Suggestions needed for a HP CB for 44 mag

[bwelch]

Can someone suggest a good Cast Boolit maker that pours Hollow Point 44 mag. I have a S&W 629 PC hunter I'm wanting to try some in. Preferably a Keith style HP 240-255 gr. I was looking the GT Bullet guys but have read a few old reviews online that were not good. Said they leaded barrels bad. I'm in South Louisiana.
Any recommendations?

[beagle]

You might post where you are. May be someone in the neighborhood that makes them./beagle

[daloper]

I have some that I have cast up. They are a little hard and I don't know how will they mushroom. They are PC and not lubed. How many are you looking for? If you are looking just to try some and you don't need a lot I can send you some. They are cast with the MP mold 432-256 PB with the Penta HP pins. If you are not in a hurry I will be casting up some-more with added pure lead to get the hardness down. If you wait I can send them unsized and not coated if you want. 219757 Send me a PM if these will fit the bill.

[Larry Gibson]

I've found Lyman's Devastator (429640HP) cast of 20-1 or 16-1 alloy to be excellent bar none...

[fredj338]

I have the Lyman 250gr Dev mold. I had eric @ HPMS make a cup point pin for it, had the gc removed & it casts about 270gr. Cast 20-1, I run it at 1250fps with good expansion & no leading. I need to make some up & PC them, I think they will run even better. If I were buying one today & had to have swc, then the NOE is a good choice.
http://noebulletmolds.com/NV/product_info.php?cPath=37_368&products_id=2820&osCsid=k29vr4lg1skjltlmh7gtddg3g7

[Gamsek]

Larry is right, those 432640 Devastator (MP Molds) deep HP made from pure+2%tin, 253grs at 750fps made this....https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20180503/e263155374d552f67ce68952cc7ad895.jpghttps://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20180503/db606ce45faddc5cd70d9cd2390f8fcd.jpg 6” of penetration.

I also have a MP copy of H&G#503 in solid version which is a dandy boolit and if you can get HP version (or even with interchangeable pins to cast HP and FP) you have a winner. Solid penetrates 18” in soft soaked paper. https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20180503/29ed794379fbda2b00f3bcbc6928c73a.jpg

[gwpercle]

Check out Bayou Bullets , they down the bayou in Reserve, Louisiana. Excellent reviews, they make whatever you need. Check out they site
www.bayoubullets.net/
Where Y'at in Louisiana...might be worth a road trip to go see dem boy's .
Reserve is on the East Bank of the river(Mississippi River ), West of Gramercy and just past Garyville .
Gary

[DukeInFlorida]

Matts Bullets in Arkansas: https://www.mattsbullets.com/

They will custom cast bullets for you. Matt is a great guy, and I occasionally do some testing for them.
Call Matt and tell him what you plan to load, and why, and he'll make some to your specification at a very reasonable price. Most of the other casters will just produce a wide variety of castings using Lyman #2 alloy, which might be fine. But Matt will adjust the alloy for you, size them to your bore needs, and even adjust the lube for better shooting.

Tell him DukeInFlorida sent you. That will just get you a good seat.

[Mal Paso]

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?354293-MIHEC-432640-Lyman-Devastator-RERUN

Hurry, the buy is closing.

Sorry you wanted a bullet, not a mold.

Ask Matt

[W.R.Buchanan]

I have some that I have cast up. They are a little hard and I don't know how will they mushroom. They are PC and not lubed. How many are you looking for? If you are looking just to try some and you don't need a lot I can send you some. They are cast with the MP mold 432-256 PB with the Penta HP pins. If you are not in a hurry I will be casting up some-more with added pure lead to get the hardness down. If you wait I can send them unsized and not coated if you want. 219757 Send me a PM if these will fit the bill.

Ditto on these and I have the Mihec mould as well that will make them with 3 different HP's or a solid. I also PC all of mine and have eliminated leading from my life completely. I do them in Red and Black.

Another common boolit I use for my .44 Rifle is Lyman 429244GC This is a SWC but with a smaller step on the boolit and a gas check. It runs perfectly in my Marlins with a chamfered chamber mouth.

I also use a Mihec mould for it which includes both the HP pins and solid functions.

I use strait up wheel weights or sometimes add some tin which makes them fill out better.

These moulds are as good as it gets and I seriously recommend them. I have several other .44 cal moulds but these two pretty much cover everything I do with my 3 .44 cal revolvers and Marlin 1894CB.

I really want a Ruger 77/44 Carbine and these boolits will be too long with Magnum cases for that magazine but will work just fine in .44 Special cases which can be loaded up to 90% of Magnum pressures easily and in a rifle the results are above .44 Magnums in Revolvers.

The Lyman 429640 suggested above will work in that rifle without issue

From a rifle they will take anything I could ever want to shoot in NA.

