Soft boolits tumbling out of barrel

[PBaholic]

OK, here is my first message, so be gently with me.....

I have been casting .358, 125 and 158 grain and .452, 230 grain for a few years, and have the Brinell (BHN) down and even powder coat my boolits. They shoot perfectly fine when they are my standard BHN 14, which I water drop to quench up to about BHN 16. I can shoot these with or without the powder coat fine.

Last week I cast some soft lead, BHN 6 and powder coated them. Most of them shot well, except I could tell 1 out of 10 were tumbling, making long holes in the target. A buddy of mine shot the same boolits in a different gun with the same results. The barrels were perfectly clean in both guns, and shot my BHN 16 boolits fine.

I thought this might be because the BHN 6 lead was shrinking more than my BHN 14, so today I cast some more 6's, and they measured .358, about the same as the BHN 16's. They do go through my sizing die easier than the 16's, so they must be just a RCH smaller.

I was trying this to avoid having to obtain harder lead mixes, as the powder coating has removed any leading problems.

Do you think this is just a sizing issue?

How hard do I need to go to get this to work?

I can't be the only cheap skate that has tried this....

[Mitch]

A bit more info would be helpfull for someone to give some advise.Like cal. and gun

That said.Most find something that works well and stick with it.going from 16bhn to 6bhn is a big difference.

sizing issue.you said the chack about the same.so I don't think is is sizing.

How hard.this all depends on you gun and the loads you are using.Try a smaller step in hardeness.mix up a small batch and try something like 10 to 12 bhn.

cheep skate yes lol.you are not the only one I think we all try to get by with less alloy and not waste thing like tin and antimony.You have some lead that is close enough to consider it pure.so if you have some of your 14bhn lead left to a 50/50 mix it should be about 11 to 12 bhn.if not you will need something else to bring up the hardness so you can do some testing.i mix of cow w might be about right to.

[PBaholic]

Caliber is .38. Gun is a Ruger 3" Speed Six Revolver, and a Ruger 6" GP-100 Revolver.

The boolit I use the most is a 158 grain .358 (Lee 358-158-RF) in a .38, with 3.7 Gr Titegroup (Max Load).

Powder coat is a single coating of Harbor Freight Red.

I'm probably going to try casting some BHN 8, 10 and 12 to see which one works OK. Yes, this is 100 lbs of pure lead that I picked up for only $0.20/lb. I have some Linotype to mix it with to increase the hardness, and can measure it easily. I was hoping that someone might know the answer off the top of their head, so I don't have to experiment.

I still am casting and using my normal boolits, but since I'm powder coating now, I thought I'd cut back on the hardness.

[MT Chambers]

Maybe you are doing something while loading the softer boolits, may be your crimp is damaging or changing the diameter of the soft boolits.

[runfiverun]

re-sizing pure lead is pretty easy to do.
it also gets longer easier.
and is easier to distort under pressure.

I'd get some back from the berm and look for skidding on the soft ones versus the hard ones.

powder coat is not a cure all to anything it is a coating.
you have to still follow the basic rules of cast lead boolit shooting to get good results.

I'd mix my 14 bhn lead with my 6 bhn lead and either water drop and coat or air cool and coat.


one more thing.
we deal in measurements less than one red hair .001 does make a difference.
sometimes all the difference in the world.

[Mitch]

the 38s should be ok softer but at a max load of TG may be skidding a bit.I see you have a 452 boolit in your first post.My thought would be for the 38s and 45acp 10 or so bhn might work just fine.I shoot 10 or so I my 45lc and acp running at about 820 fps.i shoot 14 in the 357s in the 1200fps range.Like MT said above other things could be going on with the softer boolits.you might be swedgeing the boolit down with the case.I don't PC.

[jcren]

My guess I is they are being sized down by the brass. Pull some down and measure. If you run mixed brass, the tumblers are probably from thicker/smaller id brass.

[OS OK]

My guess I is they are being sized down by the brass. Pull some down and measure. If you run mixed brass, the tumblers are probably from thicker/smaller id brass.

Ah ha…somebody's paying attention. Are you expanding for a j-type (as in typical die sets) or for a larger cast? Take some down after loading and measure that soft round. Are you using a carbide crimp die?

