40 - 1 in the 44 on deer

[Johnch]

Well actualy 41 - 1 , 20 lb of pure lead and 1 lb of 50/50 bar solder was my starting alloy mix.

I wanted a soft bullet to use to get it to expand ( also I was having accurey problems with hard cast ) out of my 7 1/2" Redhawlk .

I read in a magazine where they first lubed pure lead bullets with Lee liquid alox .
When dry they wraped teflon plumbers tape around the bullet ( I used 5 wraps)
Then size and relube with liquid alox .
They claimed no leading , lower pressures and great accurey .

I got out a Lee 310 gr RF gas check 44 cal mold I had and casted some .

I figured I would try a few ,if it didn't work I would try something else .

I did 12 and loaded them with 20.8 gr of WW296 and a Fed mag large pistol primer .
The bullet has 2 crimp groves and I loaded them using the back grove .(longer)

I later ran some acrost the Cronny and got 1345 fps

I shot 6 at 40 yds and got a 3" group with no leading , with 1 called flyer
I tryed the other 6 and got a group right about 2"

That is about my limmit in group size with iron sights . :groner:

As I got ready for season I shot close to 90 rnds thru the pistol without cleaning with just a slight bit of gray on the edges of the lands at the muzzel.

I used the 90 rnds to sight in a Millit 30 mm red dot sight and shoot a few more groups .
I was able to keep a 2" or slightly less 6 group at 50 yds with the red dot

This lubing is a pain .
But I didn't need many for hunting .
I took 6 in the gun and 12 in the ammo wallet (in case the deer atacked me I guess) , came back with 2 emptys and 2 deer.

My hardness tester has not arived yeat , but the bullets should be BH of 8 or slghtly less

Johnch

[44man]

Johnch, go to wheelguns and handcannons and see the pictures of my deer shot with a hard cast. I can only imagine the damage on your deer.

[BOOM BOOM]

HI,
I have had good success with air cooled WW on 3 deer. One shot each. Out of my 44 pistol.
Also 3 other deer with same 250 gr bullet out of a 444 marlin. So I don't think you need to have any special alloys to hunt with a cal. as large as the 44.

[Johnch]

44 man the one that the bullet exited thru the shoulder blade I lost a few pounds of front quarter meat but not as much as I would have thought .

The other I lost only some rib meat .

The reason I went with the soft bullet is .
I have problems geting even air cooled WW to shoot accurately .
The cylenders are ok to slightly tight but the throat to the barrel IMO is oversized .
The Redhawlk will shoot either soft bullets or jacketed just fine , but harder bullets it is a crap shoot weather I will get good accurey with bullets that fit into the chambers .

I am having a Lee sizer opened to .432 to try .

Johnch

[Buckshot]

.........You are in effect patching your slugs with the Teflon tape. You do NOT need to lube the boolits at all, neither before applying the tape nor afterwards. The tape is pleanty of lube in itself. If you were using paper to wrap the slug in then I would recommend a lube like Lee TL.

If you feel the Teflon needs lubing (Teflon itself is an anti-friction material) then I would suggest you spray the wrapped boolits with a moly or graphite mix. You may find your accuracy improves. Lubing the pre-patched slugs serves no purpose I can concieve of.

Another test you might try is to take 10 boolits and roll each one lightly between two files before wrapping with the Teflon. This will in effect give the lead surface a bit of 'tooth' plus increase the diameter a half thou or so. The 10 rounds loaded and fired over a known load will tell the tale.

..................Buckshot

[Johnch]

Thanks Buckshot for the things to try .
I plan on trying a bunch of things after season .

I just followed the directions as listed to the best of my sliping memory.

I bet if I teflon tape the bullets and then use Lee Alox only to hold the tape on it will work .
I tryed just taping a bullet , after a less than a week it seemed to be starting to come loose.
I could also try taping and loading the same day [smilie=b: ,but I like to have bullets ready to load as I feel like it .
And if I load them all I can't play with loads .

I also plan on trying to cast pure lead bullets for a few tests .

I also am going to try a 240 - 250 gr bullet if I can find a mold I like .

Johnch

[Bret4207]

I tried the tef-tape idea years ago after reading about it in Handloader. I used the tape on a Loverin desin 7mm mould that cast undersize for my '95 Mauser. I applied the tape to the dry boolit and streched the tape as tight as I could without tearing. Then I rolled it between my fingers to seat the end into the under layer of tape as best I could. My diameter increased by around .003+ which was what I needed. They shot OK, around 2" at 50 yards, which was fine by me for those mini-shilouettes we we supposed to shoot at. The shoot never got off the ground so no prizes to talk about. I still have a few rounds and the tape is showing no signs of loosening. I would think the Lee Frog Snot may have some solvents in it that would affect the tape. I'd try them without any lube other than the tef-tape as Buck says. If the tape extends way up the boolit, as in a heavy rifle design, I could see some tape getting loose, but with that design in a 44 I wouldn't think the tape would be showing much. Sounds like a little moreexperimenting is called for. Also, have you considered having the throats opened a bit?

