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slk
01-01-2013, 03:36 PM
I am using the Lyman 225438 mould. The majority of weights are from 44.6-45.1. This mould is supose to cast 44gr. I am trying to do all in (Lyman #2 formula). I have all of my boolits separated into weights. Question is I know I need to stick to a certain weight to have any kind of consistant accuracy. Which one's should I use? I do have some that are comming out closer to 44gr, but the majority are 44.6-45.1. I have an equal amount that are 44.8-44.9. Wonder if I can combine those? What is the weight difference you would not use together? .1, .2,.3, etc.

303Guy
01-01-2013, 03:58 PM
I would batch those as best I could and group each batch with load work up until a found a load that produces the same POI for each weight. My thinking is that the load should be insensitive to charge variation as well as boolit weight variation or as close as one can reasonably get to that 'ideal'. I'm not sure that there would be a noticeable node with light load cast boolits. My one concern is the jump into the leade with a lighter and short boolit. My hornet has that problem but my boolits were poor so accuracy could not be assessed properly. I did notice there was not much difference between cast and jacketed loads but my cast loads were not light - I was aiming for top end velocities with them.

slk
01-01-2013, 04:29 PM
When I load with Hornady .224 HP bee my accuracy is great. I can shoot 1/4 to 1/2 groups at 100yds consistant without any wind. It is just those cast boolits that give me greif. I shoot 2-4 inch groups with them at 100yds. But that was before I started to separate them into weights. My problem was I would adjust the scope for some and then the next batch would be all over. I have tried the small rifle & small pistol primers. I seam to be having the best results with IMR 4227. It would be nice to be able to cast my own to save in cost.

1Shirt
01-01-2013, 07:31 PM
You need to inspect closely and pitch out any with the least minor visable defect. That done, you need to weigh them and sort by exact weights. Chances are when finished you will have a bell shaped curve of weight variance with those in the middle probably being optium for accuracy.
1Shirt!

telebasher
01-01-2013, 08:12 PM
Seems that your boolits are within a 1/2 grain or so. After weighing several different samples of jacketed bullets I was surprised that they varied as much as they did! As for your boolits, close visual inspection and culling any with even the smallest defect will surfice except for maybe bench rest or match shooting. I tried weighing and sorting and compared groups with those that were just given good visual inspection and there is no justification for me to weigh. YMMV.

slk
01-01-2013, 08:35 PM
I don't mind too much having to buy jacketed boolits for hunting special things. It is when you want to have fun just shooting it is nice to be able to hit the smaller targets. Hornet is so hard to load for cast boolits. So you guuys are thinking I could combine the 44.8 & 44.9 ones together and load them?????

runfiverun
01-01-2013, 08:40 PM
44.8-44.9
i'd use that weight as my mean average,
i'd probably shoot them together as a group.

i'd keep the 7's and 0's also, but separatly.
giving me 3 different piles.
everything else would go back into the pot,i'd shoot the 8/9 untill i got a bunch of the 7&0 piled up, then load and shoot them each as a separate group.

felix
01-01-2013, 08:41 PM
No, separate them into separate batches with no weight variance per batch, but mark as same lot only if made with same pot of lead on same sitting. ... felix

cbrick
01-01-2013, 08:47 PM
You want as little weight variation as possible with 22 boolits. A half gr variation with a 250 gr boolit is a small percent of the whole. A half grain variation with a 44 gr boolit is a much larger percentage of the whole.

As or possibly even more important is perfect bases, the base steers the boolit not the nose and any defect including not completely filled out bases can hurt accuracy. Covering up a poorly filled out base with a gas check is still a poorly filled out base, you just can't see it any more.

Rick

kweidner
01-01-2013, 09:00 PM
Just curious if you are using a digital scale. Resolution is + or - 1 on those. Might need to break out the beam and check your work just in case if so. For weight variations using my digital if my target is 50, i batch together 49.9 to 50.1. This takes into account resolution of scale. Only time I ever weigh to .1 degree is for 1000 yd shooting. Even jword big manufacturers have a surprising amount of variation. I don't know how much .1 is going to make unless your into BR accuracy. Seems like a ton of work for a boolit that will likely be used less than 200 yds max. Course if it makes a significant difference and you don't mind spending the time, go for it. I would like to see some further testing and outcomes to if .1 makes a quantifiable difference in cast at the distances we typically shoot.

