East of Scottsdale, Arizona, is a Frank Lloyd Wright house he named Taliesin West. The word “house” is being kind; it’s a mashup of tent and stone. The place is built using local rock and concrete, so you know I’m predisposed to like Taliesin.
Front view from the visitors entrance. The rocks blend in because they are from the site. We didn’t get to see the borrow pit.
I’m usually not a fan of Wright’s designs. They pointlessly stretch the function of materials and the idea of space in directions I dislike. Wright pushed the boundary of possibilities: A structure didn’t have to provide structure, it could exist simply as an idea. Take Falling Water. It barges in on the environment lording itself over the river and unnecessarily cantilevering all over the place. It’s a rude work. Not to mention his stuff leaks.
Door into the Kiva room. Kivas in my neck of the woods are round inside and partially underground. Wright got the feel with a square room.Detail of a plywood embellishment in the Kiva.
Taliesin West follows Wright’s usual distain for practicality and water tightness. Many roofs are canvas. Shutters open backwards so rain can blow in instead of shielding the windows. Painted plywood, probably the miracle material of the 1940s, is used extensively and today lends a cheap feel to the building. Not to mention the constant painting and replacement plywood requires. Odd little squares line the eaves requiring constant upkeep. Shallow reflecting pools breed slime and need cleaning frequently.
The entertainment room. Its low, heavy ceiling gives a crypt-like feel. Lots of windows to let dust and air inside.Interior wall lamps. Painted wood. Taliesin uses cheap materials, easy to replace.
Over the entertainment area the roof is a series of angled concrete and stone boxes that look like ideal water traps. Ceilings are low most everywhere and typically large Americans had to duck to get inside rooms. There’s a reason we all live in boxes. Boxes work.
Wright liked Chinese ceramics and design. Taliesin West looks sort of Oriental.
Having said all that, I loved Taliesin. Wandering around, my inability to think outside the box kept me shocked at the unsuitable designs Wright employed. I’ll never be as free as him. Things like moving a window because he didn’t want to move a vase amaze me. My values always default to sensible. I’m going to move the vase no matter how much I like it there. Wright doesn’t do sensible.
Sitting in the Garden Room, looking out the low, western wall, gave a feeling of it being a special place. None of the boxes I build feel special. The density of the walls with their large rocks strangled in concrete felt safe. My dry-stack rock walls can tumble down at any moment. Corrugated metal buildings feel anything but safe.
Water pump and surge tank. I’m not sure if this is for the house or the landscaping.
Taliesin started out as a 500-ace campsite and when Wright left for the summer the canvas roofs were removed and the buildings were left to the elements. Returning for winter the place would be reassembled and a crowd of designers worked there. Taliesin has a magical, Disney-theme-park feel. You expect a gnome to pop out and spin a hex around every corner.
My takeaway is this: I’m never going to build something that is doomed to fail, but I might be able to loosen up a bit and do some dumb things just because I want to. At least I’m going to try and stretch my thinking. Wright showed us that we don’t always have to follow the rules.
A few months ago Sue and I visited the Jameson Classic Motorcycle Museum in Monterey, California, for a Motorcycle Classics “Destinations” article. It was a marvelous museum in a marvelous locale, we had a wonderful time, Motorcycle Classics published the article, and I first learned of Emma Booton. Staci Jameson, heir to the Jameson museum collection, explained that several of the bikes on display had been lovingly restored by Emma Booton, whom Staci described as a “restoration goddess.”
I’m currently working on another Motorcycle Classics set of articles featuring how to do different motorcycle maintenance activities, which led me to seek Emma’s advice and, hopefully, to photograph her activities as she did some of the things I would be writing about. Well, I hit a home run there, too. Emma was very willing to support the activity, so Sue and I did another run up to the Monterey Peninsula to visit with Emma at her Moto Town shop.
Emma has a sense of humor, as this photo in her shop demonstrates. That’s Emma on the right.
Emma and I spent a great morning together as she worked through a series of activities on a vintage Honda dirt bike and I snapped away with my Nikon. Emma is a wonderful teacher with a delightful British accent and a very keen sense of humor. It was fun and I enjoyed every second of it.
Emma Booton’s resto mod Triumph Trident. I want it.
While all this was going on, my eye wandered to the other bikes in the shop, and one in particular was visually arresting: A resto mod Triumph Trident. I asked Emma about it and learned it was one of her personal bikes. The bike has been poked out to 900cc, it has larger diameter forks and dual disk brakes, bigger carbs, transistorized ignition, a hotter cam, an oil cooler, and lots more.
I asked Emma if the colors were the stock Triumph purple that was available in those early 1970s Trident days. I remembered that Triumph had a purple, but Emma’s bike was much more vibrant than any Triumph I remembered. “No, dear,” came the answer in that vibrant British accent (aurally matching the Trident’s stunning purple paint). “I knew I wanted purple, but not the Triumph purple, which wasn’t very uplifting. I looked and looked and looked and couldn’t find exactly what I wanted, and then I saw it…the purple on a Roto Rooter truck! I call it Roto Rooter purple!”
Call Roto Rooter, that’s the way…
There weren’t any Roto Rooter trucks nearby, and on the long drive back down to So Cal, Sue and I diligently scanned the other cars and trucks we saw on the road, but we didn’t see any Roto Rooter vehicles. A quick look on Google Images struck paydirt, though, and we saw it. Emma was right. She nailed it: Rotor Rooter purple!
Emma and yours truly.
I would dearly love to own Emma’s Triumph. Not many motorcycles reach out and grab me like that, but the Trident you see here sure did. It’s a good feeling.
In prior ¿Quantos Pistones? posts, I wrote about engines with which I had personal experience. When dealing with five-cylinder engines, though, I cannot do that. I don’t think I’ve ever even seen a five-cylinder motorcycle. They exist, though, and I found them by poking around a bit on the Internet. The best source was Wikipedia, which lists several. I used Wikipedia as the basis for further research, and I went beyond that to include others found online.
The Straight Fives
These fall into two categories: Custom-built motorcycles created from stock bikes, and Honda’s 1960s small displacement Grand Prix racing motorcycles.
