My dad asked me to cast bullets for his handguns recently. I decided to start with his smith and Wesson in 44 mag. Its an old target model with 10 inch barrel and a weird adjustable front sight. When I described slugging the barrel, he said no way. To be honest, I don't see why you can't make great bullets without measuring out to the .0001". With a calipers his groove diameter is right around.429", and his throats are right around .432" (one was a little bigger at a touch over .433"). I see no reason bullets .430"-.432" wouldn't shoot well, please correct me if I'm wrong.
My grandpa gave me a handful of 44 molds, however, he is a target shooter, not much of a hunter. He casted a few years In the 70's or 80's, until he quit. I would rather have a mold around 265 grains SWC. The closest is a mold that with the alloy I'm using drops a 210 grain SWC HP. I'm thinking that might work well, a little light, but still more than enough for whitetail. The problem being I'm not very good with that mold. Maybe my standards are set too high, but out of about 50 casts, only 2 were what I would call perfect. A bunch were pretty good but had a bunch of flash at the hollow point. When I looked up the mold number, it came up as a Lee buckshot mold! Its not the old style pin hollow point, the pin stays in the mold. I've read that the pin could be colder than the mold causing problems, but with it being non-removable, how would I heat it? The mold was already too hot, maybe I could try turning the pot way down? The lead was around 700-750 degrees.
Another mold seemed like a SWC that someone drilled out the lube grooves. I'm not sure what they were going for, or how you would lube the bullet without powder coat (which as far as I know wasn't the fad in the 80's it is now). One very odd thing he gave me was a jacket swaging set. I can't find anything online about it, but it does work. Its a simple hand press, where you cast an undersize bullet (he gave me a mold that casts a cylinder slug that is adjustable for weight), then with the jackets you swage them into jacketed soft point's. He gave me a box of about 500 jackets of both 44 and 357, but I prefer a straight lead bullet, else I buy them.
The only other real choice is a SSK 429-310 NEI brand mold. I casted a bunch of those, and they cast nice. When I weighed them, they are a whopping 330 grains. These look to have 3 lube grooves and one crimp groove. When measuring, these average just a hair over .430". When I tried them in the cylinder throats, they were a very good fit. I'm thinking of shooting these as cast, and just pan lubing in some carnauba red. I figured these heavy bullets would be at the edge of being unstable. It turns out all S&W handguns have a 18.75:1 twist, and according to the Berger twist stability calculator should be plenty stable. The odd thing with these is the load data. I have an old Lyman book from 1994 that lists up to 325 grains, and velocities only go up to about 1000 fps, which is more than enough. This gun will be used for deer under 50 yards. On the Hodgdon website, they have loads that are approaching 1250 fps. That 1994 book already seemed to have max loads hotter than todays. I'm looking for a more moderate load, rather than one right on the cutting edge. I would prefer to use bluedot. According to that lyman manual, that gives a max load of 13 gr with Bluedot at 937 fps. I'll probably work all the way up to that incase its more accuate, but I'm thinking 12 grains in the 800 fps range would be ideal. Has anyone shot these huge SSK bullets with success?
