Well, I recieved my new MP mold, a H&G ”50 clone a couple of days ago.
Today I´ve shot the first boolits.
I used a soft alloy made out of airpellets scrap +1% tin.
Ingots ex-rayed to 98.54% lead 1.3%tin and 0.16% iron (rust from my smelting pot?) for these HBWC´s
As this is my first mold with pins I soon found out that both the alloy and mold had to be a bit hotter than I usually run stuff. But soon it started to throw beautiful boolits.
I had the mold set up with 2 dome pins and 2 cone shaped ones, so I got 2 different HB shapes to try in one castingsession.
Cone HB cameout at 129.4 grains lubed, and the dome HB at 130.5 lubed.
One thing I noticed is that the boolits measured .357 as cast, not .360 as stated.
I don´t know if that is due to the mold or the alloy/temp?
Well, that made the lubeing a bit difficult (only star lube die I got is .358) to much pressure gave a lube overflow. But I managed to get the boolits lubed after some tuning of lube temperature and pressure. If this continue I will either order a .357 star die, go tumble lube or PC.
Lube: Randys TAC-1 (only the lower groove)
Case: GFL (Fiocchi)
Primer: Fiocchi SP
Powder: Vithavouri 310
Powdercharge: 2.5 / 3.2 and 3.4 grains.
COL: 1.265 seated to crimpgrove, or 1.189 fully seated below casemouth
Crimp: Rollcrimp
Gun: Ruger GP100 4”
Range: Rested at 25m (27 yards) windy, rain and 39F
Each charge was loaded with both coneshaped HB and domeshaped HB
Each charge was seated either to the groove or below casemouth.
The velocity ranged from 666ft/sec for the mildest load, to 885ft/sec for the stiffer load.
All loads was soft to shoot, but ofcourse the lowest charges was a sneeze..
The boolits with domeshaped bases showed slightly higher vel in the same load as the ones with coneshaped bases (due to weight?)
The coneshaped ones was more accurate in the same load out of the two boolits.
The deeper seating didn´t affect the accuracy much , just getting higher velocity with the same charge as those crimped to the groove.
No load was exceptionally bad in accuracy, all shot 4 inch or less at 27 yards.
But my goal is 2 inch or better (10 ring is 2 inch)
The load with 3.2grains, coneshaped HB and seated to the crimpgrove and launched at 741ft/sec was the most accurate load in this short test. 5 Shots 0.787 inch C-C at 27 yards.
Only thing to do next is to adjust the sights and cast more boolits!