BruceB Softnose casting with pics (.41 mag)

[7br]

Here are some pics to illustrate the bruce b. softnose casting method

First pic is the reson for the bruce b method. We don't want a bad weld between the softlead and the hard lead.

First, (Pic 2)cast a bunch of donor bullets in pure lead. I cast the 22-55 rcbs and a 7mm LBT bullets in pure lead. The LBT bullets cast at 135gr and the rcbs at 57 gr. The wadcutters came in at 38 grains.

Second, (pic 3)melt the donor bullet bullet into the nose of the mould and cool. By cooling the nose, the lead should not comingle.

Third, (pic 5,6) Pour wheel weight on top of the nose. At this point, you may or may not have a good weld between the two alloys. Place the mould back into the ww melt until sprue softens. Recool.

The last picture is why you need to use virgin bullets. The lube off of the wadcutter melted and really screwed up my mould. I still have not gotten it entirely clean and am have trouble casting with it.

Thanks to jjamna for donating some .32 cal round balls and bullets. I wound up accidently melting them down trying to melt the lube off of them.

[7br]

Here are the results.

Testing medium was phone books soaked in water for about a week. One batch of 4 books were not completely submerged while another set was. The completely submerged books were noticably more mushy. I fired three of each bullet into the phone books at 25 yards. Oddly enough, I lost one bullet in each test by hitting too close to an edge of the books. The firearm is a Dan Wesson .41 magnum with an 8 inch barrel. Load was 19.8grains of ww296, Federal Large Pistol Match primers in starline cases

I tested three bullets. One had 115 gr of softlead in the nose, one had 135gr of soft lead in the nose and the last bullet was pure lead. I am not convinced that I did not loose some of the soft lead when I remelted the bullets.

An unfired bullet length is .725 in. The 114gr bullet shortened to .705 and the bullet with 135gr shortened to .712. The pure lead bullet shortened to .594. Weight of the pure lead bullet without gas check was 241 grains. The two alloy bullets came in at about 235grains.

Both of the two alloy bullets were fired into the less mushy phone books and tumbled. The pure lead bullet was fired into the more mushy books and did not tumble. In all cases, weight retention was above 95 percent. The pure lead bullet had a larger entrance hole and left a 4inch ring of paper that swelled out of the face of the book about a quarter of an inch. No leading with any of the loads. I did not test accuracy as it was very cold, but it did seem like the bullets were hitting where I was aiming. Penetration for the two alloy bullets was 18 inches and the lead bullet was 14 inches.

MY conclusion: For pistol bullets at moderate velocities (1250fps or so) Pure lead is probably better than the two alloy bullet for deer sized game. I am not sure about larger game or for rifles at higher velocity

Problems with the test: This is a very small sample and I don't think I really controlled the medium very well. I should have tracked the weights of the two alloy bullets better and am not convinced that I didn't loose some of the pure lead through the vent lines.

[7br]

Here are the result pics

[longbow]

I have used a different method to get to the same end product by pouring pure lead or at least soft alloy in the nose with a small dipper (sized for the volume of soft lead I want), wait a few seconds then pour in hard alloy on top.

I have found it to be quick and easy and gives good joints.

The soft nose boolits do seem to perform well as you have shown. By varying the amount of soft lead in the nose the amount of expansion can be controlled.

I have only used this method for large caliber boolits though so may just give it a try next time I cast some 314299's for my .303.

Longbow

[GLynn41]

I have made them for years -- but have not had one tumble and even killed a few deer with them/ I have enjoyed and learned from all this thanks-- a small cup point or hp does help with the expansion

[7br]

A bit of clarification. All entry holes were round, bullets started to tumble once they entered the phone books.

[jhalcott]

Why would they tumble? What was the estimated velocity of these bullets(boolits)? I've made softpoints Bruce and Longbows way. They work very well in the 45-70, but the smaller .30 and below, are often a pain. You are dealing with such a small amount of lead, it's hard to keep it liquid till it gets to the bottom of the mold. The great thing is you do not need many for a deer season! I tkink half or a third of the nose area made from pure lead is about right. Once you go beyond a certain point , the lead nose becomes heavier than the rest of the projectile.

[Three44s]

A thought:

I was looking at your pics and to me .... it seems that you should try LESS soft lead in the nose.

I am basing that on an article I read by Ross Seyfried.

Great work ..... great pictures ...... keep us informed .......

Three 44s

[NSP64]

I have cast a few boolits the BruceB way and I pour some soft lead out onto a piece of stainless, so it forms a line. Then I take a pair of dikes and cut it into small pieces. I then can weigh the pieces to get the same amount in each cavity. I then heat the mold up till they melt together(soft lead pieces). I then use a wet rag to cool mold down til it solidifies. Then cast ww metal on top, leave the sprue. then reheat to get the sprue to just start to liquify. then cool it down with the rag. now I knock off the sprue and waterdrop. I think you may have the metal blending in the molds. Do you have a hardness tester that you could check the noses with? when I cast mine I can see a line where the soft is a different color(you can't feel it,just see it)

[LeadThrower]

Great information, and nicely documented.
I'd sure love to see the same test with those boolits hollow pointed!
Now I've got the itch to soft-nose some of my heavy 358's.

