because he wasn't used to any objections. Turns out that right where he had to drop me off at the longer pond a mama grizzly and two cubs just happened to be foraging and a quick glance accompanied by an I told you so brought him to my reality.
Anyway that's just a little of the history I have using this bullet in a lever gun so now I should explain why this particular design is so well suited to lever guns when other more traditional paper patch designs are not. I hope to have Tine add some pictures so folks can see what I am trying to explain so be patient and those should come along soon.
Anyway describing this bullet I would call the nose shape a semi spitzer that begins its ogive at a full caliber shoulder at .458" then just behind the full caliber shoulder a straight shank of bore diameter for the rest of the length of the bullet ending with enough bevel base it could almost be called a boat tail. The straight shank portion of the bullet where the paper patch goes there are some shallow grooves that seem to help hold the patch in place when seating the bullets in the cartridge cases. The full caliber shoulder has a couple benefits in that it makes it very easy to align the patch to the bullet without any jigs or measuring plates. Secondly and very importantly this full caliber shoulder takes the lead into the rifling when fired and acts as a protective shield to the leading edge of the patch being first engraved and eliminating the possibility of the patch being torn at this critical point. All other paper patch designs have the leading edge of the patch larger in diameter than the actual bullet so are susceptible to damage at this point. All other smooth sided designs weather tapered or parallel sided weather designed to be patched to groove diameter or to bore diameter are this way as they are designed for single shot rifles where the cartridge OAL is immaterial but in lever actions is critical. With conventional paper patch designs the cartridge oal is such that it already has the patch started into the rifling but with a lever action with a limited cartridge OAL that condition may be impossible and is exactly why this design is so well suited to lever guns.
Still in use and the mold used to cast the bullets seen here the first paper patch mold I ever used I bought at a gun show at least 30 years ago. This design was my first step into paper patching. Since then I have acquired many PP molds all smooth sided some tapered some not some cup base some not some for patching to groove and some for patching to bore diameter. All have given good results when properly loaded in single shot rifles. The one that started me on the road to PP is still the one I like the most especially for lever guns. I liked this design so much in fact for lever guns that when I finally got a 50 caliber lever gun I bought the same design in 50 caliber.
One nice feature of this design is that a patch of 1" height is perfect for both the 45 and the 50 cal as both have the same length straight shank though the 50 caliber design is over 600gn. I should also mention here the easiest fastest way I have ever found to cut precision paper patches. For this I have to say if your going to paper patch go to an office max or any office supply store and get a platform type paper cutter. They are fairly inexpensive and make the job of cutting patches fast, precise, and easy. The platform has a measuring scale so it is a very simple matter to first cut your paper sheets into strips which is the first step. Then with a template mark one strip and use it as a guide to cut several strips at a time into patches. The paper I use is 11" tall and takes about 1 minute to cut into 11 - 1" strips. Each strip allows two patches at 45 or 50 caliber so one sheet of paper yields 22 precision cut patches. With this paper cutter it only takes about ten minutes to cut 100 patches.
As for making your template its simple. I first cut one from a soft material like a butter tub lit or some such. Then I slowly adjust its length so it produces a patch the gives two wraps without overlapping a third. Start out long and keep trimming with scissors until its just right. Once I have the length of my soft template just right I then transfer that length to a hard material. For this I have used brass shim stock, steel shim stock and have even peened out tin cans flat and used that material so it doesn't have to be too complicated or expensive there. You can even just keep and use the soft template for that matter.
Well there ya go you have now wasted a substantial segment of your life reading through my reminiscing, or perhaps not !
