Got to fire one of these once as a young man and remember thinking that my CZ75 had a trigger so much better that I pittied the krauts who had to wield it. Fascinating thing though and incredibly far ahead of its time. The chamber fluting to aid extraction was one of its secret H&K sauces too.

Quote from: troglodyte on Today at 06:47 PMMy experience is that I require slightly less propellant to achieve book velocities for cast when powder coating. Have to assume the stuff is slidier than raw lead.
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Are you certain about this, the powder coating reduces friction substantially, the reduced friction = less pressure, the less pressure = reduced velocity. I have found that you need more propellant to get same velocity via raising the pressures. Then because of the lower pressure you can raise the load to achieve higher velocity than uncoated.
You can at a point move to an faster propellant and step a level up in velocity. This has all been learn back in the Moly and other coating start out days.

Not sure of the whys and wherefores but my results are as follows. I use roughly 10% less powder for a given plated bullet weight when loading cast PC and a hair, but a noticeable one, than I used with the identical bullets in raw lead lubed form.

I have done a lot of fire forming of bullets, and the most important part is not fireforming.
Annealing is far more important than the fireforming how to. Learn to destress your brass and do so before every step of your fireforming, even new brass is better annealed before fire forming.
That done, then shooting it.
I have a 210 liter oil drum plastic rubbish bin in my garage which use when absolutely full as a fireforming silencer. The full of garage and household rubbish drum has a hole barrel size  two thirds down the side and a thick old blanked foldeda few x over the top with a weighted lid over that. When I fire form I just place barrel in drum and do the deed, its no louder than dropping a phone book flat on a tiled floor or hitting the last hit on a nail when you hit the wood as well. I phone closest neighbour, tell her I will be doing some wood work, please let me know if I bother you. She claims not to have ever heard me. My wife sleeps about 4 rooms away when I work, no hassle.
I have used Mp - MS to achieve desired results, I also have a bottle of spilt propellant, droppings and leak out autoloader and Lee pro press. These droppings are everything hand gun, rifle and shotgun propellant.
I usually use 12 - 20 gr of mix for fireforming and I have topped charge with almost everything you can imagine, cotten, kapok, toilet paper. I have use Porridge, pronutro and birdseed, sawdust and shavings to a small load of birdshot. I have stuffed a case full of cotton wool and topped that of with soap forced into neck, I have poured wax in and used 2 mm of polifiller. I have used silicon sealer and even a small amount of Bostic contact dribbled on top of paper at mouth of the neck.
They all work, every way of making a bang works, sometimes just a tweak is needed to raise the resistance- pressure.
 ....................But please, anneal thos cases.

My experience is that I require slightly less propellant to achieve book velocities for cast when powder coating. Have to assume the stuff is slidier than raw lead.
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Are you certain about this, the powder coating reduces friction substantially, the reduced friction = less pressure, the less pressure = reduced velocity. I have found that you need more propellant to get same velocity via raising the pressures. Then because of the lower pressure you can raise the load to achieve higher velocity than uncoated.
You can at a point move to an faster propellant and step a level up in velocity. This has all been learn back in the Moly and other coating start out days.

Quote from: Krazong on May 08, 2024, 08:03 PMI find that the stick-on wheel weights which are actually made of lead (Pb) can only be used for muzzle loaders.  In fact, they are so soft that it's in fact almost pure 100% Lead.  Because it's not really an alloy, it casts with great difficulty and does not flow as well as the crimp-on wheelwreights.  You also would want to increase the temperature a lot to effectively cast a nice bullet without wrinkles.  They made great roundballs and I use them exclusively to cast my .715" and .735" roundballs.  These balls consume huge amounts of lead, being 550 and 650 grains respectively.

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I was told the stick on weights are NOT pure lead, the need to be softer than lead and are therefore an alloy. I have believed this since forever,
I now actually researched it to correct your post only to find that the stick on weights I have been turning down are actually the real thing ..........................Waaaaaaaaa ha ha ha !

For those of you who love polymer made firearms and think that Glock was the first commercially available polymer framed gun, you are wrong.

The first polymer framed gun was actually the Remington Nylon 66 made in 1959 BUT this was in fact a rifle, not a handgun. 

The very first commercially available handgun made with a polymer frame, was in fact the Heckler & Koch VP70.
This was manufactured back in 1970 and therefore predates the first Glock 17 gen 1 by about 12 years.



It was manufactured primarily for the police or  military and it came in two variants.
VP70z was the "Zivil" or civilian version lacked the ability to add the shoulder stock extension to enable the three round automatic burst.
VP70m was the military variant and when mated with the shoulder stock, had the ability to fire a three round burst.

It was not widely accepted and one can argue that it was a commercial failure.  The firearm was very innovative for it's period though but had some minor niggles which made it not very popular.  The main drawback was the fact that it is a pure blowback type pistol, without any lockup mechanism used by most 9mmP chambered firearms.  This caused some design limitations which include:
Very heavy slide to absorb recoil
Very deep grooves in the barrel to reduce pressure.

It also came with a unique front sight which did not work very well.  It has two brightly polished posts and this caused a black "shadow" in between the posts which you need to align with the notched rear sight.  The sights were not replaceable.  It also does not have a slide lock on the last round fired.  This is a problem as you might find that your gun goes "click" instead of "bang" unless you counted the rounds fired.
Similar to Glock. it was striker fired with no external safety.  Unlike Glocks, the VP70 has a DAO trigger (Double Action Only) and the trigger is very heavy with every single shot fired, making accurate shots a challenge.  It was very reliable though.  Every shot fired had an "interesting" type of recoil due to the extremely heavy metal slide and the very stiff recoil spring.  It is also fairly big but does have an 18 round double stack, double feed magazine.  Loading the magazine can be done in a similar way to an Uzi where the rounds are simply pushed straight down into the magazine.

Overall, an interesting collectors gun with a very prominent place in history.

I used to do some fire forming with my 7x57 using a load of 10 grains MP200 and adding some tissue paper on top of that.  Filled with mielie meel, and then held into place with another wad of toilet paper.  Must be shot on a shooting range at it's nearly as loud as a real bullet.  Difficult to clean the barrel afterward and smells like burnt pap.

Thanks, most interesting. If my toy budget was in better shape or had realistic prospects of improvement collecting would be something I'd love to explore. As a military history geek there are very few artifacts that are of more interest to me than the firearms used in the conflicts of the periods I'm interested in. 

Thank you for taking the time to share your knowledge and experience.

Die vraag is eenvoudig: watter metodes bestaan daar om doppies in te skiet, en hoe doen n mens dit?

The question is quite easy: which methods exist to foreform cases, and how is it done?


(Vir die Afrikaanse deelnemers: daar bestaan sover ek weet nie 'n geykte term vir "fireform" nie. Ek maak dus nou die begrip "doppies inskiet". Soos wat 'n mens n teleskoop met 'n sekere lading inskiet, moet doppies ook soms ingeskiet word om by 'n spesifieke geweer te pas.)