Randy

[W.R.Buchanan]

I got one ! thanks for the heads up Mal Paso!

Randy

[CJR]

Bwelch,

Just so you know. HP Keith style CB are fine for "soft targets" etc. However, Elmer Keith specifically designed the Keith/Lyman 429421 for "penetration", "bone-breaking", and creating "leak holes" in various critters. Elmer actually specified the amount of penetration for various animals. Expanding CB have reduced penetration. Likewise the cutting shoulder, on the Keith style SOLID CB, helps promote its superb penetration. Once the HP version of the Keith CB starts expanding over its cutting shoulder, the cutting shoulder is no longer acting to aid penetration. Likewise, depending how "hard" the target is, an expanding HP may not stay together or have enough remaining energy to break/penetrate bones or get a complete pass-through for "leak holes".

So when one thinks about an "energy dump type of kill", here are some things to think about. Years ago, football linemen were instrumented to determine the levels of "g's" they were experiencing from hits at the line. IIRC it was about 9-11 g's and play always continued for the next down.. Likewise here in PA, from time to time, we have cars hitting our large black bears. The largest black bear I know of was a 800 pounder in another hunting camp. I hear rumors of 1000 pounders, but can't verify that. However the score between " car/black bear encounters" remain; cars: 0 (completely totaled) , black bears:1 (after wandering off). So the "bottom-line" is: soft or hard targets determine which type of CB to use; i.e. HP or solid.

Best regards,

CJR

[KVO]

I've done a fair amount of testing with the Mihec #503 clone and Clear Ballistics gel. Note that this mold has relatively long, thin HP pins that terminate at the beginning of the SWC shoulder. I will have a 432-640 as Gamsek shows on the way soon, that particular mold has more steeply tapered HP pins. Cavity geometry makes a tremendous difference on the end result. All of the below were cast with Rotometals 20:1. All velocities chronographed from a 6" barreled S&W 629. As has been said by others, any appreciable amount of antimony will decrease the boolit's ability to hold together on impact. The faster they open up, the less they penetrate all else being equal. If deep penetration is desired, I would favor a small or cup point pin that allows the boolit to "plump up" gaining some diameter to the would channel but still reaches the vitals from less than ideal angles. If we push too large a cavity too fast it will turn into a grenade, so choose your cavity geometry based on the highest impact velocity you expect. As can be seen we have several different velocity windows with essentially equal size expanded boolits yielded from different cavity geometries. From my testing the penta will shed the nose of loaded much faster than 950 fps, or if higher antimony/low tin alloy is used. The penta loaded to about 1250fps cast from low tin range scrap will blow the nose off and leave ~185gr of wadcutter to keep trucking along... looks amazingly similar to a Lehigh Defense or G2 R.I.P. Apparently some folks will pay top dollar for what I consider a bullet failure (or a great varmint boolit). Different people, different ideas of what is best. I like full weight retention. I also don't want to be shot with any of them.

Note that the blocks are 16" long, and all rounds EXCEPT for the boolits on the black background were shot though two layers of cloth.

219854219855219856219857219859
#503 small HP, 18.0gr Alliant 2400 1220fps. 18-20" penetration. I have not yet tested the small HP at higher velocity, such as a full charge of H110.

219858219860219861219862219862219863
#503 large HP, 10.0gr Unique, 1072fps, 10-12" penetration (The penta in the last pic was loaded w/ 7.5gr of Unique @885 fps).

[W.R.Buchanan]

KVO: have you tested any of your boolits from a rifle? I would like to see the penetration of the 503 solids in the jello.

Your loads at 1250 ish FPS should be around 1600+ from the rifle.

My main .44 Rifle Boolit is the 429244 clone I would expect it to act exactly like the H&G 503 style solid.

This is why I got the Solid pins for my Devastator Mould coming. I see that boolit being a pass thru type of boolit from a rifle and I don't see it staying together as a big HP at those speeds. If it did stay together with say the small HP it would make a very big hole!

Randy

[Leadmelter]

NOE had some Keith style bullets in the 270 gr range with HP pins.
Rim Rock Bullets makes some HP bullets,
leadmelter
MI

[KVO]

Randy,

I don't currently have a .44 rifle, about the closest to that I can get is a 7.5" Super Blackhawk. I can load up a few nuclear loads for it with H110 and test out both the small pins and the solids. I can also drill a smallish cup point. My thought is that while still several hundred FPS slower out of the 7.5" pistol, shooting gel at <10 feet might be a closer approximation of your results with a rifle impacting at ~100yd factoring in the velocity lost at range. Still not the same of course. Assuming I chose a comparable BC, Strelok+ says we have approximately 140fps velocity loss from the muzzle to 100yd for this boolit (see attached chart).
219924

