Anyone want to "sherardize" their bore?

[BCall]

I have seen little information about the Harvey Prot-X Bore molds. A few mentions of them here and some on some other forums. I have yet to see any that someone actually used. I acquired a 358500 mold a while back, thinking I might use it as a core mold to swage soft swc's kinda like the ones Hornady sells. Just put a couple of small cannalure like grooves on one and tumble lube it or use rooster jacket. Then I saw some supposedly pure zinc washers on E-bay intended for these type boolits, so I bought some to try.

I read a bad report or two about these washers, but they seemed to fit my mold fine. My mold is a nose pour, and the nose is messed up. It needs to trimmed down to remove the bad edge at the top. But it worked! I heated the washers in a small pan on the hot plate while casting. They were kinda fiddly to put in a hot mold, but once I got the hang of it, it wasn't too bad. i wouldn't want to cast a ton of them though. Sized out at just over .359. I ran them through a .358 sizer die lubed with a bit of imperial sizing lube, base first. Seemed to work fine.

Don't know if I want to put it in any of my barrels currently, but maybe someday I'll run across a ratty 357 contender barrel to try them in.

[BulletFactory]

40,000 rpm, and youre sure you can get them absolutely in the center?

That said, I dont want zinc anywhere near my alloy. I also catch many of my bullets, and dobt feel like disecting each recovered round.

[trk]

COOL!

I have 3 of the moulds - .357, 44 and .45. Have cast some bulelts, but don't have any washers. Always wondered about how they'd shoot. (That is the bottom line.)

One could have washers made of many types of materials - like copper.

[littlejack]

Hey Billy:
I believe I saw some of those there washers on one of Corbins pages.
Yes, the outfit that makes swaging dies. I think they sell them as one of there products.
Jack

[BulletFactory]

from page 90 of From Ingot to Target: A Cast Bullet Guide for Handgunners
A joint effort by Glen E. Fryxell and Robert L. Applegate

For those of you that have Harvey moulds, and need a source of Zn washers, they are available from the following manufacturers:
Sport Flight Mfg., P.O. Box 1082, Bloomfield Hills MI 48303;
4-D Custom Die Co., 711 N. Sandusky, Mt Vernon Ohio 43050 740-397-7214 (http://www.ch4d.com/)

[Mk42gunner]

I don't have one fo those molds, but my question is: wouldn't the zinc washers contaminate the melt if you recover them? OR are they more of a fire and forget projectile?

Robert

[southpaw]

I don't have one fo those molds, but my question is: wouldn't the zinc washers contaminate the melt if you recover them? OR are they more of a fire and forget projectile?

Robert

Keep the melt below 787*f and you will be able to skim them off the top of the melt. Just make sure that the temp doesn't get that high or they will melt and contaminate your mix. I keep my smelt temp ~700*f.

Jerry Jr.

[geargnasher]

COOL!

I have 3 of the moulds - .357, 44 and .45. Have cast some bulelts, but don't have any washers. Always wondered about how they'd shoot. (That is the bottom line.)

One could have washers made of many types of materials - like copper.

Good idea, how about leaving half a lube groove on the mould's base, and having some little copper cups made to fit on the base, with a thick edge that would bite into the boolit as it was sized and crimp on?

Just jerkin' yer chain, TRK, couldn't resist!

Gear

[leadman]

If you melt a 600' you won't have to worry about the zinc melting until 700' plus.

[MikeS]

I would say that if you're going to be recovering your boolits, then you should avoid these. But, if you're not recovering your own boolits, then by all means give them a try! I would certainly like to give them a try. But then I tend to like things that are weird, and/or different, and it seems that those exact things tend to come my way! I have a SAECO #68 mould (a copy of the H&G #68) that has a SHARP transition from the meplat to the sides tapering back to the driving bands where most all 68's I've seen, SAECO included have a nice rounded off transition from tapered sides to meplat!

The only drawback I can see with these boolits is that placing that washer into the mould HAS to make casting happen at a snails pace! If there was some way of making a washer dispenser that could be used to both warm them, and dispense them into the mould, then casting speed would be able to get back to almost normal!

[MikeS]

Good idea, how about leaving half a lube groove on the mould's base, and having some little copper cups made to fit on the base, with a thick edge that would bite into the boolit as it was sized and crimp on?

Just jerkin' yer chain, TRK, couldn't resist!

