boolit hardness for pistol calibers

[hickfu]

Just a quick question to throw out there.... I just started casting for my wifes 44 Mag Marlin and my Super BlackHawk and wondered if I should air cool or water quench for both or air cool for the pistol and WQ for the rifle.....

What do you guys use?


Doc

[mroliver77]

No need to WQ in my opinion.

You probably should give more info on loads and intended use though.
J

[gray wolf]

I have no problem with air cooled ww metal. I do size my bullets to the largest cylinder throat for my SRH that would be .432
my loads ( in my pistol that work for me )
10 grains of long shot
8.5 and 9.4 Unique
19 grains 2400 / 20.6 for 240 J-words
Lead bullets are 250 and 260 grains
I might water drop if I needed extra penetration, then again I could use a heavier bullet for that also.

[Cherokee]

More data needed, light, medium, high end loads? I use air cooled CB's in all three type loads in my 44 Mag revolver. Don't have a 44 rifle but would probably do the same for it. Fit is very important.

[KYCaster]

Just a quick question to throw out there.... I just started casting for my wifes 44 Mag Marlin and my Super BlackHawk and wondered if I should air cool or water quench for both or air cool for the pistol and WQ for the rifle.....

What do you guys use?


Doc



What alloy?

Jerry

[MtGun44]

Air cooled wwts or softer works fine for me up to full power .44 Mag and .357 Mag loads
with no GCs, just good fit, good designs and good lube.

Bill

[hickfu]

Opps, sorry about that guys... I had to post that quickly so I could go help my sister with a computer problem.

The lead is 50lbs 80% COWW 20% SOWW then I add 1lb of pewter for a total of 51lbs. Air cooled is just about 10.5 to 11 BHN WQ somewhere in the 20's

I want some to be full Mag loads for me (I use 2400) and some light loads for the wife (whether in a mag case or a special case)
In the SBH they will be full mag loads as she cannot shoot the handgun.

Boolits are 432 dia GC'ed at 250gr and 265gr and resemble beartooth's (should I consider 50/50 mix?)

Sorry if I rambled there... the fibrofog makes it so I cant think alot of times so thoughts get jumbled... :shock:


Doc

[44man]

I water drop everything. Air cooled will give me fliers. Air cooled needs a GC. There is no difference in terminal performance on a deer. Air cooled will not expand in the .44 and is no different then water dropped but it is not tough enough to take rifling without skid.
Nobody can claim an air cooled will kill a deer better then a water dropped in the .44. You will never find either boolit to compare them.
The .44 is perfect with a hard boolit, just water drop.

[pdawg_shooter]

AA.COWW for all my handgun bullets. Works for me in 3 45ACPs, 2 357s and two 44mag, one handgun and one rifle.

[hickfu]

I water drop everything. Air cooled will give me fliers. Air cooled needs a GC. There is no difference in terminal performance on a deer. Air cooled will not expand in the .44 and is no different then water dropped but it is not tough enough to take rifling without skid.
Nobody can claim an air cooled will kill a deer better then a water dropped in the .44. You will never find either boolit to compare them.
The .44 is perfect with a hard boolit, just water drop.

I bow to the 44 Mag guru!!! I have always WQ (just easier for me) so I will continue to do so.....

Thank you all...

Doc

[Slow Elk 45/70]

+1 for the water WQ for 44 boolits

[RobS]

There is success both ways.......your gun will tell you what it likes. I have some that it doesn't matter others that prefer a harder/tougher boolit somewhere in the 18 to 20 BHN area. Then in some high end rifle loads 20-25 BHN works well.

[44man]

The .44 is my go to gun for deer, never fails and leaves a huge blood trail. Even though I change calibers through the season, I still depend on the .44. It just seems to work, period! I do use a heavier boolit, ran out of mine last season but did not notice. I loaded the gun, shot two deer in 2 days to find I had the Lee 310's in the gun---no, I did fail to notice and never checked the sight settings. They hit perfect. The last deer was walking fast at about 60 yards.
I always get 2 out of 5 fliers with air cooled, not bad out and OK for deer. I once annealed the gas checks for air cooled and it did help but I can't explain it.
Air cooled is still so tough they will not expand on deer so I found it makes no difference with how they kill. It is just easier for me to water drop instead of moving hot boolits around on my small casting area. I do get more accuracy.