[44man]

Johnch, I can understand about your Redhawk. And just maybe the softer lead won't do much more damage to a deer. I have killed many deer with pure lead balls in my muzzle loaders without mashing anything. The only one that was bad was the one I hit in the shoulder and spine with my .54. Looked like I used a .300 mag on her.
The whole idea is to kill the deer cleanly, we can deal with the mess when butchering. I just posted this because of all the posts where a lot of fellows think they need expanding boolits in the big bores. Not so, but it doesn't hurt either. I thought it was interesting how much damage the hard boolit actually did.
I also had trouble with several Redhawks years ago when we were shooting silhouette. We could not get 296 to shoot at all. I switched all the loads to H110 and we shot fantastic groups. Now don't ask why because I don't know! It's the same powder, but just a tad different on the burning curve. We also found that magnum primers tripled the group size with both powders in the .44. The primer was blowing the boolits out before the powder burned even with very tight boolit pull and crimp. The way we discovered this was that as boolit weight was increased, the groups tightened but never equaled the groups from the Fed 150 primers. I have not found a need for magnum primers until I get to the .475 where they work great. Maybe this is due to the heavy boolits.
So, while you are working loads, try H110 and the standard primer and get back to us with your results.
We also tried softer alloys with the magnum primer and they seemed to come out of the case easier then a harder boolit making groups larger. I have to question what putting teflon between the boolit and brass does to boolit pull, especially with too hot of a primer.

[felix]

44man, you said a good point about that teflon "lube". Far too slick for the application on hand. ... felix

[Nrut]

44man....lots of good info in your #8 post!...esp. about the primers as every loading manual says to use mag. primers with H-110 and 296....mic

[Johnch]

I will try going to a Standard primer .
I have always used Mag primers with 296 and H110 with jacketed bullets
So I never even gave it a thought when I started loading .

This all started because I wanted to shoot something different for the deer season .

I have a list of 12 -14 different thing I want to try over the winter .
I just got my 3 deer and last for the season with my 44 .
A ear shot at 10'
My gun season ends today , and I am out of tags .

Now I am going to finish welding my bullet trap so I can recover all the 310 gr bullets I will try .
I hate throwing that much 40-1 away when I can recover it and recast more.

Johnch

[Nrut]

johnch..... your bullet trap sounds interesting..hope you post pictures of it....mic

[44man]

Good luck with the boolit trap. I made a heavy steel trap and angled it around 45 degrees. I have yet to find a boolit and the shrapnel is so small I can't salvage it. Cuts a tremendous furrow in the ground that I could plant taters in. Oh well, makes shooting safer anyway!

[buck1]

Thanks Buckshot for the things to try .
I plan on trying a bunch of things after season .

I just followed the directions as listed to the best of my sliping memory.

I bet if I teflon tape the bullets and then use Lee Alox only to hold the tape on it will work .
I tryed just taping a bullet , after a less than a week it seemed to be starting to come loose.
I could also try taping and loading the same day [smilie=b: ,but I like to have bullets ready to load as I feel like it .
And if I load them all I can't play with loads .

I also plan on trying to cast pure lead bullets for a few tests .

I also am going to try a 240 - 250 gr bullet if I can find a mold I like .

Johnch


Did you use a taperd or roll crimp?? ...Buck

[Johnch]

I put a FIRM crimp on with a Lee factory crimp die .
It is a roll crimp
Johnch

[kenjuudo]

Good luck with the boolit trap. I made a heavy steel trap and angled it around 45 degrees. I have yet to find a boolit and the shrapnel is so small I can't salvage it. Cuts a tremendous furrow in the ground that I could plant taters in. Oh well, makes shooting safer anyway!


44man, stuff that sucker with layers of tire sidewalls (the wire in the tread portion is a hassel). I have over 3k rounds in mine and haven't had to replace it yet. Bullets come out mostly in one piece.

jim

[44man]

Good idea about the tires, thank you.

[scrapcan]

johnch,

I just got a batch of old magazines from an uncle and was suprised to find an article in one about using paper patch bullets in 44mag and 45 long colt. They were using commercial paper jacketed bullets. I have shot quite a few paper patched heavy 357 slugs out of a 38-55 win 94 and it was quite a surprise as to my results. Actually shot pretty well. Many will ask why did you do that, My comment is to keep my brain from becoming mush. We all need to continue to learn and why not learn something new about shooting.

You might want to try a conventional paperpatch if you can find an undersize mould.

I will try to remember to post the magazine/title of article/author for the paper patch in revolvers. I think it was Guns magazine form 1977. Man is there ever a difference in the magazine articles then and now. I hate the crap we get now after reading those old slicks.

[scrapcan]

The article was in GUNS Magazine, November 1988, pages 48-49,99-100. Written by Raymond Page. Sorry it took me so long to get the reference.

Discusses the use and loading of PP lead bullets in Hanguns, contenders, and carbines. Not a bad article and gives some load data.