Well here she is, my new baby.

For those of you who didn’t catch my first posts regarding going down to take a look at this rifle and the decision to buy, she is an A Hollis but most probably built by H. Leonard. The H. Leonard serial number is 1424 which is I believe 182 rifles later than Rusty’s and the A. Hollis serial number is 15113 which is I believe 15 rifles later than Rusty’s. This I believe puts it at a similar time of manufacture of between 1910 to 1912.

She is in 450/400 3” has 26” barrels, a deep dark wood and in good general condition considering her age.

I had the bores slugged and she has the larger .411” bore rather than the .408”.

I am going to have a mould made so I can cast my own bullets and wondered what diameter bullet to go for. Some have advised up to .002” over bore and some to go for something around .410”. Also I was advised to go for a .416” gas check which would be swaged on through a sizing die. There seems to be a lot of differing opinions, unfortunately most of these opinions are from those who haven’t actually reloaded for this calibre although they have reloaded and cast bullets for other large calibres. Has anyone actually done this in this caliber, what do you think. Does it need a gas check and do you get leading/fowling problems pushing lead bullets up to around 2100fps.

The other question I have is in regard to the hardness of the lead required and getting consistency of the alloy without batching large quantities.

Sorry this has turned out more a reloading post than a double rifle post.

Regards

Phil