Gear

Actually I wonder how these boolits would work if you used copper (or brass) washers on them, rather than the originally intended zinc? Would the copper edge work like a scraper to keep the barrel clean? Either way, with copper or zinc washers, I would think these boolits would work better if they were given a coating of tumble lube (either LLA, or 45/45/10).

[geargnasher]

I think they'd work wonderfully with copper washers, especially if they were fluxed with a light coat of rosin and the alloy had a few percent tin in it. In fact, if you soldered the copper on that way, you could do this with any plain-based mould. The reason I think they would work so well is not because of the "scraping" action so much, but because the washer would give the boolit a harder, almost perfect base that would exit the muzzle squarely, thus improving accuracy on warmer loads.

Gear

[BCall]

from page 90 of From Ingot to Target: A Cast Bullet Guide for Handgunners
A joint effort by Glen E. Fryxell and Robert L. Applegate

For those of you that have Harvey moulds, and need a source of Zn washers, they are available from the following manufacturers:
Sport Flight Mfg., P.O. Box 1082, Bloomfield Hills MI 48303;
4-D Custom Die Co., 711 N. Sandusky, Mt Vernon Ohio 43050 740-397-7214 (http://www.ch4d.com/)

Thanks, but as far as I know, Sport Flight is no more, and when I contacted CH4D, they said that they didn't have any. Maybe someone else will have better luck?

[BCall]

Thanks for the comments guys. As far as getting them in my melt, I ladle cast these with a Lee 4 lb pot, so if I did happen to drop some in the melt, I'd only lose a couple of pounds of lead. And I barely use that little Lee pot anyway. mainly just to cast a few muzzleloader bullets from time to time. And as of now, I don't get to reclaim hardly any boolits.

I'd really like to try them out, but the old literature says the zinc would coat your bore, that is what it was intended to do. hence the "Prot-x" bore name. I'm not sure if it could be removed later if needed, and I'm not willing to try. Unless I can get an old beat up contender barrel to try it on. I don't know how centered the washers really are, but I doubt that after sizing they would be any more off center than a gas check would be. I've got almost 1000 washers still, that will probably be enough to last me and my son for our lifetimes.

I would like to find more info on the Harvey "Jacketed Jugular" bullets. I have a mold for one of them as well, but no jackets to fit it. Not sure if they were to be swaged on or not, but in the few pictures I have seen, they look to almost be crimped on, not swaged.

Thanks, Billy

[noylj]

Been there, done it, have the t-shirt.
I found they were as accurate as my other cast bullets, but I had zinc in the bore after shooting about 50. Also, didn't like the idea of someone getting my lead and getting zinc contamination.

[44man]

Why did it even come about? Same reason the GC did. Soft boolits that skidded the rifling. I remember them, made to try to halt base band skid. They found soft lead boolits had a problem with smokeless so they came up with all kinds of stuff. The Harvey disks were never as good as a GC.
Soft boolits can be good but have always been a problem since BP went away.
Things go away if they can't survive.

[MikeS]

Been there, done it, have the t-shirt.
I found they were as accurate as my other cast bullets, but I had zinc in the bore after shooting about 50. Also, didn't like the idea of someone getting my lead and getting zinc contamination.

The zinc in the bore isn't a problem with these boolits, it's supposed to be a feature. Supposedly once your bore has a proper coating of zinc it will help with several things, but I don't recall what they were. This was from reading an article about the Harvey Pro-tex-bore boolits.

[perotter]

The zinc in the bore isn't a problem with these boolits, it's supposed to be a feature. Supposedly once your bore has a proper coating of zinc it will help with several things, but I don't recall what they were. This was from reading an article about the Harvey Pro-tex-bore boolits.

Lower the friction.

And fill in the pits in a old barrel. This was supposed to make the rifle more accurate, as opposed to them being filled with lead or copper. I'd guess there was a lot of pitted barrel around in 1950, because of the corrosive primers.

[perotter]

For washers(page down a little):

http://www.hawkbullets.com/swage-it.htm

For info:

http://www.hawkbullets.com/Prot-X-Bore.htm

[williamwaco]

I never cast or swaged any but load and fired about 100, acquired from a friend, in a .357 back in the early '60's. They were swaqged. Not sure but I believe they were C&H dies.

In my opinion their coming and going was a non event. They were no better and no worse than normal cast bullets and they were significantly more work to make.