Honda built the RC148 (the first edition of their 125cc inline five-cylinder, four-stroke engine), and the RC 149 (which was a further development effort). The RC149 is reported to have reached speeds of over 130 mph. It had an 8-speed transmission and the pistons must have been about the size of thimbles. Well, not really. This engine was originally based on Honda’s 50cc twin (can you imagine such a thing). Take two and a half 50cc twins, throw in some Honda pixie dust, and voilà, you get an inline 125cc 5-cylinder GP bike. It must have been exciting, being an engineer at Honda back in the 1960s.
Here’s a video I found of Honda techs evaluating an RC149 on a Honda test track. If you like listening to engines wail (their, um, ExhaustNotes), you’ll enjoy this one:
There have also been custom straight fives fabricated from other engines. Here’s one based on the Kawasaki three-cylinder 750cc two stroke:
Those bikes must have been impressive, too. I thought I once saw something on the Internet about a similar custom Kawasaki 900 (you know, like Gresh’s old Zed) that had been cobbled into an inline 5-cylinder machine, but I couldn’t find it again. Maybe it was in a dream.
Honda’s V-5 GP Bikes
Honda was the only player in the V-5 game, and they only did so on their GP bikes in the early 2000s. That bike was designated the RC211V. Everyone else used either a V-4 or an inline four.
The reasons are very technical, but they all boil down to two advantages:
The V-5 engine was actually smaller than either a V-4 or an inline four engine, and
The V-5 engine had an inherent power advantage over the other four-cylinder engines.
The above is explained well in the video below.
The Verdel Radial 5
Here’s one that has a bit of controversy about it: The Verdel radial 5-cylinder bike:
Some have written about it as a rare, 1912 motorcycle, but it’s not. It was built in Britain by an engineer in the late 1990s. A notable motorcycle museum bought it thinking it was a genuine vintage motorcycle (Verdel did exist, but the company made aircraft engines, not motorcycles), and apparently the museum has since acknowledged that this never was a production motorcycle from Verdel. It kind of looks the part, so it’s easy to understand how the museum fell for the vintage bike story. The ground clearance and those two cylinders hanging out from the bike’s undercarriage just scream for a skid plate.
Go Puch Yourself
Sorry, I couldn’t resist that (every once in a while, my New Jersey roots emerge). Back to the story: Here’s another interesting 5-cylinder custom motorcycle assembled by a talented builder using Puch moped engines.
Uwe Oltman (that’s the builder’s name), a guy in Germany, assembled the custom you see above from five Puch 50cc (actually, 48.8cc) moped engines.
The info I found says the bike is pretty much an unrideable showpiece due to the noise and heat from the five Puch 2-stroke engines. They’ve been poked out to 70cc each, so I guess that makes this creation a 350. As design exercises go, I think it’s cool.
Megola
I first heard of this from a friend who had a conversation about rare motorcycles with Jay Leno. Mr. Leno has a Megola in his collection. The Megolas were German bikes from 1921 to 1925 in Munich. The name is combination of its designers’ names (Meixner, Gockerell, and Landgraf).
Megolas are about as weird as motorcycles can be. The engine’s five cylinders rotate around the front axle, with a 6-to-1 transmission that cuts the axle rotation to one sixth of the engine’s speed. The 640cc engine ran at 3600 rpm, which turned the front wheel at 600 rpm, which provided a top speed of about 60 mph. There’s no clutch, so when a Megola rider came to a stop, so did the engine. The owner’s manual suggested riding in small circles if you didn’t want to shut the engine off. Weird, huh?
So there you have it: The Fives. Next up in our ¿Quantos Pistones? series will be (you guessed it) the Sixes. That one will be easier, as I owned a Honda CBX a few years ago. Stay tuned!
Ah, missed a couple! I thought I had them all, but then I found this video, and it identified a couple more 5-cylinder bikes. Take a look; it’s worth a watch!
Missed our earlier ¿Quantos Pistones? stories on the Singles, the Twins, the Triples, and the Fours? Hey, no problemo! Here they are:
I’ve written about the Ruger .357 Magnum Bisley before, and I’ve written about other Ruger .357 Magnum revolvers. The .357 Magnum cartridge is one of my all-time favorites, and I wanted to share with you a load that is particularly powerful and accurate. It’s the one you see below:
Winchester’s 296 propellant has always performed well for me in the magnum handgun cartridges and in .30 Carbine, and the .357 Magnum is no exception. I had loaded these cartridges with Hornady’s 180-grain jacketed hollow point bullets (a heavier bullet than the normally-used 158-grain bullet). I like these bullets a lot, and apparently, so does the Bisley. Here’s a 25-yard target with 50 rounds, shot from the bench, but with no other rests employed:
The average velocity from the Bisley was a cool 1194 feet per second, with a relatively small 18.4 feet per second standard deviation. This is a good load. From a metallic silhouette perspective, I can’t tell you if they will reliably take down the 200-meter rolled homogeneous ram, but I’m guessing they will.
We’ve written a lot on the .357 Magnum cartridge, Ruger handguns, and reloading the cartridges they shoot (including the very fine Lee Precision dies and turret press I use). Links to those articles are listed below.
One of the many red lines crossed on the way to becoming moto-saturated is owning a motorcycle lift. If a rider finds that he needs a lift then things have gone too far and he needs to reevaluate what the hell is actually up.
I’ve wanted a lift for many years but haven’t been able to justify the expense or space requirements a lift brings to the table. (ha!, get it? Table?)
The lift comes securely packaged in a wooden crate. If you know the price of wood nowadays the lift is almost free!
This particular lift from Harbor Freight cost around $300 when it first appeared on my radar 30 years ago. At the time my shop was a 10×10 metal shed and there just wasn’t enough space to park the thing.
Turns out it was a good thing I didn’t take the plunge as my shed in Florida was flooded several times and the lift would have corroded away. (Ha! Get it? Plunge-flooded? I kill myself!)
My recent acquisition of a pair of Honda Dreams and subsequent crawling around on battered knees got me thinking about a lift again. I have the room now. Floods are unlikely where my shop is situated and the HF sale price of $399 defied quantitative easing, inflation-tracking and recent tariffs on China. In short, $399 seemed like a pretty good deal.
