[johnacarver]

My Hunting buddy and I have 60-70s vintage Marlin 444s/ss rifles and have refinished them both to perfect condition (with the addition of Kick-eez pads and mercury recoil reducers in the stocks - ouch...) Our final project is seeing about wringing all the accuracy out of these thumpers as possible. We have been experimenting with Hornady 265 and 300 grain bullets with only limited success. Marshall's articles on the .444 drew me to Beartooth and I have purchased all of the equipment to fire-lap our rifles. I'm in the process of reading his technical guide now. This book is a real 'forehead slapper' if you get my drift... Well more twice as much as the price he sells it for. I have a question about the loads to use for fire-lapping. I have some polyester batting and some bullseye powder laying around and want to use that for lapping loads. Can anyone tell me if they have used bullseye (or any other pistol powder) and how much powder was needed? Did you use batting in the case?

 

[johnacarver]

I'm using Marshall's latest compound. Well, I think it's his latest - I just got it in the mail. When impregnating the bullets I'm unable to get the bullets to appear black with the stuff (like his book mentioned), just darker grey. I have six rounds loaded up with 3.5 grains of Bullseye, that sure is a small amount of powder... I also seated the bullets to sammi specs. You think I should seat them backwards? I was expecting some wadcutters but these are regular old bullets - real soft though, not alot of bearing surface. I'll go light them off and see if they work ok. Thanks for all the advice folks.

 

[johnacarver]

Well believe it or not, it only took 2 grains of Bullseye. It was perfect, it sounded like a pop-gun and I could actually SEE the bullets flying downrange. I didn't use the batting and seated the bullets backwards - all the way in - flush with the case mouth after using a toothpick to smear a little more compound into the groves. Out of 50 rounds I had two get lodged in the bore right under the front sight. I cleaned every ten rounds. Before leaving the range I shot some full-house bear loads and already it's shooting tighter groups. Now I'll do some hand lapping and slug the bore again. Thanks for the tips everyone.