I gave up trying to resize the pic. Sorry!

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Thanx for the update! I have finished processing 21 cases and seated a cast bullet for determining chamber size. As with the form dies, I will now taper bore the chamber with a thou and a half clearance on the neck.

Joe, 
What velocity do you think thar 17gr load was producing? I’m going to fireform with the 210gr Accurate 36-210BG and then design an Accurate mold to suit the case, neck and throat dims. I am now leaning towards reducing the stop-ring land diameter to a couple thou. over throat freebore diameter. I will mock the neck section of the chamber in that muzzle end cutoff first to evaluate seating conditions and then throat the rifle to suit.

this is my first outing last year with fixed GC bullets in my 35-40(or 30?) Maynard(barrel marked 9.1x51R)  on a large Martini.
it's never shot fixed ammo this well again and now I breech seat and I'm slowly getting it to shoot.
With a martini, I'm having to use a simple  push seater with no leverage help . So I have a taper die for 35 calibers and I'm able to taper the bullets so I can get them to seat easily.

SBoomer wrote on Jan 1^st, 2024 at 4:08pm:


ya,14g 2400 and RCBS 250sp.its a special order mold i picked up when I visited Huntingtons 25 years ago
my chamber is super tight.To seat .358 bullets I had to turn necks! 
I can't find pics of my breech seat plainbase groups but they were just a bit bigger.i used about 14g of 4227.

I load fixed ammo  with 35-40 Lewis dies and it's pretty close to my chamber.

I spent the last couple days testing dozens of loads with the 35/30 Maynard “fixed” project. It was disappointing at best. I was optimistic that extra care taken in a tight chamber and case prep would pay off. I was getting 2-3” 100yd groups with an occasional 1 1/2 group. I decided that I would see what this particular barrel would do with breechseating. This barrel is on a Stevens 44 1/2 action. Seating a .360” cylindrical bullet was out of the question. Not having a tapered 35cal mold suitable for breechseating, I made a tapered size die customized to the Accurate 36-210 bullet I am using. The pic shows the before and after of this bullet. I tapered the lands .351” to .360” top band to base in .460” of length. In actual use, the die works beautifully. This taper allows a plugged case to easily seat the bullet engraved nearly thru the base band. I had previously removed the gas check feature to use this 210gr. bullet in my “fixed” efforts. The first few shots using the new tapered bullet and breechseating let me know I was on the right track and greatly re-energized my 35/30 Maynard enthusiasm! My first (5)shot target had a three shot cloverleaf with the remaining 2 shots 1/2” out. The next (3) targets all had 3-shot cloverleafs with the flyers being my fault. I chose the 210gr. bullet as I already had this mold and anymore, I am becoming more and more intolerant of recoil. The load I am using is launching it at around 1550fps and is very pleasant to shoot. The barrel is the Ron Pence barrel that I bought from a forum member a while back. It finished at nearly 8# and is a 16 twist. Ill post some targets in the couple of days as I shoot more at 200yds. Cheers!

I had a fun project with the .35.    This was originally a Ballard Perfection in 38-50.    I found the rifle in Northern Idaho.   It was cosmetically sound externally but had significant corrosion in the bore.   Consequently, I learned a great deal on the way to making this rifle an excellent shooter.    I ordered a TJ liner from Mike Sayers.  John Taylor did the reline of the barrel with the T.J. Hammer-Forged liner and cut the chamber.   For the chamber I modified a drawing for a Baldwin 35-40 chamber using my Tom Myers (Precision Software).   From that drawing I had Manson Reamers make a chamber-reamer for Mr. Taylor to use in cutting the 35-40 Maynard chamber.   The Oklahoma gunsmith and friend, Steve Baldwin, did additional work on the barrel face to tighten the lever lock-up.   I then drew up a bullet using the same software and had a custom mold-maker cut a mold for casting bullets.  There were a lot of steps I could have fouled up. The first real test was an 18” round gong at 500 yards hung at Wind’s annual get-together.    That was the first validation that I had everything correct. But the best part, after eight consecutive hits, handing the gun to my good friend, Mo, and seeing him best my 8 by going ten consecutive hits.     The only thing I might redo is going with a faster twist liner so I could have shot a heavier bullet.   

My eyes are gone now with advanced glaucoma so reshaping my collection to pass on.   This will be a hard one to turn loose of.