You definitely get your money’s worth in weight as the lift was a heavy bitch to load and unload. Plan on having a few strong backs to move the lift. The guys at Harbor Freight loaded it into the truck with a forklift but I don’t have any strong backs available at home. I had to slide the crate out of the truck and let it fall the last two feet from the tail gate. It wasn’t really a free fall, I had a floor jack mid-crate to act as a fulcrum when the crate cleared the tailgate. Think of it as a controlled crash landing. The crate took the fall in stride and its contents were undamaged by my rough handling. Plus the lift is a sturdy thing, it would take some doing to bend it.
In this Harbor Freight photo you can see how the clamp won’t do much for holding the motorcycle upright.
The lift comes 99% assembled with only the wheels, tie down points and tire vise to bolt on. If you’re handy 1/2 hour should see the project through. There are a few niggling issues though.
Like most things from China Freight the lift needed a few modifications. It goes with the $399 price point.
Slightly reduced nipples to go with the reduced price. If you want to grease your new lift you’ll need to replace the gold Chinese nipples with good old USA style, silver Chinese nipples.
China must have different size grease guns because all of the grease fitting were slightly undersized and didn’t fit a US style grease gun. Attempts to grease the various grease points just pumped gook all around the nipple. I replaced the China-sized nipples with US-sized nipples and the pressurized grease flowed to the desired locations with no ooze-out around the fitting.
This rubber plug is where you add oil to the pump. Warning: it’s a bear (like Ossa!) to get back in the hole.
The owners manual that came with the lift recommended checking the hydraulic oil in the ram. It was slightly low so I put in a few ounces of fork oil. That was the easy part. Getting the little rubber plug back into the ram housing was a struggle with the lift in the lowered position. I finally gave up and raised the lift for access. It was still a PITA to get the plug back in.
Not much weld on sliding part of the clamp.I stuck some more welding wire to help hold the slider togetherHere it is in action. I’ve yet to clamp the rest of a motorcycle to the table so it may fall apart on me.
As delivered, the tire clamp installs in the wrong place. Down on the floor, it doesn’t provide much resistance to tipping leverage. There are many internet solutions for this issue but all of them required spending additional money. I figure at $400 you shouldn’t need to buy more stuff just to keep the bike from falling over.
As delivered the tire clamp is too close to the fulcrum of tip-ology.If all you have is a hammer every problem is a nail. It’s the same when you get a welding machine. I added the tire clamp to the top of the tire stop to gain better leverage.The repositioned tire clamp gets a higher grip for less tip.
The thriftiest way to fix the tire clamp is to relocate the thing on top of the tire stop. This gave me a chance to practice poor welding on a mission critical part. The sliding part of the clamp was lightly welded so I slathered on a bit more metal.
Once the clamp was in place I added a piece of angle iron to prevent jaw-spread, a common occurrence among older motorcyclists. Drilling two extra holes in the angle iron gave me another, more forward attachment point for tie down straps.
This all sounds like a lot of work but it took maybe 2-3 hours and that number includes thinking about things. I’ve got the Dream on the lift for its maiden voyage and it seems to be stable. I give the lift 5 stars for value and 2 deep vein thrombosis’ for HF still not quite getting it right after all these years. If you need a motorcycle lift and don’t mind tinkering and welding a bit the HF lift on sale is hard to beat.
The ’62 Dream gets the honor of being the first to sit atop the HF lift.
Fours? I’ve owned a few, and Lord knows I’ve sure seen a bunch of them. For starters, there’s the 1931 Excelsior-Henderson at the top of this blog (a photo that graces every one of our ¿Quantos Pistones? blogs). It’s not mine and I didn’t ride it. I was so interested in photographing that motorcycle, I didn’t realize I was standing next to Jay Leno until he took his helmet off. I’ve written about that encounter before.
Honda CB 750
When the Honda CB 750 Four came on the scene in 1969, it turned the motorcycle world upside down. I thought the bike was interesting before I saw one, but I also thought I was a 650 twin kind of guy (you know, Triumphs and BSAs). The first 750 Four I ever saw accelerated past my house when I was way younger. It was a gloriously visceral and symphonic four. To a guy used to lopey Harleys and throaty Triumphs, the CB 750 sounded like an Indy Offenhauser. When I heard that high performance four-cylinder yowl, it was like walking through the jungle on a moonless night and having an unseen leopard suddenly scream a short distance away. It reached deep, took hold, and shook me mightily. I remember it like it happened yesterday. At that instant, I knew I would own a 750 Four someday soon. And I did.
Yours truly in the 1970s. Hard to believe it was more than 50 years ago. I loved that motorcycle.
Our family bought our motorcycles from Cooper’s Cycle Ranch in Hamilton, New Jersey. The CB 750 was $1539 out the door (I can’t remember what I had for lunch earlier today, but I remember that number), and my 750 was the color I wanted. Honda offered the 750 Four in four colors in 1971 (brown, green, gold, and candy apple red). I wanted a red one, and Sherm Cooper made it happen. It was a glorious bike. I rode it to Canada with a fellow Rutgers student (Keith Hediger, who had a white Kawasaki 500cc triple). That was my first international motorcycle trip. I rode it a lot of other places, too. It was a wonderful motorcycle. I wish I still had it.
Honda CB 500
I owned two Honda CB 500 Fours. I bought one from good buddy John who was a high school and college classmate. I only put a few miles on before putting it on my front lawn with a for sale sign. It sold quickly. I liked the bike (it was very smooth), but I needed the cash for something else (I can’t remember what).
Good buddy John and the CB 500 I bought from him.
A similar opportunity popped up decades later when a guy at work had a metalflake orange CB500 for sale at Sargent Fletcher (an aerospace plant I ran in the 1990s). Metalflake orange was a factory color on the CB 500 Honda. At $500, I figured I could take a chance. I bought it, rode it a little bit, never registered the bike, and sold it with a Cycle Trade ad a couple of weeks later.
Suzuki Katana
This was a bike way ahead of its time. Wow, was it ever fast. In 1982, the performance was incredible. It would probably be tame by today’s hyperbikes, but back in the early ’80s, it was something else.
Me and my Katana. I still had some hair in the 1980s. Not much, but some.