[jlchucker]

I've never tried water cooling. I hadn't thought much about it until I read this thread, and everything so far has worked OK for my guns. After reading everyone's posts, I may give it a try, just to see what I can see.

[fredj338]

I would be happy w/ ac clip ww for any vel in a 44mag. Up to 1200fps, even softer alloys work fine.

[jlchucker]

I would be happy w/ ac clip ww for any vel in a 44mag. Up to 1200fps, even softer alloys work fine.

That's what I use, and my 44 magnum loading is for rifles--a Winchester trapper, and a Rossi 92 rifle. I usually mix my wheelweight lead with about 20 percent pure, and use a gascheck. Once, out of the Winchester, my loads were chronied at the gunshop I go to, and my 429215 boolits were clocked at 1680 fps. I don't recall the load at the moment, but I think it may have been 20 gr of 2400. I used to frequently plink clay pigeon fragments that were at the 100 yard berm at my club range, a 50 round box of ammo at a sitting, and never had a leading problem. A couple of years ago, I gave that rifle to a local kid who's Dad has been a friend for years. The kid now has a kid of his own, and I saw both recently. Apparently the "kid's" little boy, just short of 1 year old and living in Wisconsin now, is destined to be flinging 429215's out of that little trapper in about 10 or 11 years--at some Wisconsin whitetails. That makes me feel good.

[Shuz]

Air cooled wwts or softer works fine for me up to full power .44 Mag and .357 Mag loads
with no GCs, just good fit, good designs and good lube.

Bill
Plus 1 to what Bill said.

[gray wolf]

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=71285&d=1369268969
Air cooled WW + 2% Tin and 20% range lead seem to work fine in my SRH

[RobS]

Nice work there Sam.

[Slow Elk 45/70]

Yup ,each to his own...I started water dropping my 44's in 1970 If my mind serves me well,
they punch through all the animals I have shot with my 44's pistol/rifle Works for me.
I shoot a lot of calibers.. if they are 1,000 FPS or under I let them air cool. :guntootsmiley:

[hickfu]

Yup ,each to his own...I started water dropping my 44's in 1970 If my mind serves me well,
they punch through all the animals I have shot with my 44's pistol/rifle Works for me.
I shoot a lot of calibers.. if they are 1,000 FPS or under I let them air cool. :guntootsmiley:

That sounds perfect, I was going to cast at some point for my 45 acp's so I will air cool those...


Doc

[Rick N Bama]

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=71285&d=1369268969
Air cooled WW + 2% Tin and 20% range lead seem to work fine in my SRH

Dang Sam! You were using a Ransom Rest......right? My one shot groups aren't that good :)
Rick

[Boerrancher]

Guys, the original .22 WMR fired a pure lead bullet at 2,000 FPS. The .22 LR is 1200 FPS with a pure lead projectile. Use those two rounds as your rule of thumb for calculating the hardness you will need, and tweak your alloy from there to get the accuracy you are happy with. Boolit size and lube will have more to do with leading and lack of accuracy than the hardness of your boolit.

Best wishes,

Joe

[Piedmont]

Guys, the original .22 WMR fired a pure lead bullet at 2,000 FPS. The .22 LR is 1200 FPS with a pure lead projectile. Use those two rounds as your rule of thumb for calculating the hardness you will need, and tweak your alloy from there to get the accuracy you are happy with. Boolit size and lube will have more to do with leading and lack of accuracy than the hardness of your boolit.

Best wishes,

Joe
That is news to me. I thought the original .22 Mag was by Winchester and was a jacketed hollowpoint and a jacketed solid. Are you sure of your information?

