.44-77 and paper patch?

[Distant Thunder]

Kurt,

I haven't recovered near the number of bullets you have, but I have recovered a few from both my .45-70 and my .40-65 and I've never seen any evidence of the 45* end stop digging into the bullet like that!

I did have trouble with paper rings in my .40-65 (freebored gg chamber) in part due to brass being .020 - .025'' short. I did two things, I weeded out the short brass and I set the bullets very, very shallow. That got rid of the paper rings and improved the accuracy.

When I first started having success with pp in my standard chambered Shiloh .45-90 I found the shallower I seated my bullets the better it shot. I have carried that lesson with me as I developed loads for my .45-70 (Danielson pp chamber w/ 45*) and my .40-65. I always stress the importance of shallow seating shallow with bore diameter ppb to everyone trying shoot ppb in any chamber. When I say shallow, I mean SHALLOW, like .090 max to .075" is even better. It has work so well for me and I think you get past some of these kind of problems.

Seating a bore diameter paper patch bullet deep like a gg bullet would be is only going to cause problems because there are too many places for the bullet to upset into before it starts to move down the bore and most of them are not good.

It seems to me that a bullet will still upset into any empty space ahead of the case mouth and even more so if you have a long shallow angle starting from the case O.D. and running out ahead of the case. It may smear the upset part more smoothly when it's a shallow angle but the empty space will still be filled with the upset bullet. I have no idea what the best way to cut a chamber is, but having more empty space for the bullet to upset into doesn't seem right.

In a perfect world there would be NO gap between the end of the case and the lead angle into the rifling, but I don't think such a chamber can be cut.

There is a lot of good information coming to light here, but I'll be darned if I know what's best. I DO know what has worked for me so far and that will be hard to let go of.