Can you push too hard?

[Charlie Two Tracks]

There is another thread going on right now about what is soft med and hard alloys. Anyway, I was wondering what happens if you use too soft a boolit for your load. Does it blow apart or raise pressure too high or just lead the barrel? There is a lot of information on this site and for me, it is taking awhile to sort things out so I can figure out how to come up with good shooting cast boolits. I will keep reading and if you don't mind, keep posting.:coffeecom

[docone31]

When I do not need obturation, I like to go with harder alloys.
Minie's for example, I need at least "sweet" wheel weight alloy. As it turns out, I have access to roofers. I get lots of pure lead.
For myself, I have not found hard lead to be a detriment. I also do not hunt. I punch holes in paper. I blend zinc into my alloy to stretch it. My black powder rifles, though, I use pure.
Just seems to work.

[lwknight]

If the bullet is too soft and you shoot high end loads , you might skid the riflings.
Meaning that the barrel will try to spin the bullet and skid around the soft lead before the bullet gets up tp rpm.

[chris in va]

I got really bad 'skidding' with my .356 boolits in 9mm. I had to go .003 over bore diameter before that issue stopped and the projectiles actually hit what I was aiming at.

I did extensive testing with different powders/charges/hardness levels during this process. My air dropped 356's were more of a shotgun pattern while the water dropped actually hit paper half the time. I haven't tried air dropping the fatter 358's yet.

[ph4570]

When I do not need obturation, I like to go with harder alloys.
Minie's for example, I need at least "sweet" wheel weight alloy. As it turns out, I have access to roofers. I get lots of pure lead.
For myself, I have not found hard lead to be a detriment. I also do not hunt. I punch holes in paper. I blend zinc into my alloy to stretch it. My black powder rifles, though, I use pure.
Just seems to work.

How much zinc do you blend in percentage wise? I bought some clip-on WW ingots that had some unknown amount of zinc -- boolits were hard and shot well. I have no idea how much zinc was in the mix.

[fatelvis]

When she says "ouch!", you pushed too hard.

[docone31]

2% zinc is a snap. Over that, and you have to add lead to zinc, rather than zinc to lead.
Either way, keep it stirred.
Works for me.

[mooman76]

You can actually blow them apart as Lee did in his experiments but you pretty much have to be trying to do that.

[nicholst55]

I once had lead 'soldered' to the case neck and shoulder in a .308... The bore was an absolute mess.