runfiverun
01-01-2013, 09:08 PM
with the little 22's any weight variaton really shows up on target.
felix is shooting for the 1's.
i'm cool hanging in the 3-5's range.
at 2700fps+ keeping the 9 twist ar in boolits is hard enough work let alone all from one pot [if you don't weight sort here though you will have groups [plural] scattered everywhere].
for the bolt guns it's a lot easier to do one long day batch of casting and visually then weight sort them.
it hurts to throw a bunch back untill you shoot the groups.
but a 20 lb pot can sure make a lot of boolits [make sure you monitor your alloy temp]

kir_kenix
01-01-2013, 10:04 PM
I utilize the same approach as runfiverun. I visually inspect and cull anything out of the ordinary. Then I weight sort to the .1 gr.

Accuracy depends on alot of different things, from boolits, to load, lube, to your rifle, shooter, etc, etc. Best to take out as much error out of the equation as possible. Best way to do that is with being very particular in your projectiles. Cast a pile out of the same batch of lead, 20#'s make ALOT of .22 boolits. With a sample that large it makes it easy to cull anything thats an outlier weight wise. These may have interanal voids, base defects, etc.

shooting on a shoestring
01-01-2013, 10:08 PM
To each his own...I don't weigh my 225438's for my No. 3 in .22 Hornet. Using AA1680 to get me to 2200 or so fps, gives me lots of 1.5" groups at 100 yds rested, with some occassional excursions to 2". That tickles my fancy. I just cull out any with imperfect bases and skip the weighing. Perhaps I could sort by weighing and cut that in half, may try someday, but now I just cast, cull, load and shoot. Its fun that way.

slk
01-01-2013, 10:15 PM
I am shooting these through a Ruger 22/77 with 1/14 twist. My pot is a Lyman but does not have a temp control on it. You just plug it in and it melts the alloy. I have cast 9mm, 45/70, 45 and some others but have never had the problems I am having with these little .224's. You are right about them being all over everywhere when I just load a mixed batch. I know the gun shoots great because I can load the factory hornadys and get great accuracy. I am asumming it just has to be the weight factor. Now all that being said I have been trying to watch out for the formation of the bottoms. If they don't look right I usually throw them back in when I am casting. I will load a batch of all one weight and see if they all have a similar POI.

JonB_in_Glencoe
01-01-2013, 10:24 PM
Casting at a consistant rhythm to maintain consistant mold temp and monitoring the pot temp so it remains consistant really helps getting consistant weights throughout the batch of boolits.
Jon

HARRYMPOPE
01-02-2013, 12:21 AM
To each his own...I don't weigh my 225438's for my No. 3 in .22 Hornet. Using AA1680 to get me to 2200 or so fps, gives me lots of 1.5" groups at 100 yds rested, with some occassional excursions to 2". That tickles my fancy. I just cull out any with imperfect bases and skip the weighing. Perhaps I could sort by weighing and cut that in half, may try someday, but now I just cast, cull, load and shoot. Its fun that way.

My experience as well.I have weight sorted 22's and find it waste of time.And those who weight sort often do not segregate cavities which nulls the weighing process anyhow.I find it hard to cast bad 22 bullets.Heavy objects should fall faster than light ones and 22's need to be weighed to get any accuracy at all because they are small.makes sense.

Gohon
01-02-2013, 01:32 AM
slk, how old is your mold? Reason I ask is a couple years ago I ordered that mold from MidwayUSA and the check shank was so large I couldn't get gas checks on. Sent it back for a replacement and the second one was the same way so returned the second one for a refund. I'd love to have that mold again but am a little skittish on trying for a third time. That is the only Lyman mold I ever had a problem with. If it makes any difference my alloy was straight air cooled wheel weights.

slk
01-02-2013, 02:19 AM
I bought this one from MidwayUSA also. Just about 2 years ago or so. The gas checks go on just fine. I don't think I tried straight wheel weights with this round. I have always used the formula:5% antimony/5% tin/90% pure lead. Now I do subsitute something in my formula. Since tin is about $13.00 a lb now I go to garage sales and buy up all the pewtew stuff I can find You can usually get a pewtew cup that weights about a lb for $.50-$1.00. Pewter is about 95%tin. Just another way to save bucks in reloading. Just be sure it says pewter on the bottom. If it is the real thing it will say pewter.