Take a good look at that photo. The ’82 Katana you see above is the only vehicle (car or motorcycle) for which I ever paid over list price. When it first came out, it was pure unobtanium. Suzuki only made 500 initially. I think mine was No. 241. I paid $5500 for it, which was way over list price in 1982, and I had to go all the way to Victorville to find one.
I thought I had something special, but that only lasted a month or two. After the initial limited release, Suzuki made another 500, bringing the total number to 1,000. I found that troubling, and I felt cheated. Those sold quickly, too, so Suzuki went ahead and produced yet another 500. Those last 500 didn’t sell well at all (Suzuki had reached all the fools like me by then and the market for a bike like the Katana had been saturated). Suzuki had to discount the remaining bikes heavily to move them. That really pissed me off. It would be another 15 years before I would buy another Suzuki (that was my ’97 TL1000S). The way I was buying and selling bikes in those days, that was a long time.
The Katana was my first ever superbike. It was scary fast in 1982, and it would probably still be scary fast today. Thanks to Joan Claybrook and Jiminy Carter (remember those two?), the speedo maxed out at 85 mph (as if that would somehow slow anyone down).
The pipes were one of the coolest things on the Katana. They were what Suzuki called black chrome and they looked great. The instrument pod was cool, too. The tach and speedo needles moved in opposite directions, which made it seemed like the two needles were unwinding as you rowed through the gears. This was my first ever bike with low bars. I didn’t like them, but the rest of the bike was very, very cool. I sold the Katana when my first daughter was born. A fat lady knocked it over in a shopping mall pulling her car out of its parking space. I took that as an omen. Time to step away from riding for a bit. I wish I still had that motorcycle.
Suzuki went on to use the Katana name (a Katana is a Japanese Samurai sword) on other models, but they were never the same at that first 1982 Katana.
Triumph 1200 Daytona
This was a fun machine. I bought when it was still brand new (but already 7 years old) on Ebay, thanks to an alert from my buddy Marty. It was $7,000. As soon as I won the auction, the next highest bidder contacted me and offered to buy it, but I turned it down.
The Locomotive. This was one of the best motorcycles I ever owned.
I’ve written about the Daytona before, and rather than reinvent the wheel, I invite you to read the more complete Daytona story here.
Honda Gold Wing
Back in the day, the initial Honda Gold Wing was a four, as they continued to be for several years. I thought I wanted one when the Gold Wing was first introduced (I was in Korea at the time and I saw the new Gold Wing in a Cycle World magazine). But I never acted on the urge to buy one and that was a good thing. I rode a friend’s a few years later and the bike had no soul whatsoever. It was boring beyond belief; I would not have thought any motorcycle could be that boring. But it was and it made me glad I never bought one.
Somewhere in Arizona on a road trip in the ’90s. That’s my CBX (to be covered in a later ¿Quantos Pistones? blog), my buddy Louis V (who went into the witness protection program), and Louis’s Honda Gold Wing (the most boring motorcycle I ever rode). All the gear, all the time was definitely not Lou’s motto.
Guys who have Gold Wings seem to love them. Emilio Scotto rode one around the world and wrote a great book about it. Today, of course, Gold Wings are sixes. I’ve read that the handling on the new ones is great for a big bike. But they’re not my cup of tea. You may feel different about Wings, and that’s okay.
So there you go: My experiences with four-cylinder motorcycles. The configuration makes sense from a lot of perspectives. They can be powerful and they are an almost universal configuration on Japanese motorcycles. But they’ve grown too big for my liking. I know there have been smaller fours out there (the Honda CB350 Four comes to mind), but as I’ve matured (read: become a geezer), I like smaller bikes better. As always, your mileage may vary.
Missed our earlier ¿Quantos Pistones? stories on the Singles, the Twins, and the Triples? Hey, no problemo! Here they are:
Part 1 of this series took us through brass preparation, Part 2 took us through priming, and here we are at Part 3, which discusses powder charging, bullet seating, and case mouth flare removal.
Cast 200-grain bullets, lubed, sized, and gas checked. These are from the Lyman 314299 mold.
I had previously mentioned that I shoot cast bullets in my military surplus rifles, and in particular, I like a gas-checked 200-grain cast bullet. Good buddy Roy Hursman cast these for me. Roy retired and sold his bullet casting gear. I hope I’m able to find somebody that does as good a job as Roy.
This 8-lb bottle of IMR 4227 propellant is good for nearly 2,700 rounds of .303 British ammo.
I use different powders in my rifle cast bullet loads. A good one is IMR 4227, which is what I used for this .303 British load. The secret sauce recipe is 21.0 grains of IMR 4227 with no fillers. I’d like to tell you that I developed this load after extensive testing, but I can’t. It was next to what the Lyman cast bullet manual said was the accuracy load with this bullet and IMR 4227 was in my ammo components locker, so it got the nod, and it worked. I felt no need to experiment any further; the load worked well and was very accurate. This 21.0-grain IMR 4227 load is near the lower end of the loads listed in the Lyman manual. The bullets exited the muzzle at about 1600 feet per second (as tested with my Garmin chronograph), and that’s good enough for me.
I use an RCBS powder dispenser, and once I had it set up to throw 21.0 grains of IMR 4227 propellant, there was no need to weigh the charge for each cartridge because the powder meters so well. I loaded the 20 rounds like it was pistol ammo, placing each empty brass case beneath the dispenser, charging the case, and moving on. After I had charged all 20 cases, I threw another charge into my scale’s powder cup and weighed it again to make sure the dispenser was still on the money. It was (the powder dispenser released exactly 21.0 grains).
It was time to turn to the Lee Ultimate 4-Die set’s bulleting seating die. The first step was to install the bullet seating die in the press and screw it partially in.
The Lee .303 British bullet seating die. It includes a feature for a roll crimp if so desired. The knob on top adjusts the bullet seating depth.
I placed the first bullet over a charged .303 British case (charged with IMR 4227, that is) and raised the ram in the press. Observing where the bullet went (i.e., how deeply it seated in the case), I lowered the die in the press a bit more, repeating the process until I attained the desired bullet seating depth. I wanted the bullets to be seated such that the cartridge mouth was just behind the bullet’s first driving band.
A cast bullet about to be seated in the cartridge case.A seated bullet, positioned exactly where I wanted it.
