Thread: Baikal single shot rebarrel - Anyone done this?

I had a chance to put 3 rounds through this a few weeks ago. I did not have a chronograph and it was only 3 rounds as I was not expecting to have an opportunity to shoot it given the location.

The loads were a combination of 410gr projectiles I purchased from ShooterNZ here on the forum and 450gr projectiles that I am making myself.



The load for both was 15-16gr of ADI AP100 with about 0.8gr Dacron filler. I have been learning all about case mouth flaring and expander mandrels, as to this point all my loading has been for boat tail jacketed projectiles, so a bit of a learning curve to deal with cast bullets well. Quickload estimates this load to be right on 1000fps.

Recoil was stout but not obnoxious. I would liken it to my lightweight and short 308 hunting rifle shooting hot loads. With full house 45-70 rounds I think it would be extremely unpleasant to un-shootable. It is only 3kg after all.

To my surprise, my efforts seemed to pay off in drawing the projectile path and barrel/barrel block in CAD to work out exactly how high my front sight and rear sight needed to be. It was shooting approx 2.5" high at 25m and good windage, which is close to what it should be to give a zero of about 80m and then around 3.5" - 4" drop at 100m.

I have been playing around with making a mold for casting my own 450gr projectiles. It took a few goes to get one that would fill out and eject the bullet properly. It is not a split mold and is along the lines of paper patch bullet molds since it does not need lube grooves as I am powder coating. I need to remake the sprue plate and make a decent handle for it, but I managed to cast enough for testing.

I have 20rds loaded up ready for some proper testing once I find somewhere to shoot. I lost access to my last spot about 6 months ago as the property was sold