I'll Make Mine
01-02-2013, 08:14 AM
Heavy objects should fall faster than light ones and 22's need to be weighed to get any accuracy at all because they are small.makes sense.

A fellow named Galileo disproved that, almost five hundred years ago. What's correct is that a heavy boolit will hold velocity better than a lighter one from the same mold, and the lighter one is also more likely to be off center (because the lost weight may come from incomplete mold fill out).

cbrick
01-02-2013, 09:36 AM
Casting at a consistant rhythm to maintain consistant mold temp and monitoring the pot temp so it remains consistant really helps getting consistant weights throughout the batch of boolits. Jon

Exactly! The more mold temp variation the more variation in boolit weight.


Heavy objects should fall faster than light ones

Stand on your roof with a one pound rock in one hand and a ten pound rock in the other. Drop them both at the same time and see which one hits the ground first.

Harry, they have also discovered that the world is not flat. :mrgreen:


A fellow named Galileo disproved that,

I could be wrong but I thought That was Newton.

Rick

Wayne Smith
01-02-2013, 12:05 PM
Nope, Galileo, dropped weights off the Leaning Tower Of Pizza. (sp?)

303Guy
01-02-2013, 02:15 PM
Stand on your roof with a one pound rock in one hand and a ten pound rock in the other.The ten pound rock will hit first but not because it's heavier. It's because it has a smaller frontal area relative to its mass i.e. it has a higher sectional density. That's assuming assuming both rocks are sort of round. From that one can deduce that 22's will be more sensitive to surface defects, never mind internal voids! It's all making sense now - why 22's are so damn hard to cast and shoot well.

I made a swage die which took my 55gr RCBS castings and reformed them. I stopped at that point but the idea was to have a bleed hole to squeeze out excess lead but why bother if the voids and surface defects are gone and one is only left with weight variations? I was also thinking of machining out the lube groove and the gas check rebate but maybe retaining the gas check and swaging it on would be better. (It's a hornet so it will stabilize a heavier boolit than the book twist rates show due to low muzzle blast in a rifle).

I used to think the hornet was a near perfect cast boolit cartridge and theoretically it should be. I still want a dedicated cast boolit hornet and one day I'm gonna build one (unless I opt for a 222 Rimmed to make it hunting legal).

slk
01-02-2013, 04:47 PM
Ok I just got through loading some Hornets up. Cast.....44.0gn before gas check. With gas check they are 45.5gn. Dumped 5.7 gn/2400 powder.OAL 1.675. Slightly crimped. Small pistol primers. Will hit my range this Sat and report what they do.

Here in Minnesota a 22 Hornet is the smallest legal caliber you can use to hunt deer with. I have to tell you when you nail them in the ear with the Hornet they drop like a sack of potatoes in their tracks. I always take head shots with my Hornet, but I do use the Hornady .224 HP bee with IMR 4227 boolit for deer hunting. I have had the best grouping with that round.

felix
01-03-2013, 08:00 PM
Dropping a small boolit out of a perfect mold will NOT drop slower than a big boolit; that's true. In reality, all molds get out of kilter over time and will make a small boolit hang up and drop slower than a big boolit even when the latter is also restricted. Whenever a change in any mold dropping occurs, get out a magnifying glass under very bright light and look for a problem. Usually, only one cavity causes trouble, but check them all thoroughly anyway. Look for pig tail burs, sticky trash, or warping sides. Use a very, very sharp EXACTO knife to lightly saw off any burs. Get rid of sticky junk using wife's cuticle stick (OsageOrange or BlackLocust), pushing in hard (for a silver looking shine) an evaporative MolyKote (DowChemical) spray, or its equivalent naked moly powder without the included solvent. In fact, do this with a brand new mold after degreasing to get an up front rust protection (of any kind). I have NOT DONE THIS MOLY DEAL ON BRASS MOLDS, so you might want to condition them to lead first by heavy use before molying them, if ever. ... felix

Weight variance is seldom the problem with accuracy. It's the imbalance caused by microscopic air bubbles within a cast boolit. Swaging takes the bubbles out, especially with softer lead inside of a jacket. ... felix

runfiverun
01-03-2013, 10:32 PM
lots of swage die sets don't have bleed off holes in their point form dies.
so even there you need to weight sort before hand to make sure you have the same volume of lead going into them.
i swage many of my 223 boolits [for the bolt guns] then have to oven quench the batch and re-lube.

slk
01-04-2013, 12:36 AM
I have never heard of swaging boolits??? What is this process??