After seating all 20 bullets in the 20 charged .303 British cases, it was now time to remove the case mouth flare we induced in Part 1 of this series. I probably could have skipped doing so, because I did as I advised in Part 1 (I flared the case mouth just enough to allow the bullet to enter). Even without removing the flare, the cartridges would chamber because the flare was so small. But I like to go for the extra step of removing it just to make sure.
The red arrows point to the remaining flare after seating the bullets. This will be removed with the Lee factory crimp die in the next step.
Lee’s factory crimp die (the fourth die provided in their Ultimate 4-Die set) is what I use for removing the flare. It can also be used (as the name implies) for crimping the case mouth on the bullet.
Lee’s factory crimp die. The arrow points to the cylinder that is pushed up into the die body by the shell holder when the press is fully raised. By adjusting how far the die body is screwed into the reloading press, you can adjust how much crimp is applied.The view from above the Lee factory crimp die. The cylinder shown in the photo above (see red arrow) cams into the four circumferential collets shown in this photo. These four collets apply force to the cartridge case. You can adjust the die to apply no force, just a small amount of force to remove case mouth flare (as I did to my .303 British cases), or to apply a crimp.
By adjusting how far the die is screwed into the press, you can control how much force is applied to the case mouth. You can screw it in just enough to remove the case mouth flare (as I did), or you can screw it further into the press to apply as firm a crimp as you want around the case mouth.
The Lee factory crimp die does not apply a roll crimp; it applies a concentric circular flat crimp around the case mouth periphery. Some folks think this makes the Lee factory crimp independent of case length. I don’t agree with that. On longer cases, the Lee factory crimp will press more case material radially inward than it would on a shorter case (theoretically, if the case were trimmed too short, the Lee factory crimp would apply no crimp). But it’s still more controllable than a roll crimp, and the amount of roll crimp applied is far more sensitive to case length than is the Lee factory crimp. And if you wish to apply a roll crimp instead of the Lee factory crimp, you can still do so with Lee bullet seating die. Just screw the die body in further (while backing off on the bullet seater on top of the die) until the reduced diameter step inside the die body contacts the case mouth enough to provide a roll crimp.
I ran all 20 cases through the Lee factory crimp die after adjusting the die. I adjusted the die to apply just enough radially-inward force to remove any remnants of flare from the case mouth.
After completing all 20 .303 British neck-sized cartridges, I put them in a box and applied a label, as I do with all my reloaded cartridges.
Reloaded, boxed, and labeled. “F2TNT” is my code for fired two times, not trimmed. “NSO” means neck sized only.
How did this ammo shoot? It did well, as the target below shows. I can’t show that my neck-sized-only reloads are dramatically better than full-length resized ammo, but I know I have the other advantages offered by neck sizing (not having to lube the cases, a quicker reloading process, and longer brass life). I am quite pleased with my Lee .303 British die set.
A perfectly centered, tight, 3-shot group at 50 yards, with light recoil and good accuracy. The Lee Ultimate 4-Die set does what it is supposed to.
More reloading, hunting, and shooting stories are here!
In Part 1 of this three-part series on using Lee Precision dies to reload the .303 British cartridge, we covered resizing, decapping, full-length resizing, neck sizing, and flaring the case mouth. Part 2 continues the reloading process.
The next step for me (after the brass is resized and flared) is case cleaning. I use a Frankford Arsenal vibratory polisher. I’ll drop the brass in it and do other things for an hour or so as the brass is polished.
Resized cases in the Frankford Arsenal vibratory polisher. The media is made from corn cobs. I add Dillon’s polishing liquid to it prior to starting the polisher.Finished brass. I like it to be clean and well polished both for aesthetics and for accuracy. When the inside of the case neck is polished, it is free of any lubricant from the resizing operation, and case neck grip (or tension) will be consistent from round to round. Case neck tension variability will increase group size.
After the brass comes out of the polisher, I inspect each one to make sure there are not bits of the polishing media stuck in the primer hole. I’ve never tested to determine if this would interfere with the round firing or if it would cause a flyer, but it’s not the sort of thing that would help.
A primer hole with a bit of media stuck in it. Usually about 10% of the cases have media stuck in the primer hole after polishing. I push it out with a dental pick.A cartridge case with a clean primer hole (i.e., with no media stuck in the primer hole).
When all the cases are completely free of media and all the primer holes are clear, I’ll set them in a reloading tray, as you see below.
Twenty polished cases ready to be primed.
Next, I’ll prime the brass. There are a lot of tools available to do this. I use a Lee Auto Prime, an item that I bought a good 50 years ago. Remember that I mentioned that Lee gear is good? Lee no longer makes this item (I can’t tell you why) but they do have other priming devices available today. For me, this one just keeps on working, and I like how it works. It consists of three groups of parts: The primer tray and feed system, the case holder/primer seater assembly (it installs above the reloading press), and the ram that installs on the press ram.
An old Lee Auto Prime, still in its original box. The two feed chutes on either side of the primer tray are used for either large or small primers. The primer seating assembly components are in the plastic container at the photo’s bottom.Lee Auto Prime components. From left to right: The die body, the priming ram, the two primer rods (one for small primers, the other for large primers), and the spring. The spring goes over priming rod selected for use (as shown here, the large primer rod). The priming ram is installed on the reloading press’s ram where the shell holder would normally be. One of the priming rods, with a spring over it, goes into the die body (see photo below).
I install the case holder/primer seater assembly on top of the ram, then I remove the shell holder on the reloading press ram and install the primer ram on top of the ram, and then I load the primer tray and feed chute.
The Lee Auto Prime die body installed in the reloading press, with the priming rod and spring in place. The primer chute will go over the priming rod and spring, and the shell holder snaps into the die body over the priming rod and spring.The Auto Prime ram installed on the reloading press ram. It fits into the ram where the shell holder is normally installed.The primer chute installed on the primer tray, with 20 primers dropped onto the tray. Note that some primers are facing up, some are facing down, and some are on their sides.The tiny concentric ridges in the primer tray help to flip all primers such that they face up. By gently shaking the tray from side to side, all primers orient themselves to face up. If you shake too aggressively, you’ll drop some of the primers out of the tray. It sounds more complicated than it actually is, and after doing it once, you’ll get a feel for how much “shake” is needed.After getting all the primers into a face up orientation, I put the primer tray cover on the primer tray, and then use a toothpick or the previously-mentioned dental pick to obstruct the primer chute at the primer tray. Then, I’ll place the bottom end of the primer chute in the die body. Finally, I’ll slide the shell holder into the die body and remove the obstruction from the primer tray. The primers will slide down into the chute and the first primer will be in position over the priming rod.