OS OK

[PBaholic]

Thanks guys.

I mixed up a bunch of lead, and it came out at 9.5 or so. I was shooting for 10.

I cast 250 boolits, and loaded them. I'll go shooting and see how they work tomorrow. I shoot indoors at a commercial site, so I can't collect spent rounds. The 6's I made were just a test, and I don't have any more to pull apart to look for swedging. The 6 brass was all RP, but not necessarily from the same batch.

These new 9.5 boolits felt exactly like my 14 boolits going through the sizer, so I'm hopeful that they'll shoot straight. I water dropped the 9.5's, but forgot to test if that boosted the hardness any. I'll have to remember to try that on the next batch, as I have about 30 lbs of the 9.5 left. I didn't even bother water dropping the 6's I made, as this does nothing to the hardness of pure lead.

I can't measure any real difference between the 6's and 9.5's with the micrometer. Both measured .3580 to .3590, but the 6's went through the sizer easily, where the 9.5's had to be pushed, so there is a difference. I forgot to mention that I slugged my Ruger Speed Six previously at .3555.

The whole reason for all of this is to try to get my lead mix hardness down a little bit, as 14 is hard to get economically. I picked up 100 lbs of window weights for only $0.20/lb, which ended up being almost pure lead. The window weights fooled me as they felt harder than just lead. I believe there may have been a layer of something else in the window weights for strength, as when I was melting them, I ended up with a layer not melting very well, and lots of oatmeal type slag. I use a hot plate to melt the raw lead, and it does not get hot enough to melt things like Zinc, which is what I suspect it was. The window weights were made by dipping them repeatedly to create layers. The outer layer was lead, but the next one in was harder, and did not melt easily. I collected the oatmeal slag, and melted it with a torch in another pot. It is metallic, but barely melted at the top end of the propane torch temp. At least if it was zinc it didn't sour my lead.

I'll let you all know how these 9.5's shoot. If anyone is interested in a cheap and EZ way to measure BHN hardness, let me know, and I can post how it's done.

[runfiverun]

it takes about 10-15 days for lead to come to it's full hardness after being cast.

that foamy oatmeal looking stuff was probably antimony.

[prs]

WOW, 6 lead must be foundry pig lead or sheeting such as phone cable or X-Ray room lead. A small dose of tin will make you smile, and equally small dose of antimony will get you to giggle like a little girl; except for your lighter wallet. Deforming from loading tools, swaged by brass, deforming from handling, deforming under normal shooting pressure. Powder coat is great, but still flexible. There is also an outside chance that one of your 6 shooter's forcing comes is too tight. The softer the boolit, the more difference that would make. You smith can check with pin gauges.

prs

[PBaholic]

The BHN 9.5 lead and Powder Coat worked well for the 158 grain .38's, with a max load of Titegroup. No tumbling.

I even made some 230 grain .45's, and they worked perfectly as well.

[Walter Laich]

glad you figured it out.

be sure to check the swapping and selling section for Pb, Sn and Sb.

I have used several different folks and all are top notch.

[blikseme300]

To the OP, glad you found a solution.

There are 2 ways to preserve CB size when seated. 1 - Use harder alloy, 2 - Expand the case more or anneal to prevent squeezing down.

Some time ago when I tried plain based CB's of the same design as the one that used gas checks I could not get accuracy from my Marlin 30-30 no matter that I slowed the charge way down. These were cast from the same alloy and powder coated and sized the same. After some head scratching (maybe the other end too) I pulled some rounds and found that the lower part of the CB where it met the neck was 0.002" smaller than when sized. I annealed some brass and tried again with new loads. A test pull of a loaded CB revealed that the sizing down no longer happened and I was able to work up good loads with these PB CB's.

Not all brass is the same and case thickness and hardness can and will mess with your accuracy. The simple quick-and-dirty fix is typically to use hard alloy to prevent CB squeeze down during seating but this just masks the problem. When wanting to use soft alloy, be it for hunting or plinking or economy, attention needs to be paid to what happens when seating. This is just my opinion, YMMV.