Month: March 2020

Good Monday Morning!

First off I made a mistake and released the Casting Bullet Quality Control write up as a post an not a page. Thus it was emailed out to all of you instead of just going live to the page. We truly do not want to spam our subscribers, so we limit emails to once a week updates for those who want to see what happens on the site. I’ll pay special attention to this in the future.

We had a successful casting session last week. Instead of doing a full “How To” I instead decided to share my thoughts on casting. Hopefully there’s some interesting stuff for newbies and veterans alike.

Some Thoughts on Casting Bullets

When you manufacturer your own bullets or ammunition you need to have some way to measure critical dimensions, and a means to establish your own quality control. While perfection is everyone’s goal, there are often factors that beyond your control that make achieving this goal impossible. Here is what we do when we look at quality control of our cast bullets.

Casting Bullets Quality Control

We’ve been working with Hi-Tek Expoy coating for our cast bullets. Expect to see a write up on that in the near future for those who are interested. This is the first time we’ve used this coating, and it has been a bit of an adventure. I do believe in the future we will see a migration away from copper and brass jackets bullets to Nylon, or Epoxy type coatings, for budget ammunition from mainstream manufacturers.

This is not without precedent, as Herters, Federal and some other have released some version of a Nylon or Coated lead bullet in loaded ammunition. While these early attempts may not have been a commercial success, we will likely see these products come back to the market as ammunition prices rise, and companies find way to cut costs and bring product to the market at lower costs.

As always if you have any questions, comments or concerns, please feel free to drop me an email at jayandrew338@gmail.com or hop on Facebook and checkout our Facebook page.

Stay sane, and stay safe!

The Ballistic Assistant

March is almost over, and what a March is has been.

We continued our series of write ups on Spud Guns. This one focused on building out the combustion chamber. Once the PVC fittings are put together and the glue has dried there is still some work in ensuring electrical connections can be made to the igniter and the fan. We detail all of that work in the write up below.

The Humble Spud Gun: Combustion Chamber

Sighting in the VZ-58 has been a small project in its own right. Discovering tools that are needed and weaknesses in the build. We took a hard look at the trigger, being that it really was not working for us. We took a look at our options, tried a few things and came up with a solution that got us a better trigger. See the detail here’s :

VZ-58: Trigger Rework

Last week we had indicated there would be an update to the Powder Burn Rate chart to include SMP 764 and 6.5 Staball powder. We have not release the update yet, as we want to check the approximate burn rate of SMP 764 against SMP 765. Be patient with us and we’ll get this update out as soon as possible.

I was able to track down some 7.62×39 ammo at a local pawn shop. So we will continue working on sighting in the VZ-58 this week. Hopefully we will have that finished off. I also plan on doing some bullet casting, and try my hand at epoxy coating. Expect some follow up write ups on both of those topics. We will also be working on the Spud gun, but we are waiting on some components to arrive, there may not be an update on that this week.

With everyone stuck indoors what have you been up to? Have you worn out your presses yet? Run out of components? Sold the kids to buy more? It been tough for a lot of us, hopefully we are through the worse of it. Let us know what you’ve been up to over at Facebook.

As always if you have questions, comments or concerns shoot me an email at jayandrew338@gmail.com. I’ve heard from a few of you and I have really appreciated the feed back and conversation. Stay safe out there.

Thanks,

The Ballistic Assistant

Good Monday Morning!

I gotta say, man the world is going crazy right now over this COVID-19 outbreak. Certinately never seen anything like it. Fortunately it doesn’t impact much of what I do, it is just insane to watch. Stay safe out there.

We’ve been working behind the scenes on projects and do not have much in the way of website updates this week. When sighting in the VZ-58, I discovered that I needed a tool to adjust the front sight. Instead of purchasing one, we made one. Here is the write up on that.

VZ-58: Front Sight Adjustment Tool

Expect to see an update on the Burn Rate Chart this week. This update come courtesy of one of our readers. Winchester StaBall 6.5 is the consumer version of St. Marks SMP 764. We will edit the Relative Burn Rate Chart to reflect this new information. A big thanks to the gentleman who pointed this out.

If anyone has anything they would like to add or change on the Relative Burn Rate Chart, please do not hesitate to shoot me an email. When doing load development, the Burn Rate Chart was an invaluable tool for identifying all the different powders worth testing. Having a comprehensive and complete Burn Rate Chart was and is always my goal.

That is all for this week’s update. As always, thanks for subscribing, if you have comments, suggestions, or corrections please email them to jayandrew338@gmail.com. If you would like to interact with us directly, check out our Facebook Page.

Thanks,

The Ballistic Assistant

Good Monday morning!

Last week was a busy week working on a few projects. We still managed to hash out a write up continuing our series on basic handloading equipment. Hopefully it is somewhat insightful for people who are looking at getting started in handloading, as well as those who have been at it for awhile.

Handloading Your Way – Powder Metering Accessories

We’ll continue to work on this series as time allows. We’re dutifully working on some of the other projects for the sight, so keep an eye out for updates.

We try hard to stay away from politics and world events on this website, but we would be somewhat negligent if we didn’t comment on the current trends of the firearms industry. Currently we are seeing an uptick in ammunition and firearm purchases. This can be traced to two primary events, the CORVID-19 outbreak and the upcoming 2020 elections.

These “Run on guns” can have detrimental effects to both the hobby shooter and the professional load developer. Shortages in ammunition can result in the inability to conduct Competitor Sample comparisons, and shortages in powder often results in alternate powders being use, incomplete powder screenings, or loads unable to be loaded at all. If you have time sensitive projects coming up, be sure to order early, and anticipate standard lead times may be longer than typical.

I’m not saying to run out a purchase all the 22LR you can find, but I am saying that you may want to plan accordingly. Depending on the outcome of the 2020 election, we may see this “Run on Guns” evaporate overnight, or it could get a lot worse. We will have to see.

We’ll continue to monitor the market and see what the trends look like. Be safe out there.

In the meantime if you have any comments, suggestions, or question feel free to give a shout out to us at Jayandrew338@gmail.com or check us out on Facebook. Thanks for subscribing and we hope you have a good week!

Thanks,

The Ballistic Assistant

First Monday in March. This year is flying by!

We had a busy week last week and got a lot done. Thus we were able to get a few things published.

I made a mistake when I tried to improvise my own tool for disassembly of the Mexican Mauser action. I twisted the action, and when I tried to correct it, I really just made it worse. No one to blame but myself, and I learned what not to do. I have been able to source an additional Rem 700 Small Action, so the heart of the build lives on. I took a moment to do a design evaluation before continuing on the project. This lays out the goals of the build, and discusses some of the challenges that we may expect to encounter with the build.

308 Scout Rifle: Design Eval

As mentioned previously Potato Cannons, also known as Spud guns, are really what kicked off my journey into the world of Ballistics. As a fun side project, I want to revisit my youth and apply what I know now to this simple spud accelerator. We formally kick off this series of write ups with the construction of the gun itself. I want to get a little bit fancy with the ignition, metering and mixing set up, so expect separate write ups covering those systems.

The Humble Spud Gun: Construction

It’s been awhile since we’ve had a formal update on the VZ-58 project. We were able to get the rifle a fresh coat of paint. I am extremely pleased with how it turned out. Thanks to Utah Hydro Graphics for a job well done. Just a few more things left to do on this build before we can sign it off as complete!

VZ-58: A Fresh Coat of Paint

That is it for this week. Thanks to all those who have subscribed! If you have comments questions, or suggestions please email me at jayandrew338@gmail.com or give us a shout over on our Facebook page.

The Ballistic Assistant