Once the above is complete, I prime each case. I insert each case into the shell holder, and then gently run the press’s ram up. Doing so seats the primer. The beauty of this approach is you can feel each primer being seated, and the power of the ram makes sure each primer is fully seated. When the case is primed, I remove it and the primers in the chute slide down, forcing a new primer into position above the priming rod. I’ll repeat the process until all the cases have their primers seated.
Primed cases, ready to continue the reloading process.
After the above is complete, I’ll have a tray full of cases ready to be charged with propellant. We’ll cover that in Part 3.
One of my favorite rifles is the Enfield No. 4 Mark 2, a bolt action rifle just dripping with history and charisma. The No. 4 Mark 2 was the last in the Enfield rifle series, with a run of 59,000 produced by Britain’s Fazakerly armory for Ireland in the 1950s. It was the last Enfield in a long line of continuously improved rifle designs, and it includes a much-improved trigger design. Most of these Irish rifles were never issued and many were sold in their unfired, cosmoline-laden condition. Mine comes from that group. It’s the one in which I tested the reloaded ammo featured in this blog series.
Once-fired .303 British cartridge cases. They almost look like scaled-down .375 H&H cases.A close-up view of the .303 British case after firing. These cartridge cases are ready for the reloading process.The headstamp. These are Winchester cases. Note the spent and indented primer, which will be removed in the case resizing process.
I have a stash of once-fired .303 British brass acquired from generous friends over the years. I will reload them with 200-grain cast bullets made by good buddy Roy Hursman, sized to 0.313 inches, which I also use in my Modelo 1909 Argentine Mauser and Mosin-Nagant rifle. I thought they might work well in the Enfield (and they did; I’ll tell you a bit about that here and provide much more detail in Part 3 of this series).
The cast lead bullets I load in my .303 British ammo. These weigh 200 grains. They have been lubed (the red grease in the lube grooves), gas checked (the copper cap on the base), and swaged down to 0.313 inches. They work great in the 7.65 Belgian Mauser, 7.62x54R Russian, and .303 British cartridges.
What I didn’t have in my shop was a set of dies in .303 British. I naturally turned to Lee Precision. I believe in Lee reloading equipment. I have their dies for the .22 Hornet, .22 250, .243 Winchester, 6.5 Creedmoor, .30 Carbine, .30 40 Krag, .300 H&H, .300 Weatherby, .38 Special/.357 Magnum, .44 Special/.44 Magnum, .45 ACP, .45 Colt, and probably a few others I can’t remember as I type this blog. I also use other Lee reloading equipment. I think their Classic Turret Press is the best reloading press of its type for loading handgun cartridges. The bottom line here is that I’ve never been disappointed with Lee products, and I say that as a guy who has been using Lee gear for 50 years.
I ordered Lee’s Ultimate 4-die set, and what I received surprised me. I received the four dies (which I expected) and a micrometer bullet seating attachment (which I did not). Each Lee die set also includes a little packet of case lube for the resizing operation (it’s not shown in the photos below). It’s a nice touch; Lee basically gives you everything but the reloading press and the components (bullets, brass, primers, and powder) to load a specific cartridge with each of their die sets.
The Lee ULee Ultimate 4-Die set includes four dies normally included in a single box. My set included a micrometer bullet seating attachment not evaluated in this blog series (although I will evaluate it in a future blog). The fourth die (the collet die) was provided in a separate container (see below). In the photo above, we have the full-length resizing die (top), the bullet seating die (bottom), the factory crimp die (right), the micrometer bullet seating feature, the shell holder, and a measuring cup (not used by me). Lee also provides a small pack of case lube (not shown here).The Lee collet neck sizing die, used in lieu of the full-length resizing die to neck size the brass case.
I won’t get into the micrometer bullet seater in this three-part .303 British Lee die set review (that review will occur down the road a bit).
The Lee Ultimate 4-die set includes two resizing dies (a full-length resizing die, and a collet die for neck sizing only), a bullet seating die (that also includes a roll crimping feature), and a separate crimping die for applying what Lee calls a factory crimp. The die set also includes a shell holder (a nice touch, as other manufacturer’s die sets do not) and a powder scoop. I’ve never used the powder scoop; I use a more precise powder dispenser.
The once-fired brass I had on had was good stuff. It was in the original factory boxes and it was in good shape. Because the rifles it had been fired in previously were not my Enfield, I knew I would have to full length resize the brass first to return each case to factory dimensions. To do that, I mounted the Lee shellholder in my press, ran the press all the way up, and then installed the full-length resizing die, screwing it down in the press until it contacted the shell holder. I then retracted the press ram, turned the die another 1/8 of a turn into the press, and locked the die in place with its locking ring.
The Lee .303 British shell holder installed in my reloading press. It snaps into place. Dies and shell holders are typically interchangeable between reloading press and die manufacturers. I use a single-stage RCBS Rockchucker reloading press; Lee dies and shell holders fit it perfectly.Lee’s full-length resizing die installed in the press. This die simultaneously resizes a fired case to factory specification and punches out the spent primer. Note the locking ring on the die body.The business end of the Lee full-length resizing die after resizing a bunch of cases. This photo shows the decapping pin, which removes the old primer.
I lubed each case with the lube Lee provided and ran it through the full-length resizing die, which simultaneously brought the cases back to factory dimensions and removed each case’s spent primer. The full-length resizing dies does both steps in one operation.
I intended using cast bullets in the .303 Enfield, so for me the reloading process included an additional step: Flaring the case mouth. Case mouth flaring allows cast bullets to enter the cartridge case without the case shaving any lead from the bullet. To flare the case mouths, I use a Lee universal flaring tool I purchased decades ago. It’s a clever die set that uses a cone to impart a slight bellmouth to the case.