[Boerrancher]

That is news to me. I thought the original .22 Mag was by Winchester and was a jacketed hollowpoint and a jacketed solid. Are you sure of your information?

Yep this is from Wiki, but the sources check out. Here is a photo of a .22WMR with the 40 grain swedged lead bullet followed by the write up. The bullet is copper plated like most rim fires.
78089

The .22 Winchester Magnum Rimfire, more commonly called .22 WMR, .22 Magnum, or simply .22 Mag, is a rimfire cartridge. Originally loaded with a bullet weight of 40 grains (2.6 g) delivering velocities in the 2,000 feet per second (610 m/s) range from a rifle barrel, .22 WMR has also been loaded with bullet weights of 50 grains (3.2 g) at 1,530 feet per second (470 m/s) and 30 grains (1.9 g) at 2,200 feet per second (670 m/s).

The .22 WMR was introduced in 1959 by Winchester, but was not used by Winchester until the Winchester Model 61 slide rifle could be chambered for it, in 1960.[2] By that time, Smith and Wesson and Ruger had revolvers for it, and Savage had come out with the Model 24 and since late 2012, the model 42, a more modern update than the 24, a .22/.410 revolver. It was the only successful rimfire cartridge introduced in the 20th Century.[3]

[Mugs]

My wife and I are Handgun Silhouette shooters. In '83 we switched to all cast. I was working full time and both of us were shooting 2 matches a month. I started to run out of time for AC WW to age harden. Water dropping became the answer, and I never quit. Has worked great for years. Slow Elk about half those years were in AK.

Mugs

[fcvan]

For years my alloy was reclaimed from a range that shot swaged hollow base wadcutters exclusively. That's pretty soft stuff and I used it in pistol calibers. If I was loading .357 or .41 mag I used a gas check. This was with Javalina lube.

Nowadays, I try to do 50/50 WW/range scrap for pistol and straight WW for rifle and BAC for lube. I am currently getting good results using range scrap for pistol or rifle and powder coated with Harbor Freight black. If the mold has a gas check shank I apply a gas check otherwise they are plain based.

The Lyman 225-415 has been working very well for me in .223 through a Mini 14 and an AR. I've loaded some 30 Carbine with a SAECO 95 grain plain base boolit but haven't tried them at the range yet. I'm sure they will work fine as I've read where others have shot that boolit in their rifles plain based with regular lube. Powder coating has worked wonderfully in everything I've tried thus far.

[fecmech]

Back when I shot silhouette (70's) I used my Ruger SBH .44 mag. At the time I owned a Ransom rest and did some testing of my silhouette load of lots of 296. Using ACWW's versus 50/50 WW/lino, my 50/50 mix was better than ACWW's so that's what I shot. I no longer have a Ransom but with dot sights or a scope a fellow can do as well or better than the Ransom. A year or two ago I shot some bench groups with my .357 Ruger GP to see if it also needed lino in the mix. My set up is one main target that catches all the shots and I move a backer that catches individual groups. My load was 14.6/820/50/50/358429 and I fired 4 Five shot groups at 50 yds The average group size was 1.91" and the composite for all 20 shots was 3"! I did the same 4 groups of ACWW's with the same load and averaged 2.7" per group and the composite for 20 shots was 4 1/8". Now IMO a 2.7" 50 yd average is not real shabby for a plain base 1200+fps load but, it is less accurate than the lino mix. If a fellow is looking for the max in accuracy in magnum plain base loads I think he needs harder bullets. CBrick who did extensive testing on his silhouette loads felt he needed at least BHN 18 for his long range accuracy and wrote quite a bit about it. Does someone need that level of accuracy for normal 25 yd plinking, probably not, but water dropping takes no extra time and costs nothing so it is a nice option. Whether it is needed for mid level loads I don't know, I only tested max loads in the 30KPSI+ range and it appears to me for max accuracy it is. YMMV

[Mugs]

I'll get to see CBrick over the Labor Day at the LASC Extravaganza. Our once a year trip to CA.
Mugs