Leadmelter,

I have the 432-277 Keith mold from NOE, the HP are very different from the Mihec 503, much wider pins. They open very well for their respective velocity ranges, with the cup point pins doing well a modest magnum loads e.g. 20.0gr H110, 1170fps out of a 6" barrel. Cup point weighed in at 274gr cast from 20:1:
219925219926
This mold is easy to cast with, I hardly ever get a bad boolit from it. However, I've not had much luck getting accuracy to equal the Mihec #503 clone. Might be different from a rifle. Also note how much these boolits are obturating upon firing- the pic on of the fired recovered boolit on the right shows rifling lands and grooves in what used to be the lube groove. I have wondered if it would shoot better using a harder alloy, or using actual lube instead of or addition to powder coating just to support the boolit body during launch (I digress though, this is a topic for a different thread...)

[bwelch]

Thanks for the help guys.

I'm not too up to date on the poly coated bullets. What is this all about? Does it also eliminate the need for lubing? What about poly build up?

[KVO]

Results from the latest test batch. Test platform is a .44 Magnum 7.5" Ruger Super Blackhawk Hunter, unless otherwise noted. Test media is Clear Ballistics gel with x2 layers of cloth folded over the front of the blocks for each shot. All shots were chronographed, and the listed velocity is either the average for the load for that string, or the velocity of that exact projectile when fired. Unless specified, alloy is RotoMetals 20:1. Two primary loads were used, either 18.0gr of Alliant 2400 for a middle range .44 magnum load, or 23.0gr of H110. All projectiles were powder coated.

My goal is to compare and contrast relative expansion vs. penetration at different velocity levels. Given that velocity variations with ES, barrel length, and even between barrels of the same length exist, I am not listing load data for each test, only velocity.

The candidates:
221828
221829

[KVO]

221830
221831
221832
221833
221834
221835

[KVO]

221836
221837
221838

[KVO]

The same drill bit was used for this boolit as for the drilled #503, but the cavity was cut deeper, all the way to the full diameter of the meplat. The drill point was modified to a 90 degree included angle.

221839
221840
221841

[KVO]

In regards to the note above about swaging the HP cavity with a Torx bit (really more like skiving), here are some examples that better illustrate the idea.
While not a .44, these are the best pictures I have at the moment. This is the NOE clone of the Lyman 358-156 with the deep HP. Rounds on the right are as-cast. Same media, both shot from a snub S&W model 19 & 5.0gr of Unique. The as-cast HP for that mold will mostly stay together with warm magnum loads from a shorter barrel, and as seen doesn't expand much at typical .38 special velocities. The point being, small alterations in the cavity geometry can have a large change in the terminal effect. I have a small tupperware full of boolits that either hardly opened or blew the noses off due to poorly matched HP geometry vs velocity.

221842
221843
221844
221845
221846
221847

[KVO]

W.R. Buchanan,

I tried some of the #503s as solids, cast from 20:1 with a max load of H110. I placed several wadded up towels behind the gel blocks; I figured the boolits would decelerate enough to at least be caught a 'la catcher's mitt and pull the towels sailing down range. Quite evidently I was wrong. Two shots zipped straight through 32" of gel and poked a drill bit hole through all the towels on the back end. Barely even moved them. If they smooshed open any I guess I'll never know. Next time I'll put a sheet of card stock or poster board behind the setup so there's a measurable hole that is larger than caliber size.

[nagantguy]

KVO those are great looking boolits and this is very interesting testing and reporting you are doing thank you for sharing it with us! I will be doing some similar testing with various hollow points in 38, 357 and 347 max soon as I get the final group buy mold and have a day or so off work!! Again your testing and record keeping and photos are very informative and worth while!

[bwelch]

Results from the latest test batch. Test platform is a .44 Magnum 7.5" Ruger Super Blackhawk Hunter, unless otherwise noted. Test media is Clear Ballistics gel with x2 layers of cloth folded over the front of the blocks for each shot. All shots were chronographed, and the listed velocity is either the average for the load for that string, or the velocity of that exact projectile when fired. Unless specified, alloy is RotoMetals 20:1. Two primary loads were used, either 18.0gr of Alliant 2400 for a middle range .44 magnum load, or 23.0gr of H110. All projectiles were powder coated.

My goal is to compare and contrast relative expansion vs. penetration at different velocity levels. Given that velocity variations with ES, barrel length, and even between barrels of the same length exist, I am not listing load data for each test, only velocity.

The candidates:
221828
221829

Where can I get the Large HP like in the pic?

[KVO]

GT Bullets appears to catalog a large HP version of the #503, possibly the NOE version because the cavity looks a little larger than the Mihec large pins in mine:

http://www.gtbullets.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=8&products_id=49

Different alloy than my testing, but would be a good sample source before you buy a mold. Looks like he has many NOE and Mihec molds offerings.