Lee’s Universal Case Mouth Expander. I bought this in the 1970s and I’m still using it.The Lee Universal Case Mouth Expander disassembled. The amount the case mouth is flared is determined by how far the die body is screwed into the reloading press, and by how far the adjuster (top item in this photo) is screwed into the die body. The cone (shown in the middle of this photo) is what flares the case mouth. Lee provides two cones; one of small-to-medium calibers (shown here), and one for larger calibers (not shown here).When empty cartridge cases are run into the Lee Universal Case Mouth Expander) it imparts a slight flare to the case mouth. If you do it right, you can barely see the flare (as is the case for the case shown here) and the bullet enters the case with no lead shaving.
The approach to case mouth flaring is to install the Lee Universal Case Mouth Expander in the press and adjust it to impart just enough flare to allow the bullet’s base to enter the case. You don’t need much flare (less is more here; too much will work harden the brass unnecessarily). I’ll jump ahead a bit and mention here that if you can find that happy spot where you flare the case mouth just enough to allow the bullet to enter the case, you won’t have to crimp the case mouth later to eliminate the flare.
A perfectly-flared case mouth, with just enough flare to allow a bullet to start into the case without shaving any lead.
After completing the above full-length resizing and flaring, I reloaded 20 rounds (like you see in the photo at the top of this blog). Then I did what I always do: I labeled the box of reloaded ammo. After that, I fired the reloaded ammo in my Enfield.
I’m not going to cover the rest of the reloading process in Part 1 of this series, but I will in Parts 2 and 3. I’m jumping ahead here by mentioning firing the full-length resized ammo because I wanted brass that had been fired in my rifle. Ammo fired in my rifle would be perfectly formed to my rifle’s chamber, which is minutely different than other rifles’ chambers. That’s because of rifle chamber dimensioning tolerances. The once-fired brass I had was fired in other rifles, so I needed to shoot it in my rifle so the cases conformed to my chamber.
How did the full-length resized .303 ammo shoot? Very well, thank you. Take a look.
This was the first time I had fired this ammo in my rifle, so I needed to dial it in. The first three rounds went low at 50 yards (the nice tight group at about 5:30 on the outer edge of the 6-ring), so I ran the Enfield’s ladder aperture sight up. Oops, too much, which resulted in the group high in the 6-ring. I went down half the distance on the rear aperture, and the next three rounds were just above the bullseye. Down a click or two more, and the rifle was on the money. In case you were wondering, I used 21.0 grains of IMR 4227 and a Winchester large primer (but more on the load in Part 2 of this series).
Having fired my full-length resized ammo in my Enfield, the fired brass could now be neck sized instead of full-length resized. The idea behind neck sizing is that the clearance between the chamber and the brass case is greatly reduced by neck sizing (as opposed to full-length resizing), and theoretically, neck sizing should result in increased accuracy because the case won’t be rattling around in the chamber. There are a couple of another advantages to neck sizing, too. One is that it works the brass less, so it should last longer. A third advantage is that you don’t have to lube and then clean the cases. They can be neck sized without using lubricant. I’ll say more on that in a moment. Not having to lube (and then cleaning the lube from the cases) greatly speeds up the reloading process.
Now that I had brass cases that had been fired in my rifle, I installed and adjusted the Lee collet die in my press. The collet die performs two operations. It has a decapping pin that punches out the spent primer, and it has a set of four collets that compress the case neck around a spindle to bring it back to new brass factory dimensions (that’s the neck sizing operation). You can adjust the die’s depth in the press to adjust the final inside diameter of the case neck, which is a very useful feature to have. Ideally, the resized case neck inside diameter should only be 0.001 to 0.002 inch smaller than the bullet diameter. That amount of case neck inside diameter undersizing will allow the case the grip the bullet firmly so that it won’t push into or pull out of the case. You could make it tighter and still seat the bullet, but doing so would expand the case mouth more with the bullet’s insertion, and that is not desirable. It would distort the case and possibly introduce non-concentricity or angular misalignment between the bullet and the case, and that would hurt accuracy.
The Lee collet die installed in my RCBS Rockchucker press. This die will neck size the case instead of full-length resizing it.A .303 case entering the Lee Collet Die. By adjusting the depth to which the Collet Die is screwed into the press, you can control the neck-sized-only cases’ neck diameters. I adjusted the die to provide a 0.312 neck inside diameter, which gives 0.001-inch interference between the bullet and the case neck.
After completing the die seating depth adjustment, I had the case mouth diameter exactly where I wanted it: 0.312 inches. My cast bullets were at 0.313 inches, so I was good to go.
Not the world’s best photo (mea culpa). Parallax makes the inside diameter in this photo look like 0.313 inches; it was actually reading 0.312 inches. That’s what I wanted.
Next up will be our Part 2 of the Lee .303 British Ultimate 4-Die set review. Stay tuned.
So far, I am very impressed with this set of Lee dies. I’m not surprised, though. As I mentioned earlier, I’ve been using Lee equipment for decades, and it has always pegged the needle on my quality meter. These dies are good at any price. The fact that they cost less than any of the competitors’ products is a huge plus.
People reload ammunition for different reasons. It used to be you could save money by reloading, and I suppose for the more exotic cartridges (any Weatherby ammo, the big elephant rounds like .458 Win Mag, the .416 Rigby, etc.) that’s still the case. It’s not the case for the more common rounds like 9mm, .45 ACP, and .223 Remington; bulk ammo for those is so inexpensive you’d be hard pressed to reload for as little as that ammo costs. Sometimes people reload because factory ammo is no longer available or it’s very tough to find. But most of us reload for accuracy. We can experiment with different combinations of components and tailor a combo to a particular firearm to find the sweet spot…that combination of components that provides the tightest groups. I’m in that category; it’s why I reload.
When I’m testing for accuracy and I get a tight group, I always wonder: Is it because of the combination of components, or is it just a random event? Usually, if the group size is repeatable, we conclude that it is the component combination, and not just a random good group that results from all the planets coming into alignment. But is there a better way? You know, one that shows with more certainty that it’s the component combination, and not just a fluke?
