Streamlining Softnose Production
Those who followed my cast-softnose thread of last year may recall that I used a dipper made from a .40 S&W case to meter the molten pure lead into the mould.
A fortunate friend has drawn an Arizona bull-elk tag in a very good area, and is taking his Marlin .45-70 Guide Gun as the backup/bad weather rifle, understudying for his M700 in .338. He's asked me to make the bullets for this rifle.
It seems that my SAECO 021, a pointy 420-grain design, may be the best of my available designs for this purpose WITH A FLATNOSE ADDED. Its accuracy is great, and the weight is just right for a modern .45-70 load. His "design intention" is to load it to about the 1800-fps mark, which is reasonable.
Instead of messing with dipper and lead-pot-in-the-furnace, I decided to use some .490" round balls as donors for the pure lead, and it worked perfectly. With the furnace full to the top and heated to its max of 870 degrees, I placed the 2-cavity mould on the melt with the sprue plate open. A .490 ball was positioned on each cavity, and I just watched until the balls melted and ran into the mould. A couple minutes later, I closed the sprue plate and filled the cavities from the furnace.
PERFECT! This is a primo way to obtain a precise amount of lead in an easy to handle package. The balls weigh 172 grains, which amounts to about 40% of the total bullet weight of 420 grains ....just about right.
The pointed pure-lead nose is easily formed into a flatpoint for the tubular magazine, simply by using a flat top punch in the lubesizer and a judicious amount of pressure on the handle. The amount of pressure, of course, controls the amount of flattening which takes place. There is no measureable expansion of the bullet at the front bore-engaging surfaces.
I am tickled to see this working so well.
stick-on hardness vs clip-on hardness
Klaus--A few years ago I did a test on hardness of stick-on type weights vs clip on weights. What I found out was that stick-on weights came out at Saeco 4 which is Bhn 7. Clip-on weights at that time gave me Saeco 6-7 or Bhn 9 to 11. In summary, I've found stick-ons to be softer than clip-ons, but not by much. Both "alloys" heat treated to Saeco 10, which is Bhn 22. When smelting ww's these days, I treat them all the same, but I just hold my nose a little more when stick-ons are evident. I am still vigilant tho for the dreaded zinc wheel weights, and if the weight has drilled holes and doesn't seem to wanna melt, it is discarded as a potential contaminate. For those of you without hardness testers, try the "ring test": drop an ingot on a cement floor and listen for the ring. You'll really notice a differance as the lead percentage goes up...more of a thud than a ring. Lino has a definate ring to it. The ring test is very crude, but, much better than just a visual guess, etc.