Has it ever been to soft?

[hithard]

Ha Ha... Okay now, I keep cutting the WW with pure, and at this point I'm almost ready to just try pure, as I have yet to get leading, staying below 900fps.

Question being how many of you have really gotten leading from your stuff being to soft? I do know I get alot of it when things are to hard....

Sorry, just had to poke a little fun.

[JeffinNZ]

I can push 7.8 BHN bullets at 1200fps in my .380 Rook over black powder.

More a factor of pressure than velocity. Providing you stay within the tensile strength capacity of the material and your bullet fits properly you will not get leading.

[missionary5155]

Good morning Hithard & Welcome !
Your doing Good ! It is just interesting how FAST you can push Soft lead. My 44.40 Winny will launch near pure with 10 grains Unique (18" barrel) and NO leading. Here I do not have a Crony to get real FPS but I would guess this load is doing about 1300 fps. But if I was to change that powder to lets say W231 then I probably would have to go a harder mix just to maintain 1200 fps because 231 gets to higher pressure MUCH faster. So you would NEED a harder, firmer base to support the pressure.
Then a good lube and sufficient amount will keep the boolit side walls from rubbing off onto the barrel. The hardest lead you can cast will still fail without lube.
Personally I start out soft and mix harder if needed. I want expansion in target. Energy transfer and penetration must be balanced as I also want an exit hole so things leak out for hunting.
For "repel boarder" loads... softest possible... I am not interested in exit wounds.. I am not worried about much leading as I do not think I will need more than 5 shots( unless it is a mob with torches and pitchforks)..
You can get to soft for revolvers so you have to be somewhat sensitive to the pressure fact.
In the search mode you can find a Pressure - Lead Hardness table that is a good guideline about how much pressure a certain hardness can sport. That "Hardness" can be reached by various mixes. But the table can help you to understand the relation to Pressure and boolit hardness. There are other factors ( boolit base height... boolit shape... diameter...)
But it sure is enjoyable... being free to tailor make a load that does exactly what you need done.
God Bless you

[Southern Son]

I am using 50/50 WW/Pure in my 310 cadet, boolit is getting along at 1220fps and there is no leading in the barrel. Don't shoot worth a damn, but I think that could be the nut behind the bolt.

[Lloyd Smale]

it depends on the barrel and the use. Put soft slugs in a 1911 and start dumping clips as fast as you can and it WILL lead. take your time and shoot slowly and dont get the gun to hot and you can get away with it with a decent barrel. Ive shot pure at 900 without leading like that. Biggest downfall to it is accuracy. I allways get better accuracy with a properly fitted harder bullet in handguns at any velcocity. It is also not really nessisary as if you have pure lead someone would gladly swap you 1 for 1 for ww and thats a much better alloy for any handgun or rifle. If your looking for self defense ammo that will expand a ww cast hp is a much better bullet then a pure lead bullet anyway. You will get expansion and better penetration that way. If your talking expansion for deer hunting my favorite way to go for that is to cast a hard bullet with a soft nose. There a pain to make but you can practice with plain hardcast and switch to a few soft nosed bullets for hunting with very little if any change in poa. Actually a soft nosed cast might be the ideal self defense bullet too. It would take away the lawyers argument that you are casting hp bullets to kill someone. I doubt if theyd check a bullet that closely to see that it was cast out of two different alloys.

[Willbird]

I shot some pure lead swc from a 1911 over 4.0 of bullseye, I recovered the bullets and the land marks on the bullet were 25% wider than on a linotype bullet. Accuracy was 5-6 times worse than a lino bullet. Lino is not needed for sure, but pure lead is too soft to use with bullseye in 45 acp.

Bill

[Boerrancher]

I am going to give a +1 to the pressure crowd. I shoot a 50/50 of pure and WW to 2500 fps out of my 30-06 with a gas check and a good lube. I also shoot the slowest burning powers I can make work for the velocities that I want. I have no doubt that pure will start to lead with 4 gr of bullseye in a 45 ACP. Change the powder to Unique, and the accuracy will improve and there will be no leading. By using bullseye you are exceeding the boolits tinsel strength the second the powder starts burning, because the pressure spikes right after ignition oft times before the boolit has engaged the rifling.

Best wishes from the Boer Ranch,

Joe

[Throwback]

So the answer, as with all cast bullets is "it depends".

[44man]

Yep, not a thing to add. The answers are so good and easy to understand.
I think these were the best postings so far on hardness.

[Gunslinger]

So does that mean: the slower the powder the less it will lead? If all other factors are taken out of the equation?

[hithard]

thats the way I take it. Good thing most all my powder is unique! of course I do have the blue and green dots too.

The pressure spike, tensile strength, thing really helps me make sense of it all.

Thanks All.

[Wills Point Pete]

I'll try to explain this business of powder burning rate and bullet hardness for you, Gunslinger. Now this assumes that all things but powder are equal and, of course, they never are.

