38-55 keyholing. help please

mike44325

mike44325

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so i have an old winchester 1894. Bore slugs at .383. Riffling is there but weak. Bullets im using are 249 grain. .381 to.382. From the bullet barn. Yet im keyholing and have very poor accuracy. My load is 27 gr of imr 3031. thinking i need to slow it down. What do you think?. Im fairly new to reloading and really new to cast.
 
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Try some faster burning powder and kick it hard in the backside and the bullet will obturate and fill the bore. My Lyman cast bullet handbook suggests red dot, 700x, green dot, PB, Unique.
 
Personally, I've found the old .38 caliber guns the most confounded things to get to shoot well. I have a few 38-55 and a 38-56, all have proven to be bears to find a load for, but when you do it is very gratifying. I have my 38-56 and one 38-55 shooting 2" at a 100 but the others are still 4" or over

One thing I will offer from my experience is that the BB bullets are hard cast and , altho I use a lot of them and they have a very nice product, with worn rifling I've had very disappointing results. Along with Biged's suggestion of faster powder, I would try a softer bullet as well.
 
When you seat and crimp your bullet is it hard to chamber or about normal?

Most problems with old warn 38-55 barrels is that you need a big enough bullet to grab some rifling and most die sets will swag the bullet down to where it is way undersized as to your needs and a hard bullet on top of that is asking for disaster. The brass is a huge factor also, most Winchester brass is to thick so when you try to chamber the round it will not go in. Starline brass is thinner and this helps greatly in chambering and oversize bullet. The finished round with an oversized bullet and thin brass looks like a snake trying to swallow a mouse.

Things to do:

1. Soft oversized bullet, you need air cooled wheel weight lead at the hardest and might end up having to add pure lead to get the hardness down.

You could try taking the hardness out of the lead of a few bullets and see if that helps. You take one bullet as the sacrificial lamb and put it on a cookie sheet (and old one or buy one from the dollar store) and you put it in the oven and slowly turn up the heat about 25 deg at a time to see when the bullet starts to melt. Scrap as much of the lube off first as it will stink when melted and might catch fire. Turn up the heat to 400F and let it sit for 10 minutes to get up to temp. After it is up to temp turn it up 25 deg. and let it come up to temp for a few minutes and watch the bullet. Keep going slowly, turn it up a bit and watch. When the oven temp is to high for the bullet it will start to slump over, at this point take a piece of masking tape and stick it beside the oven temp dial and mark exactly where the dial is. This mark is now the temp that your oven will melt your bullets. Take 25 bullets and put them on the pan (after removing the lube) and repeat this process only take the temp up to just below this mark, you want to get the bullets to the point they are red hot but not melting. Leave the bullets at this non-melting temp in the oven for 45 minutes and then turn the oven off but do not remove the bullets. Let them cool down slowly and in 1/2 an hour you can take them out. This will remove a lot of the hardness out of the lead. Since you don't have any lubing equipment you can use Lee liquid lube to put on the bullets and I would give it two coats just to make sure it has enough of the lube on it. I would wait about 24 hours and then load them up. As a side note to harden the bullets you would do the same thing in the oven but after 45 minutes you take them out of the oven and drop them into ice cold water, this will really harden them.

2. Size of the brass.

I don't mean sizing I mean the actual thickness of the brass wall that holds the bullet. If it is too thick the bullet will be sized down to smaller than you need to get the round to chamber. Get some starline brass as it is the thinnest on the market. I have also tried some Winchester brass that was too thick and once I seated a bullet there was no way it would chamber, I put the shell holder in a drill press and mounted the round on the drill press and slowed the speed down to its lowest setting. I took some sand paper and just removed a slight bit of brass from the last 1/2 inch or so on the bullet end. I would touch the sandpaper to the brass and just so it was turning the brass shinny in that area and very little was coming off on the sandpaper. I would try chambering the round and keep doing it till the round would chamber. I did 20 rounds like this just to see how long they would last and I still have them after 10 years and many reloads.

There are a lot of variables that need to be done to get the old girl to shoot straight, these two are 75% of your battle and the other 25% is bullet depth and the usual powder and primer choices. A win 94 in 38-55 can drive you crazy trying to get it to shoot but if you get a soft lead, oversized bullet and thin brass to hold it I am sure you will stop the keyholing and get down to business.

You can also have the chamber opened up a bit, this is expensive as the barrel has to be removed and the proper equipment needed so basically it has to go to the gunsmith. Relining the barrel can also be done but again it takes all the value out of the rifle and is expensive. You can buy a modern 38-55 for the price of having a gunsmith reline or chamber the old girl.

I have 4 of them and they all shoot under 2" at 100 yards which is all I can ask of them. I use 1 pound lead to 10 pounds wheel weights sized to .383 for the bullet and drive it with IMR3031 at about 25 grains. One I take hunting every year for a heavily treed area not far from my home that I don't need a great deal of accuracy or distance to get a harvest. In this role she does just fine.
 
