Weight spread on your boolits?

[bichettereds]

Hi guys. First post here but Ive been lurking for awhile. Great forum!

I just got into casting my own finally and tonight was my first night actually casting bullets. I did some 145gr WCs and 158gr SWCs. Im getting an extreme spread of about 0.5grs on both. Is that reasonable or should I expect better? The mold is a H&G #51/#50 (2 cavity, SWC and WC).

Thanks

[Cherokee]

.5 gr variation is fine. Your revolver target will never know the difference.

[JonB_in_Glencoe]

0.5gr spread isn't too bad for pistol boolits...but since you asked, I'd recommend reading this thread, it may help you improve your technique and narrow that spread some.
http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?224168-How-consistent-are-you-REALY

[dverna]

An extreme spread of .5 gr is excellent. Do not read anything more. YOU can give 95% of the forum members lessons.

Ok I exaggerated.... You are better than 98%

[44man]

I quit weighing boolits long ago, you will never see a difference. I spent too much time sorting to see worst groups too.
.5 gr is amazing with any cast. That beats most jacketed. You have no idea how good you are!
Welcome and now explain how you get almost perfection!

[bichettereds]

Well... after the reactions from my post I went back and weighed all of them. I only made 40, and weighed about a dozen before my post.

The results were an actual extreme spread of 0.96grs, but if I take out the two lightest I got a spread of 0.68grs. I take it that is still very good?

I hope you guys didnt take this as me bragging.

Anyway... I don't plan on weighing every bulle, er... boolit I cast. I'll just visually inspect for quality. I was just wondering what was typical.

For anyone who's curious, I'm using a H&G #51 mold. Going for round 2 tonight. This is pretty fun! :-)

[country gent]

Most shoot for 1% wieght variation for all around use bullets. My big bullets 360-550 grains will have slightly less than 1 grain variance in a session. These shoot great out to 500+ yards from my BPCR rifles. Get in a cadence por a big sprue and keep the bullet molten. Your doing real well as it is.

[Hickory]

Like 44man, I quite weighing boolits years ago.

[edctexas]

Generally I don't weight boolits except as goodsteel did as an experiment. I did a run of about 150 boolits using my normal procedure and then tried Goodsteel's suggestion of running hotter and draining some alloy off before filling. His suggestion did improve my consistency in the weight department. Originally I filled the mold directly from the pot, but now dribble some alloy before filling and run at 725F instead of 700F. This was better so I now do that on all molds. I think +/- 0.5gr is about +/-.4%. You might do better but not by a whole lot. I have done a culled batch of 100 boolits (9mm) and did better, but not all the time.

Ed C
Ed C

[Le Loup Solitaire]

A weight differential of .5 is very good. It would take a lot more time to narrow that down and it would be difficult to see/realize any real difference in the grouping. Naturally a weight variation of 0 or as close to it as you can get would be the ideal, but there is the consideration of practicality. I too use H&G #51 (4 cavity) and the rejection rate is quite low to start with and I have been successful with the grouping by staying with in 1.0 gr variance. LLS