This article is a bit different. It’s not just a story about a gun or about reloading ammunition. It includes those things, but it’s more. This story is about applying the Taguchi design of experiments technique to .45 ACP load development for ammo to be used in a Smith and Wesson Model 25 revolver (the one you see in the photo above).
I’m guessing you probably never heard of Taguchi. That’s okay; most folks have not. Taguchi testing is a statistical design of experiments approach that allows evaluating the impact of several variables simultaneously while minimizing sample size. The technique is often used in engineering development activities, and I used it regularly when I was in the aerospace world. The technique was pioneered by Genichi Taguchi in Japan after World War II, and made its way to the US in the mid-1980s. I used the Taguchi technique when I ran engineering and manufacturing groups in Aerojet Ordnance (a munitions developer and manufacturer) and Sargent Fletcher Company (a fuel tank and aerial refueling company).
Taguchi testing is a powerful technique because it allows identifying which variables are significant and which are not. Engineers are interested in both. It lets you know which variables you need to control tightly during production (that is, which tolerances have to be tight), and it identifies the others that are not so critical. Both are good things to know. If we know which variables are significant and where they need to be, we can change nominal values, tighten tolerances, and maybe do other things to achieve a desired output. If we know which variables are not significant, it means they require less control. We can loosen tolerances on these variables, and most of the time, that means costs go down.
Like I said above, I used Taguchi testing in an engineering and manufacturing environment with great success. The Taguchi approach did great things for us. When I worked in the cluster bomb business, it allowed us to get the reliability of our munitions close to 100%. When I worked in a company that designed and manufactured aerial refueling equipment (think the refueling scene in the movie, Top Gun), it helped us to identify and control factors influencing filament-wound F-18 drop tanks. In that same company, it helped us fix a 20-year-old reliability problem on a guillotine system designed to cut and clamp aerial refueling hoses if failures elsewhere in the refueling system prevented rewinding the hose. You don’t want to land in an airplane trailing a hose filled with JP4 jet fuel. Good stuff, Taguchi testing is.
As you know from reading our other Tales of the Gun stories, the idea in reloading is to find the secret sauce…the perfect recipe of bullet weight, propellant, brass case manufacturer, and more, to find the best accuracy for a given firearm. Hey, I thought…I could apply the Taguchi technique to this challenge.
When you do a Taguchi experiment, you need to define a quantifiable output variable, and you need to identify the factors that might influence it. The output variable here is obvious: It’s group size on the target. The input variables are obvious, too. They would include propellant type, propellant charge, primer type, bullet weight, brass type, bullet seating depth, and bullet crimp. We’re trying to find which of these factors provides the best accuracy. I wanted to turn my Model 25 Smith and Wesson into a hand-held tack driver.
The Model 25 is an N-frame Smith and Wesson revolver chambered for the .45 ACP pistol cartridge. It is a superbly accurate handgun, as attested to by the target above.
When Taguchi developed his testing approach, he made it simple for his followers. One of the things he did was define a simple test matrix, which he called an L8 orthogonal array. It sounds complicated, but it’s not. It just means you can evaluate up to seven different input variables with each at two different levels. That’s a bit complicated, but understanding it is a little easier if you see an example. Here’s what the standard Taguchi L8 orthogonal array (along with the results) looked like for my Model 25 load development testing:
As the above table shows, three sets of data were collected. I tested each load configuration three times (Groups A, B, and C), and I measured the group size of each 3-shot group. Those group sizes became the output variables.
The next step involved taking the above data and doing a standard Taguchi ANOVA (that’s an acronym for analysis of variance). ANOVA is the statistical method used for evaluating the output data (in our case, the group sizes) to assess which of the above input variables most influenced accuracy. That’s a complex set of calcs greatly simplified by using Excel. The idea here is to find the factor with the largest ANOVA result. You see, any time you measure a set of results, there’s going to be variation in the results. Where it gets complicated is the variation can be due to randomness (the variation in the results that would occur if you left all of the inputs the same). Or, the variation can be due to something we changed. We want to know if the differences are due to something we did (like changing or adjusting a component) or if they are due to randomness alone. I cranked through the ANOVA calcs with Excel, and here’s what I obtained…
The above results suggest that crimping (squeezing the bullet by slightly deforming the case mouth inward) has the greatest effect on accuracy (it had the largest ANOVA calculated result). The results suggest that cartridges with no crimp are more accurate than rounds with the bullet crimped. But it’s a suggestion only; it doesn’t mean it’s true. The next step is to evaluate if the differences are statistically significant, and doing that requires the next step in the ANOVA process. This gets really complicated (hey, I’m an engineer), but the bottom line is that we’re going to calculate a number called the f-ratio, and then compare our calculated f-ratio to a reference f-ratio. If the calculated f-ratio (the one based on the test results above) exceeds the reference f-ratio, it means that crimping versus no crimping makes a statistically significant difference in accuracy. If it not not exceed the reference f-ratio, it means the difference is due to randomness. Using Excel’s data analysis feature (the f-test for two samples, for you engineers out there) on the crimp-vs-no-crimp results shows the following:
Since the calculated f-ratio (3.817) does not exceed the critical f-ratio (5.391), I could not conclude that the findings are statistically significant. What that means is that the difference in accuracy for the crimped versus uncrimped rounds is due to randomness alone.
Whew! So what does all the above mean?
All right, here we go. This particular revolver shot all of the loads extremely well. Many of the groups (all fired at a range of 50 feet) were well under an inch. Operator error (i.e., inaccuracies resulting from my unsteadiness) overpowered any of the factors evaluated in this experiment. In other words, my unsteadiness was making a far bigger difference than any change in the reloading recipe.
Although the test shows that accuracy results were not significantly different, this is good information to know. What it means is that all of the test loads (the different reloading recipes) are reasonably accurate. If I had used a machine rest, I might have seen a statistically significant difference. Stated differently, the test told me that I needed to use a machine rest with this gun to see which load parameters were really playing a role in accuracy. Without it, my flaky shooting skills (or as the statisticians like to say, my randomness) overpowered any accuracy gains to be realized by playing with component factors.
That said, though, I like that 4.2 grains of Bullseye load with the 200 grain semi-wadcutter bullet, and it’s what I load for my Model 25. But I now know…the gun shoots any of these loads well, and crimping versus no crimping doesn’t really make a difference.
