Talk to me about 500 Magnum Boolits

[clemje]

Howdy Y'all! Long time lurker, first time poster...

I've been casting boolits off/on for the last 20 or so years and have found it invaluable for shooting on the cheap. This will go especially true for the new beast I just picked up... brand, spankin new 8" S&W 500 Magnum! I've been doing a bunch of research on molds and loads, as well as gathering up all the components I need to load for it. Dies, brass, powder and primers have been secured--all I'm missing is a mold and possibly gas checks.

Now my first thought was to buy the 440 grain Lee mold as it seems to have good reviews and is an accurate, versatile boolit. Finding the mold is easy--gas checks, not so much... about the only maker anymore it seems is Sage and they are completely sold out. I've tried emailing them but they do not have an ETA on restocking. I'd like to eventually get into making my own gas checks but I don't have access to the proper machinery to make the tools and pre-made dies are pretty pricey.

So then, I started looking at other molds in a plain base design. I ran across Accurate Molds and found their 50-411P mold which really blew up my skirt. I'm a BIG fan of Keith style boolits and throwing a half inch diameter, 1 ounce chunk of lead in that design just sounds intoxicating. But the options they offer are almost dizzying...

So my questions are this:

Will the Lee be accurate without gas checks until I can find some? I plan on running everything from mouse fart loads to full tilt big boy rounds... but mostly middle of the road stuff.

If I go the Accurate Mold route, should I go with centered tolerance (+/- .001)? I use Lee push-thru sizing dies and will be powder coating.

Also, any thoughts on aluminum vs brass if I do in fact go with an Accurate Mold? I do have quite a few aluminum Lee molds in other calibers and enjoy using them. Also have a few Lyman steel molds and they too have been fantastic but I've never used brass.

So what say ye?

[JonB_in_Glencoe]

clemje
Welcome to the forum.

NOE has 50 cal GCs in stock.

The Lee 440 is a fine mold. You will want a GC for anything approaching a standard 500S&W load.
Also, it's an easy mod to the Lee mold, to remove the GC shank...and for the price of the mold, maybe buy two, remove the shank on one mold, and leave it on the other.

I had a Ballisticast Iron mold, 385gr RF PB, that I really liked as well, for loading a bit lighter, I used Unique, and worked up from 12 gr to 17.5gr, where I started noticed pressure signs, the was happy with the 17.0gr load.

[Iron Whittler]

BE SURE to check cylinder throat size. The throats on mine were so tight that a factory jacked bullet of .500 would not go through. Not good for cast boolits. A trip to Dougguy took care of the tight throats. Your mileage may vary, but it's something to consider. Have fun, blast away, but be safe.

[clemje]

Great info, thank you!

I'll be sure to measure the throats when it gets released from prison in a couple days... (stupid CA waiting period )

[lar45]

The Lee 440 is a pretty solid performer. I mostly load with IMR4227 in mine.

[DougGuy]

480 and 500 cylinder throats are in a corner of their own. All lesser calibers, 44mag, 45 Colt, I don't worry much about how far over groove diameter they are, or how much a boolit has to swage down from a .4525" throat to go through a thread choke, but with the 480 and 500, the pressures are high, and the boolits are much larger and much heavier and many like a much harder alloy so these things to me are a sign to be very careful and very specific with sizes.

For instance, a member sent me a 500 cylinder for throating and he sent along a couple of dummies and a couple of boolits he was using. When I got the boolits mic'd they measured .5015" and they were sized to .500" 6 months prior to him sending them along. A hard alloy, the boolit had grown .0015" just sitting for 6months, in a year what would they have measured? I have noted the same amount of growth in heavy for caliber 480 boolits as well.

These slugs are very long, and I think the length of the boolit has a direct effect on how much they will grow as they age harden. The longer they are, the more they grow in these two calibers it seems.

I wouldn't want to size 500 throats to .5025" just to make room for age hardening, because of the mass of the boolit and the hardness of the alloy would lend itself to quite a bit of resistance at the forcing cone, more than I would want to subject the gun to. For this reason, it is my recommendation to take the throats to .5015" and size to .501" at the largest, and use the boolits before they grow to the point they won't slip through the throats with finger pressure. This is about the ONLY way that you can be assured that you won't be subjecting the gun to unknown amounts of stress from pressure generated by resistance.

[clemje]

DougGuy, I'll get the throats and bore measured up this week and report back to you. Fingers crossed they'll be good to go but if not, I'll definitely be enlisting you for some cylinder work

[fcvan]

+1 on the Lee 440 mold, it is the same profile of Buffalo Bore ammo. Neighbor has the S&W 8" and I do the casting. We plan on mostly loading at 1000fps, save the snollygoster stuff for special occasions. Neighbor also has an H&R 1971 single shot 20", he just doesn't know it yet

[MrHarmless]

Another +1 on the Lee 440. I've used it in the 50 Beowulf with pretty decent accuracy at 100.

Only downside is that the mold gets very hot very fast. Definitely have a cooling towel of some sort near by.

[clemje]

The 'ol Gal got released on parole yesterday! She rounds out the family quite well.



I don't have any fancy pin gauges so I smushed some lead round balls down the throats and bore and everything mic'ed right at about .5005"--thinkin .501 cast boolits should work out pretty well.

Got a few different loads worked up from mild to wild last night... First time shooting it was with 400 grain cast with a HEALTHY dose of H110. Was averaging 1600-ish FPS with a remarkably tight ES of under 10FPS with the best load.



Wowza! Needless to say, I won't be shooting too many of those. 25 rounds down the pipe and I have a nice bruise on my hand. I was minute of pie plate off-hand @ 25 yards with those monsters and will spare you the embarrassing target picture... I wasn't brave enough to try them from a rest.

Second loads were with 330 grain boolits in the 1000 FPS range with some TrailBoss. VERY pleasurable to shoot and a whole heck of a lot of fun! Accuracy was REALLY good and produced a 1.5-2"-ish group at 25 yards from a rest. I'll take it!



Lee 440 mold and some gas checks are in route--can't wait to start tinkering with it more!