Too hard for 45/70?

[HangFireW8]

Having survived the holidays, I set to work on several of my Lyman 457-124 non-GC mystery-alloy water quenched bullets with my shiny new Lee lead hardness tester. (See:
http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?t=41748
)

It turns out the hardness is... about 20BHN!

Is this too hard for a Microgroove 45/70? They came out about .4582, should I size them to .458, .457? Load them unsized? Or should I melt them down with some pure lead and recast to bring the BHN down?

-HF

[405]

Don't know how many you've already cast up at BHN 20 but I'd sure givem a try in the micro groove. Also, if you haven't done it yet would be a good idea to slug your bore and get a groove diameter. Then try sizing to groove diameter or even .001+" over groove diameter. One thing about it though... micro groove barrels.... either love em or hate em type things. Veral Smith thought the micro groove bore is the logical conclusion to trends in design of rifling that "SHOULD" be the best for cast bullets and his suggestion was use as large a bullet as would allow for safe chambering and bullet release.

I've had excellent results shooting Jbullets out of micro grooves for years. That leads me to believe that just maybe they like harder bullets better???? No expert here for sure. Lately, I've played with a Marlin 94 in 357 that is micro grooved. It has been a challenge. It does like Jbullets and full diameter, harder cast bullets. For what ever reason also it seems to like the slightly slower cast bullet powders better than the normal fast powders like Bullseye or even Unique. The big 45 cal may be a whole different ball game tho?