The slower the powder, the gentler the pressure curve. Therefore the bullet does not accelerate so violently. This gives the bullet a chance to start turning with the rifling instead of skidding. Also, since the bullet is moving the pressure doesn't rise as much, we get the same velocity out of lower total pressure. After all, if we get peak pressure after the bullet moves two inches down the bore instead of one inch, there is twice as much volume.

Now this does not mean I can use one of the 4350s instead of Unique in my .45. I don't think there is room enough for enough of it for one thing, for another, the slower rifle powders must have higher pressure and temperature to burn right.

But I can run a slightly softer alloy with Blue Dot than Unique and softer still with Blue Dot than with Bullseye. But then I can also run softer alloy in a .45 Colt than a .45 acp, due to the different rifling. And my Model '92 clone can use a softer alloy than my older Marlin 1894C with the microgroove barrel. And these differences have nothing to do with powder.

This is why my wife likes me casting bullets, it keeps me from going out and making a fool of myself with the girls.

[Gunslinger]

Wills point Pete, thank you, that makes sense. I ask because my casting buddy is old school and swears to the recipe 3-1 ww-lino, even for .38 special and 9mm. According to this forum that much hardness is not neccessary at all, which is what I've been trying to tell him (yeah we are real low on lino). I'm going to start experimenting on 50/50 ww/pure (or range lead) pretty soon, and just wanted to know if the powder choice makes any difference, I now know that it does :-D

What I don't really get is the stuff on riflings and microgroove barrels... I guess I'll figure it out eventually :roll:

[Lloyd Smale]

powder choise makes a big differnce and even switch primers can effect leading. I will still stand behind my thoughts on hardness though. If you have a good barrel and all the rest of your gun is in spec. ie chambers throat alignment ect. you will about allways see a gain in accuacy with harder alloys at even slow velocitys. Soft bullets can sometimes make up for a bad gun but its just a bandaid. If you want accuracy first chore is getting your gun right.

[Bret4207]

So the answer, as with all cast bullets is "it depends".

It's even more than that. "It depends" needs to be added to "Each gun is a law unto itself". What works in my gun might not work in yours and what works in yours might work in one of my guns, but not any of the others.

Neat the way Murphy plays with stuff, ain't it?:mrgreen:

[Bret4207]

So does that mean: the slower the powder the less it will lead? If all other factors are taken out of the equation?

Depends on the gun. In one gun that might work fine, it's a general rule. But if you change to a slower powder you might find leading further down the barrel. Ya never know till ya try. And if you have good fit to start with you can go places mediocre fit will never begin to go with any alloy you use. Then go from a so-so lube to a really good one, or alter your neck tension and you might be able to go to new places, or not.

This cast stuff...she's not so black and white, eh?

[Gunslinger]

I think I need some more testing. But that equals more fun, so that's welcome. I'll start taking notes I think. I already know the first thing to test. A funny story goes with it.

I've shot a little shy of 3000 of the Lee TC 124gr .358 in both my Tanfoglio Limited Custom and my 686. Never slugged any of them, the guy I cast with has always just sized to .357 and shot. Homemade lube. Alloy has never been super consistent. But always heavier on the hard side. The guy uses enough lino till he know the alloy is hard enough. COL of the 9mm is 1.080 travelling at 1280fps and the .38 special at 919fps. Never had leading. Always cleaned both guns after 1 or 2 shootings... with a brass brush, CLP break free and cotton cloths at the end... barrels have always looked like mirrors... until the other day. I cleaned my Tanfoglio and for the first time saw small lead chips. Half of the 3000 is from the same batch:roll:.

Why is this happening? We changed nothing! The only thing I could think of is that I the last time I may have shot a little faster, but I think not more than usual. Funny thing is, the day it had leaded was at a shooting get-together where people had admired the boolits and I had said that I shoot several hundreds through it each time and never have any problems Which was TRUE, untill that day.
Maybe I jinxed it :confused:

[Gunslinger]

Hmmmm on second thought I actually used Magtech primers for these loads. Nothing fancy just small pistol?!

[Bret4207]

Changed the pressure curve with a different primer? Yeah, that could do it.

[Tom Herman]

Ha Ha... Okay now, I keep cutting the WW with pure, and at this point I'm almost ready to just try pure, as I have yet to get leading, staying below 900fps.

Question being how many of you have really gotten leading from your stuff being to soft? I do know I get alot of it when things are to hard....

Sorry, just had to poke a little fun.

I ran an experiment to see if I could cut the amount of wheel weights in my alloy from 50/50 lead to wheel weights to 2:1 lead to wheel weights in my .45 LC Ruger Redhawk at 850 FPS: I had hellacious leading!
I quickly scrapped that idea, and converted the remainder of that batch to 50/50.
So much for trying to go softer... YMMV.

Happy Shootin'! -Tom

[Gunslinger]

Changed the pressure curve with a different primer? Yeah, that could do it.

I kinda thought I'd take more to end up with leading. You think backing off the load by 0.5gr would help?