[jhalcott]

I THINK the hollow point is unneccessary with this type of boolit. The soft lead WILL open quite fast as it is. A HP MIGHT just blow the nose off,especially at close range! Maybe I'm wrong, but it just SEEMS natural to assume some things.

[longbow]

Okay then I stand corrected.

I have use the 2 scoop/2 pot method to pour pure lead in the nose of a boolit mould then another to pour wheelweights but that was for 500 gr. .45 cal and it worked very well.

I just tried it with the 314299 .30 cal 200 gr. and it was a dismal failure! I was running lead, alloy and mould hot but still no go. I think a combination of surface tension and lack of molten metal mass in the smaller mould is the problem. Regardless, I got bad joints.

Looks like the better method is the BruceB method.

Longbow

[leftiye]

Get a mold heater, heat the mold too! It is possible by this method to melt lead in the mold. Not that you want to.

[jhalcott]

Lefti, THAT is exactly what Bruce does! He drops a "donor" bullet in the mold and melts it. Then cools it , pours in his base alloy and lets that cool. THEN he melts the whole bullet IN THE MOLD! This does work but you MUST be carefull to keep the mold level. MY first thoughts on Bruce's method was the melting would cause the alloys to mix. IF the mold is kept level it doesn't mix.

[PatMarlin]

Where is Bruce these days? Haven't heard from him.

[9.3X62AL]

Bruce, NV Curmudgeon, and Neal B just got back from an Alberta hunt. My guess would be that Bruce had to pull a series of shifts right after returning.

[BruceB]

Yeppers, Al is right. I yam here at work, but fortunately WITH Internet access.

I posted some stuff about our hunt on the Humor and Off-topic Forum, as well as expressing my (usual) EXTENSIVE opinion about getting started in casting on the Reloading Tools forum.

If you look at my pictures on photobucket via the H & O-T forum, be aware that some of the photos have comments below them, but you have to scroll down just a tad to read them.

The softpoint discussion here is very interesting, as always. jhalcott has distilled the process I use very neatly in his latest post. For MY purposes, it yields bullets that are amply consistent and which can be used interchangeably with bullets of the same design but NOT softpointed. Just a very few softpoints will supply hunting needs for years, since practice and zeroing can be done with non-softpoints. I originally intended to take my .416 Rigby to Alberta again this year with cast softpoints, but various circumstances led me to go with just my .338 Savage.

I do believe that bullet shape is mostly irrelevant when a pure-lead softpoint is used. Also, my taste runs to over-.30 caliber as a STARTING point for cast-bullet hunting....which is why I like to think of myself as regressing to the ballistics of about 1890-1900 or thereabouts, with heavy-for-caliber bullets and speeds not much over 2000 fps, if that much. It also gives me an excuse to maintain and mess with a few rifles in the over-.40 range!

Some experimentation in the proportions of pure lead to the harder alloy might be necessary. I've had some concerns about nose slumping in long, small-diameter bullets, and think I'd go down to maybe 20% pure lead in a long .30 or .338 bullet. All I want is SOME expansion, and doubling the diameter on impact should be possible with a 20%-pure-lead softpoint bullet. My .416 bullets have about 1/3 pure lead by weight, and they work fine at over 2000 fps...but that's a much "stiffer" bullet than a 200-grain .30 design.

It's nice to be back. 2008 has been about the worst year of my life, and I'll be heartily glad to see the end of it. I have a stack of cast-boolit projects which have accumulated, and I hope to start working on some of them right quickly. I even dug my M1A out of a dark corner today, and (as usual) was smitten with the feel and "presence" of the rifle. Time to get to work!

[BruceB]

So there we were, a few days ago, sitting around the Hoist Control-room and BS'ing about guns/hunting/shooting/handloading (the place is a HOTBED of shooters and hunters!).

We got to yakking about cast softpoints, and my lead hand asked, "Why not use split shot for the nose portion?"

DUH! Why not, indeed? Why didn't *I* think of that? On my first day off, I hied meself to the local got-it-ALL store (they really do, too) and bought three sizes of split shot. This stuff is essentially pure lead, at least as soft as what I've been using for pure lead, anyway. Be aware that there are some politically-correct non-lead sinkers out there, but they should be clearly identifiable.

I test-weighed a few shot of each size, and found that they are very consistent....within a tenth or two-tenths of a grain. The three sizes I test-weighed yielded averages of around 6 grains, 14 grains, and 29 grains. Obviously it's a simple matter of doing the arithmetic and counting out the required number of sinkers for any given application.

This method will greatly ease the production of cast softpoints, particularly in smaller diameters where donor bullets are more difficult to find.

[NSP64]

We got to yakking about cast softpoints, and my lead hand asked, "Why not use split shot for the nose portion?"



