The 4 grits for fire-lapping came in so I proceeded to the next step. I cast some bullets with a hardness of about 22. Also did some pure lead for slugging the bore between grits. This did not require any major effort on my part as I cast my own bullets as a matter of course.
The applying of the grit to the bullets was interesting. Started with the 1200 grit as I figured if I didnt clean all of it off I wouldnt be contaminating the next one down. This went fine. The 800 was a bit thicker (natch) as was the 400. When I got to the 220 it was almost like working with sand but other than that went OK. Had to roll each bullet between the steel plates that came with the kit; the bottom one had a thin layer of grit that I had to apply. There is a bit of skill involved in applying the right amounttoo much and you have a mess, too little and not enough gets on it. Didnt take too long to get the right amount on the plate. Stored the bullets by grit in plastic bags. I have 32s, 38s and 45s (200 and 250 grain) but Im betting I can tell them apart later. :grin:
In the instructions it talks about 10 bullets of each grit per gun (general idearesults may/will vary from gun to gun.) So, figuring 40 bullets per gun times 8 guns = 320 that I got to grit-up. I figured I wanted to do this at one time and not keep going back again and again. Guessing about an hour and a half for all this fun.
Next comes the actual loading of the bullets in the cases. This will require I wipe the bullets before loading into the cartridge so no grit is ahead of the bullet and this might ring the barrel. Wiping them will also keep the grit from getting on the SDBs dies (I hope.)
More to come as we travel down this trail
..
ÇR