Try slugging your barrel to find the size. Old 38-55s are notorious for having various sizes of bores.
 
bigedp51 said:
Try some faster burning powder and kick it hard in the backside and the bullet will obturate and fill the bore. My Lyman cast bullet handbook suggests red dot, 700x, green dot, PB, Unique.
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x 2, but get some pure lead bullets too. I've 38-55 Winny with rifling that is beyond dismal...6-7 deer later, still fills the freezer.
 
mike44325 said:
I think i will try unique. Does it really only need 9 grains. Seems very small charge.
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9 grains is a max charge

Start at 7g and work up to 9 g for a 249g cast bullet in the 38/55

you also might need a softer lead -- the larger the better (as long as they are not too big to chamber)
 
mike44325 said:
so i have an old winchester 1894. Bore slugs at .380. Riffling is there but weak. Bullets im using are 249 grain. .381 to.382. From the bullet barn. Yet im keyholing and have very poor accuracy. My load is 27 gr of imr 3031. thinking i need to slow it down. What do you think?. Im fairly new to reloading and really new to cast.
Click to expand...

Not sure why you are keyholing but it usually is indicative of either poor bullet fit or velocity being too low to stabilize the bullet. It could also be a damaged crown.

That powder charge is only going to develop about 13000 psi and consequently doesn't burn very efficiently. If I were you I would bump that charge up to 30 gr and try 1/2 gr steps from there up to about 32 gr, and see if things get any better. You will still be well under max pressure at 32 gr.

Some rifles don't like super hard bullets. A slightly warmer load and softer bullets could be the answer, as another poster already suggested. I've had better luck with bullets in the 20-22 BHN range.
 
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Is .380 the bore or groove diameter? Normally you want to use bullets sized for .001 to .002 over the bigger groove diameter. So if it's the bore that is sizing out at .380 you may need a little bigger bullet yet.
 
Key holing is caused by undersized bullets, an oversized barrel and sometimes too low velocity. Your issue is the over sized barrel.
Your rifling is too far gone for a solid flat base bullet. A hollow base might work though.
Or you could try a paper patch.
 
sunray said:
Key holing is caused by undersized bullets, an oversized barrel and sometimes too low velocity. Your issue is the over sized barrel.
Your rifling is too far gone for a solid flat base bullet. A hollow base might work though.
Or you could try a paper patch.
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what if i drilled out the bases alittle? I have no experience with a paper patch. how do you do that ?
 
I started with this video and have been paper patching for my 45-70 for a little while now.

I do it because I like the concept even though it's a lot of work, not because I have to. You can use them with smokeless, not just black powder, but most of my paper patched are used with Goex FFg or FFFg. If using smokeless you skip the over powder wad and lube step; you can shoot them dry. I use lined 3-hole paper from Staples and my cast bullets start at .450-.451" and are .459-.460" after the patch dries. I rub a touch of Imperial Sizing wax on the paper before seating but many use the tiniest amount of alox lube to the same effect. With a hint of lube I get maybe 1-2 in 50 that tear the patch, if I seat them totally dry it's more like 1 in 10 even with a massive mouth flare on the cases.

The hard part for you is going to be finding a starting bullet the right size. If you have a ~.383" bore you will need a bullet around .375" or so. You can use bullets with lube grooves or purpose designed bullets with smooth sides. You can even paper patch over top of lubed bullets and it wont effect it. You can use thinner or thicker paper if you need more or less extra diameter. I've tried onion skin paper that only added around .006" for a really worn out 8mm rifle (.323" cast up to .329" for a .327" groove diameter) but it didn't work well (I think the throat may have been too long). You want the rifling to imprint the paper when the round is chambered; any jump can tear the paper. You want to see confetti coming out your barrel with each shot. If the paper stays with the bullet it can really throw it off. I've gotten some really odd looks when some people see me shooting confetti at the range when they haven't seen paper patched bullets before (which is 95% of people in my experience).
 
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LUTNIT said:
I started with this video and have been paper patching for my 45-70 for a little while now.

I do it because I like the concept even though it's a lot of work, not because I have to. You can use them with smokeless, not just black powder, but most of my paper patched are used with Goex FFg or FFFg. If using smokeless you skip the over powder wad and lube step; you can shoot them dry. I use lined 3-hole paper from Staples and my cast bullets start at .450-.451" and are .459-.460" after the patch dries. I rub a touch of Imperial Sizing wax on the paper before seating but many use the tiniest amount of alox lube to the same effect. With a hint of lube I get maybe 1-2 in 50 that tear the patch, if I seat them totally dry it's more like 1 in 10 even with a massive mouth flare on the cases.

The hard part for you is going to be finding a starting bullet the right size. If you have a ~.383" bore you will need a bullet around .375" or so. You can use bullets with lube grooves or purpose designed bullets with smooth sides. You can even paper patch over top of lubed bullets and it wont effect it. You can use thinner or thicker paper if you need more or less extra diameter. I've tried onion skin paper that only added around .006" for a really worn out 8mm rifle (.323" cast up to .329" for a .327" groove diameter) but it didn't work well (I think the throat may have been too long). You want the rifling to imprint the paper when the round is chambered; any jump can tear the paper. You want to see confetti coming out your barrel with each shot. If the paper stays with the bullet it can really throw it off. I've gotten some really odd looks when some people see me shooting confetti at the range when they haven't seen paper patched bullets before (which is 95% of people in my experience).
Click to expand...

might have to give this a try if all else fails
 
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