25-20 Loading

This weekend a buddy and I tried out the newly cut 25-20 mold which is now 63 grains and is flat base without a gascheck. He used his newly lined 1892 Winchester and I used my newly lined 1889 Marlin. Using hard lead (wheel wieght) it shot much better with light loads. It performed very well with 4 grains of Unique or 3.5 grains of Trailboss. Going to 4.5 grains of unique accuracy seemed to drop off. At 5 grains I quickly got heavy leading again. It shot well for a short bit but then I had to push a bunch of lead out with a brush.

The light loads are very accurate and fun and almost feel and sound like a high velocity 22. Should be good for gophers, we will see this spring.

Now I am starting to wonder if I should try something different so I can push the bullets a bit faster. My options are powder coat, paper patch or make a set of dies to turn spent 22 shells into jacketed bullets. I am thinking I will try the power coating and paper patch first. I will have to make a sizing die to reduce the size of the bullets before paper patching but I think I will use the mold I have now just to see if this will work. I have never paper patched a bullet that small. We will see.