I see where this might be easier than my way of pouring melted pure lead in a ribbon on a steel plate, then cutting and weighing it[smilie=1:

[MT Gianni]

I was using 32 cal RB weighing in at 60 grains. Sinkers should work for the smaller than 30 calibers. Gianni

[44man]

My question is why soften any FN boolit from .41 to .475? They do a wonderful job just being hard.
Now smaller calibers and faster then about 1400 fps will NEED to expand. The flat nose QUITS WORKING if shot too fast even with a large caliber but if held between 1000 and 1400 fps, there is nothing better without a penetration loss.
Go over 1400 fps and the nose needs to upset to slow the boolit in the game. Smaller calibers need to expand to increase the wound channel.
By shooting a pile of deer I found there is no "one does all" boolit. I will not soften those calibers that don't need it because penetration suffers and meat damage goes up.

[9.3X62AL]

My donor boolits for the 270 grain 9.3mm boolit were the Lyman #313249 or #257312, which both give 89 grain unalloyed lead slugs. Lyman #358477 gave a 155 grain lead slug for the Lee 405 grainer in 45-70.

Bruce--a 6 grain split shot? I'd hate to try casting those, gotta be swaged. They must be used for sinking nymphs on the end of a leader. Fly-casting any significant amount of lead is a fine way to snap off a fly for an inexperienced angler. You need not ask how I know this. :)

[leftiye]

Bruce, et. al.,
How does pure lead behave at 2000 fps.? From past info, I'd guess that that would almost shatter (fly apart, not to suggest it isn't maleable) pure lead? Some posters here think that 50/50 WW?pure expands fine at those velocities. Even when heat treated.

[jhalcott]

I have shot the 358318(~250 gr) and a few other calibers that I soft nosed. I also shot the same bullet flat nosed by cuttting off the nose. Comparing them to a "normal cast bullet from the same mold/alloy. The soft nose does expand nicely when shot into water jugs and wet phone books. The FN's tend to give larger exit holes and wound channels. The RN's just plowed thru with little disruption of the jugs OR the bales of phone books! Exit holes at 50 yards were ,RN= about 1/2 to 3/4" . The softnoses = 1 1/2 to 2" ,the FN's = 2 to 2 1/2". Velocity was about 2000 fps in a custom 35 Whelen.

[Old Ironsights]

I've been wondering about dropping a .25 RB into my .358 (70%meplat) mould then pouring WW on top....

Might be interesting....

[jhalcott]

Iron sights, it MIGHT be worth a try. I tried dropping ball bearing balls into a few different molds . I was looking for the "Bronze point" effect. It didn't work as the stainless (or what ever) metal would NOT stay in the point center of the cavity! I made a LOT of scrap trying to get there though. I was thinking the hard bearing would start the expansion of a Lyman #2 alloy. I then used a thin aluminum foil strip pulled tight between the mold halves about 1/3 to 1/2 the length of the bullet for this. It worked in the 45-70 and 35 reminton. It seemed the smaller calibers would spin to fast and accuracy was NEVER found!

[7br]

I've been wondering about dropping a .25 RB into my .358 (70%meplat) mould then pouring WW on top....

Might be interesting....

I seem to recall someone saying that commercial roundballs are coated in graphite. Might not get the results you are looking for. I still haven't got my .41 mould clean from the wadcutters I tried. I had boiled them for 5 minutes before I tried casting with them.

[41mag]

I have yet to get completely set up for casting, but AM getting stuff acquired to do so. This topic has been an interest of mine for several years.

We hunt feral hogs pretty much year round. So far I have used Oregon Trail as well as Cast Performance bullets, they both do an excellent job. However, as was the case two weeks ago, they shot from stem to stern, but didn't stop or drop the hog like we would have hoped. This has been an issue on several we have taken using the hard cast bullets. Shot placement has been good and we have never had an issue with under penetration. These things are just built like small tanks and can soak up a considerable amount of impact and keep on trucking. This has been the main reason we have primiarily stuck with the heavy for caliber JHP's.

However with the added benefit of a softer nose I feel that the bullets would also inherently add considerable force upon impact which would take these tough critters down quicker. To my way of thinking this would be the best of both worlds comparable to the heavy JHP or Partitions.

I love the idea of using the split shot as one of the close tackle dealers has them in just about every size one could hope for. I will surely be looking into this coming week. They also sell molds for them as well so that would be an added benifit as well for me. It would serve both causes.

Thanks for all the time spent on this and for sure keep working on the best of the best. I will hopefully be getting something to size here in the not so distant future and then will be asking tons of questions.

Thanks

[robertbank]

I have made the soft nose bullets for pistol in the past. Expasnion was not particularly good but I had no problems casting them. I used a cut down 9MM case (took a few attempts to get the size right), made a handle out of bailing wire and just dipped the pure lead into a very hot mold. I then quickly, using my RCBS Pro Melter poured the shank if you will with WW alloy. Welds were very good though it took more than a few tries to get the bullets looking good with an even weld. The hottter the mold the better is one thing I discovered.

I may try some rifle bullets this spring using the above method. I think at higher velocities expansion will be more sucessful.

Take Care

Bob