I got my new NOE 316299 mold the other day and promptly went out and started making bullets after normal cleanup and a few heat cycles. It made nice bullets and I was excited to get to sizing and loading. I still need to make myself a .316 sizer die to deal with the big throat and groove diameter in my Lee Enfield.
I cast some Lee 155 grain .312's to use in a Swiss K31 at the same time and forced one through a .308 die yesterday. I know I need to lap that out to about .309something, but I was sad to see that the noses were "bumped" out substantially. I made a nose punch yesterday that fits better, as a possible solution, but decided to check bullet hardness too. Sadly, I figured out that the lead I used was way softer than I thought. I remember that it was ingots of supposedly clip on wheel weights that I bought quite some time back off ebay. I remember remarking to myself that it must have actually included a lot of stick-ons too. Sadly, I remebered that *after* I cast up a big pile of both bullets.
These are about a BHN 8 according to my Lee tester....just over dead soft. They will get gas checks, but I assume these are still too soft for rifle use...even at "the load" type velocities (16gr 2400). I don't have a *lot* of experience with cast bullets in rifles. I've loaded water quenched wheel weights in the 8mm Mauser with gas checks and later read that the water quench was probably not necessary so this batch are not even quenched. Plus, with not much antimony in them, they probably would not harden much anyway. I did add a bit of tin for fill-out.
So.....do I need to dump them all back in the pot, alloy them up with some lino I have around and start over? I'd rather think I wasted my time casting them than to go to the additional trouble to load them and kill an hour cleaning up a nasty leaded bore.
thanks in advance for any advice you can offer!
Paul