On Monday, April 3, 2017 at 6:39:32 PM UTC-4, Steve Walker wrote:
On 4/1/2017 7:38 PM, wrote:
SNIP

That sounds like a good deal. By the way, I once made a D-bit chamber reamer for a small wildcat. I used it, but I found that cutting into good barrel steel with that thing was more of a challenge than I expected. I had a Douglas barrel that was unchambered.

I wound up drilling out most of it with regular twist drills, leaving some meat for the D-bit reamer. It worked OK, if slowly, but then I learned some more about wildcats and realized I had come up with a potentially dangerous cartridge. g

It was a .32 cal H&R Magnum pistol cartridge swaged and necked down to ..22, for lead bullets. The brass was too thin for a wildcat tyro like me to be playing with. It was going to be my squirrel- and indoor schuetzen rifle (I was a member of ASSRA in those days), built on a replica, miniature Farquharson action that I still have. Maybe I'll do something else with it.

I remember reading about this, some time ago:

http://www.24hourcampfire.com/ubbthr...Re_6mm_Mach_IV

There are few shooters more dangerous than a tyro wildcatter -- which I was at the time. g You really have to study and learn the signs of over-cooking before you play with those 4.000 fps wildcats. That's not what I was doing -- my little .32 Mag/.22 was mostly for offhand shooting at single-shot events (scheutzen events) but I also thought it would make a cool squirrel gun.

When I was in my early teens, my best friend's dad, who was quite well off, had a collection of professionally build wildcat rifles, which he allowed me to shoot. He had everything from an Ackley Bee to a .25/06, back when it was still a wildcat. I was hooked on them for years but I never got into it sufficiently to be allowed to run around loose with one I cooked up myself.

--
Ed Huntress