Am I lucky or what?

[Seeker]

I have a NM Blackhawk convertible and recently started casting my own. All I have right now for a mold is a Lee dbbl cavity 452-200-rf, but that is gonna change soon. Any how, the coww boolits drop at .4525 and 211 ish grns. I've never slugged the barrel or the cylinder throats even though I've resisted the temptation. I TL the boolits, run through a 452 sizer and TL them again. Yesterday I venture out back to the range and shoot over 125 rnds in .45 Colt and am quite pleased with the accuracy. 2" groups off the bench at 25 yrds.with a lot of boolit holes touching, and I was hitting clay pigeons placed randomly out to roughly 50 yrds. When I got done, I took the cylinder out and checked the barrel to find it clean as a whistle. Virtually no leading. Leading would have reared it's ugly head by now wouldn't of it? I'm a newbie to shooting lead and casting and quite frankly, I was expecting the worst after reading all the threads on a few different forums on how the NM Blackhawks all need to have the cylinders reamed. If it doesn't show any leading and shoots this well...I'm not gonna slug nothing.

[Landshark9025]

I would. You go to the emergency room with your finger bent at 90 degrees sideways and tell them you just slammed it in a door what's the first thing they say? Let's xray it. Why? To have a better idea of what's inside and REALLY going on.

[Cowboy_Dan]

I'm the type that would slug it just because I want to know. However, if what you're doing works, I wouldn't change the procedure. That is, unless slugging suggested a much better way.

[Motor]

If it was a rifle I would have slugged it before even casting.

I don't think you got lucky. I think you wern't unlucky. It seems everything is as it should be with your BH. I'm definatly in the if it works don't mess with it crowd.

It's been my experience that leading shows its ugly head very quickly and gets worse and worse every shot until accuracy is shot gun pattern like and the bore begins to look like a smooth bore musket. Some times the leading is near the muzzle too but the effect is the same.

My BH (s) shoot lead just fine and none have been slugged or reamed. I guess I'm lucky too. ;)

Motor

[captaint]

I guess I've been lucky, also. I've had to slug only a couple of barrels. I size to what SHOULD work and like you, if I get no lead, I'm good to go. The couple of occasions when I did get lead, it showed up after about 20 rounds. My accuracy went south pretty quick. It went from very good to terrible within 20 or 30 rounds. I do check all of my revolver throats, though. I have the pin gauges, so that makes it easy.

[leadman]

Cast and load some more, you are good to go.

[gwpercle]

You doing good....Keep on , keepin' on. When I started casting and reloading , slugging and measuring hadn't been invented yet! I did just as you have done and low and behold never had any leading with 38 spcl, 357 magnum, 45 acp, 9mm luger, 30-30, 30-06 or 7.5 Swiss. I used good lube and gas checked boolits in rifle and magnum loads. The only time I slugged something was about two years ago I got a 303 British No4 MKI and a WWII vintage Walther P 38...wasn't having any problems, just wanted to see what they measured. Felt guilty about never doing it. I'm not going to mess with success , if it works, keep doing it !
Gary

[NoZombies]

I only start investigating things closely if I have spare time (not much lately) or there's something that's off and needs fixed.

I recently picked up a .38 revolver that was cheap. I have no idea what the throats are like, or what the barrel slugs at, since the first time out using my plinking load of a H&G #51 sized .359 over 3.5 gr Bullseye, it put all 6 shots through a ragged hole at 25 yards. I'm not likely to ever slug it or check the throats as long as it keeps shooting like that.

When a gun works as it should out of the box, I generally don't mess with it. There's nothing wrong with checking everything and knowing all the guns dimensions to the 10,000th of an inch or whatever, but I've got other things to spend my time on, and I get no thrill from it.

[Hardcast416taylor]

The only time I had a VERY BAD case of leading in 1 of my Ruger Blackhawks was when I loaded up and shot a box of Speer lead boolets I was given. Have never used that brand of lead boolets again, no matter if they were even free.Robert