10x
01-04-2013, 12:49 AM
I would be adding a bit more tin to the alloy, stepping the heat of the alloy up a notch and making a consistent large sprue every cast.
I have found that a larger sprue with a 5% to 8% tin content and a slightly warmer pot will give a better cast.
I also start with a clean pot and a well fluxed clean alloy that I melt and flux in another pot.
A hotplate with an aluminum plate over the burner preheats the mold and keeps it hot.

when all goes right the bullets will usually be within 3/10 of a grain with no visible defects

Measure the diameters of the lightest and heaviest bullets you cast. at 90 to the mold line and on the mold line and compare the measurements of each bullet.
Any difference in diameter may indicate that you are having trouble keeping the mold blocks at the same temperature over the casting session.
Even then I will get up to

1Shirt
01-04-2013, 11:30 AM
Felix and I are on the same page on anything to do with casting and shooting with the hornet. Hornets are persnickity creatures by nature. Think they are all female!
1Shirt!

303Guy
01-04-2013, 02:12 PM
I used to have so much fun with my hornet. It's beautiful rifle that fits me like a glove and has an excellent trigger. I had this complicated method of seating bullets and got fantastic velocity out of it. But - with j-words. It's a cast boolit cartridge and following this thread is getting my enthusiasm to try cast in a gain up. I see the possibility of driving 60gr cast (or swaged) boolits up to 2650fps with it. And I can have a suppressor. Now that should make y'all envious.8-)

My loading trick was to seat the bullet in a paper cup which then got soaked with 'waxy-lube' which was a solid setting melted paraffin wax base mix I made up. I would still like to try that same trick as it does not require neck sizing but I suspect the paper might damage the boolit in the bore even though it is soft paper hand towel. I have also used another trick which was to seat a card wad over the powder, then a bead of 'waxy-lube' on top of the wad followed by a heated boolit which melts the lube and glues the boolit into the neck and hopefully also centralizes it. I got pretty good accuracy with j-words like that. With cast, I can adjust the boolit diameter to close the gap a little.

http://i388.photobucket.com/albums/oo327/303Guy/MVC-030F_edited.jpg

This is a 303 Brit boolit glued in with 'waxy-lube'. It's a slick so it relies on the coating of lube for lubrication.
http://i388.photobucket.com/albums/oo327/303Guy/MVC-860F.jpg

The gluing strength is adequate for the hornet but is marginal for the 303 and requires careful handling. For the hornet with its long neck it's perfect.

runfiverun
01-04-2013, 04:13 PM
it's the same as swaging a jaxketed bullet.
only with cast you cast them.
seat the check and size them just a titch smaller than your die.
then swage them up to size in the point form die.
this squeezes everything under pressure,squares up the bases and forces everything to take the same shape and roundness of the form die.
you have to have the lube groove full frst or you will lose it, [or part of it] and you can change the drive bands to be non existent too depending on how much you set the die up for.
you can add a hollow point,flat point, or change the ogive depending on what die you have or what point form die you use.
i change my 22's quite often.
once i find a 22 savage with it's 228 bbl.
i have a point form die that's 228 diameter and i can bump regular 223 cal bullets up for it.
or use another set to bump up 427 diameter 44-40's to 430.
add a hollow point,or even change the nose shape slightly.
i can add a 44 cal gas check to 375449's to make a heavy rnfp for my 44 mag leverguns.
or bump over some 41 mag wad cutters front frive band into a slight round nose shape and add a 44 gas check to them.
this gives me a long front drive band to fill up the throat on a troublesome revolver.
when i make 358's for my 357 i use a 140 gr 8 mauser mold and half jaxkets to make either swc's, or a round nose.
or i take 180 gr silhouette boolits and bump them to a wadcutter hollow point.
you can see the advantages.
especially since i can also add a canellure where i need it after the boolit is formed.

NVScouter
01-05-2013, 11:10 PM
My hornet is a one hole rifle with most jacketed and 1 cast load. I had all sorts of issues casting those little things. My only trick was to choose the alloy I wanted and start casting. If they started dropping well cast only those until your tired of it. If they are casting funky don't waste your time.

1Shirt
01-06-2013, 12:31 PM
Sure can't disagree with the casting funky. You will occaisionally have a bad casting day just like women occaisionally have a bad hair day!
1Shirt!