Commercial Cast Pistol Bullets?

[Mike W1]

Am in the process of seeing how much weight variation there is in my cast bullets and got to wondering. How much variation there is in the bullets one would pick up off the shelf in the store. Only ones I've ever bought were 9mm's and they're long since sent downrange. Anybody ever weigh some commercial ones to check?

[osteodoc08]

The .411 215gr LSWC I got from a member here have about a 1% variance. Fine by me. Looks to be from a Magma mold.

[RogerDat]

Someplace I have a few boxes of Laser cast, those are true commercial manufacture. I'll have to weigh a few and check. Might take a day or two... but I'm curios also.

[dverna]

I tested some Dardas bullets years ago and they are very good. I am not at home so cannot pull up the data. Dardas has excellent quality and some Bullseye shooters use then exclusively.

I wound up buying over 20k of them when I was working and did not want to spend time casting.

I believe a good caster can do better.... the average guy....probably not.

Don Verna

[Tom W.]

The only ones I've bought, other than some Speer bullets for a .38 a loooong time ago were some that I bought when I got my .45 Blackhawk. I don't remember the brand, but they were awful.

[Kraschenbirn]

Haven't shot any 'store-bought' boolits in years but do have a couple thousand of the old Bull-X on the shelf. Also was gifted with some 'Lasercast' (Oregon Bullet Co.) not too long ago. Weighed a 10-boolit sampling of each with following result:

Bull-X .358 148 gr. DEWC (Magma mold): Min: 148.2 gr. Max: 149.1 gr. Avg: 148.6 gr.

Bull-X .452 225 gr. TC (Magma mold): Min: 224.5 gr Max: 226.7 gr. Avg: 225.4 gr.

LaserCast .358 158 gr. SWC (unknown mold): Min: 156.2 gr Max: 158.2 gr. Avg: 157.4 gr.

All samples were lubed and 'ready to load' and all fell under 1 1/2% variance...actually about the same as my own cast boolits.

Bill

[RoadBike]

Earlier this year, I weighed thirty 9mm 125gr LSWC from Missouri Bullet.

High = 129.5
Low = 127.8
Average = 128.6
Standard Deviation = 0.53
Coefficient of Variation = 0.41%

[Kraschenbirn]

I suspect that much of the variance in today's commercial boolits may be due to a lack of consistency in their alloys. Back in the '90s when Bull-X was the second-largest (by volume) manufacturer of commercial cast boolits in the U.S. all they used was 'virgin' 6/2/92 alloy, purchased direct from the foundry in 10-ton lots. After the company was sold and, after a few more years, run into bankruptcy by the new management, much of their equipment wound up in the hands of another, much smaller, commercial boolit operation which is owned, in part, by the operator of a public shooting range. Yep, you guessed it...their alloy contains whatever scrap is recovered from the bullet traps.

Now, I'm not saying that every commercial caster is using whatever scrap he can lay his hands on but I've been told by the yard manager at the recycler I've dealt with for several years that they're selling WWs and roofer's lead to, at least, two small (part-timer?) commercial casters.

Bill

[Mike W1]

Appreciate the replies as it gives me a sort of target to shoot for and apparently I'm doing at least as well if not better than commercial.

[LenH]

I have a stash of Viliant .452 160 gr. SWC, I have checked them before and they ran in the neighborhood of 163.4 to 164.2, these were from Magma molds.

The reason I checked these I bought a H & G mold S242, the same 160 as the Magma mold. I noticed that these were supposed to be the same profile
but the H & G was a bit taller that the Magma clone. The H&G is an 8 cavity mold and with my alloy they ran 164 to 165. The old catalogue said to use Lino
but with Hardball they ran a bit heaver.