45ACP Key holing target

[RobS]

Well, I figured back when I posted up about water quenching that it would come to a hard or not a hard boolit thread. Let the OP fix the boolit diameter issues and then if he finds that the boolits are not accurate and/or leading the barrel he can try to utilize a tougher/harder boolit. I've loaded for glocks (polygonal rifling) and yes, in my experience it does help to have a properly fitted boolit as it does in any bore and in my experience it also helped with accuracy to have a tougher/harder boolit for better grip of the rifling or if one prefers to see it, not skidding the rifling.

[Franklin Zeman]

I have a friend that has a poly barrel that WILL NOT shoot lead. Works like a champ on J bullets. It also tends to lead up very quickly. Seems like the boolit skids down the barrel and at close range puts out targets like an open bore shotgun.

[Char-Gar]

"We all agree that taper crimping can cause trouble"

No. IMO, the only trouble I have ever seen from taper crimping is a LOT of it
from inadequate taper crimp or no taper crimp.

Never, ever have seen a case of any problem from using a taper crimp.

Bill

Amen... +1..and all that stuff!

The poor guy has a series of bad boo-boos..

1. That bullet does not have a good reputation to start with.
2. Polygonal rifling is a problem child to deal with
3. Loads to hot
4. Whatever he is crimping with is swaging down his bullets

With those things going one keyhole bullets should not be a surprise. Rather it should be expected.

[44man]

Fit is so important to be sure. I have never shot that kind of rifling so I will not make much of a statement.
But it seems as if it will not have the "BITE" on the boolit that regular rifling has. It has to deform the boolit more. That will make it more prone to skid and not spinning up.
How to fix? Softer or harder? Darn I will not say and it is something to experiment with.
Once you keep the boolit the right diameter, then play with alloys but diameter is going to be first.
A primary rule is to never do any harm to a boolit when loading.

[Old Caster]

I will always use a soft bullet if I can but this leaves open a lot of avenues. In a 45 acp I and many others have used pure lead Star bullets for years, but a typical 45 case won't size a soft bullet down to less than .451. The match barrels we all used, like a .451 bullet, but it is quite likely that the polygonal barrel talked about doesn't like it that small for whatever reason. If a bullet tips at close range the culprit is almost if not always because it is too small when leaving the brass. In 9 mm it is just about impossible to make a case as large inside with an expander that I would like so I have no choice but to go to harder bullets or be faced with sideways bullets. For some people with match chambers, when everything is as large as desired, chambering becomes an issue because the hard bullet is swaging the brass out instead of the brass swaging the bullet in. If an FCD die is involved it is for sure the problem as they only cover some other problem and don't really fix anything. I think your next step is to go to a store that sells commercially cast bullets that are hard and buy a hundred or so and go back and prove or disprove the too small bullet idea. Make sure you just shove the bullets in the case with a bullet seater and don't size it down further in another step. -- Bill --

[Bret4207]

Once again we have the issue of how to approach fixing a problem. To me, it's obvious that a boolit being swaged down on seating need a change in the seater die! A "harder" boolit isn't going to "fix the problem", in fact it doesn't even address the problem. Every time we hear of an issue like this the first thing offered for advice is to go to a harder alloy. As I've noted before, "harder" is a completely ambiguous term that means almost nothing other than a BHN reading was higher. Why was it higher? What changed? I can take the same alloy and give you 3 different Bhn readings or get the same reading from 3 different alloys with widley differing qualities. This Bhn/harder is better thing is like a boil that just won't go away.

[Old Caster]

The seating die isn't what swages a bullet down when seating. There is plenty of room around the bullet and brass. It is the brass itself that is doing the swaging which is why we use different size expanders. Brass isn't strong enough to swage down harder lead which is why sometimes we use harder lead. It doesn't matter how inaccurate your BHN tester is because harder is harder and softer can swage down from the brass being too tight. It doesn't go away because it is quite pertinent in certain situations. -- Bill --

[Char-Gar]

To be certain that are circumstances where the expanding plug is WAY undersize and the bullet is WAY to soft, that it can be damaged in seating.

But those WAY circumstances are more extreme that folks think. Like Bret, I hold the belief, based on experience that this "harder is better" while a commonly held notion is most often destructive to good shooting and loading.

If you had to set up a list of possible culprits for the problems of the OP, bad seating and crimping is the most likely cause. Insufficient neck expansion is way down the list of suspect.

I hesitate to write this as there are a few true believers in super hard bullets as they only way to go, that will pounce on this. But things are what they and I think I have them all on my Ignore List anyhow. ,

[subsonic]

Many ways to skin a cat here, but it seems like his problem is stripping the rifling, so the "effective" twist rate is too slow to stabilize the boolit.

Harder/tougher would resists sizing down more (try sizing some soft and hard boolits in your lubrisizer if you don't beleive me) and also help grab the poly rifling.

[44man]

Many ways to skin a cat here, but it seems like his problem is stripping the rifling, so the "effective" twist rate is too slow to stabilize the boolit.

Harder/tougher would resists sizing down more (try sizing some soft and hard boolits in your lubrisizer if you don't beleive me) and also help grab the poly rifling.

I believe in "hard enough" and that might toss some into a frenzy. Hard does work or it would be better to say "tough enough."
Only way to see is to test. The gun might want 3X harder then another.
Now once I get to what my guns do well with, I have gone harder and harder and many times accuracy gets better but once a point is reached where alloy is too expensive, I never seen a decline.
As I soften I see more and more fliers.
I will always be where the boolit takes the rifling, nothing less.

[Bret4207]

Many ways to skin a cat here, but it seems like his problem is stripping the rifling, so the "effective" twist rate is too slow to stabilize the boolit.

Harder/tougher would resists sizing down more (try sizing some soft and hard boolits in your lubrisizer if you don't beleive me) and also help grab the poly rifling.

You can make the boolit out of the hardest lead alloy you want, it's still going to swage down if the seating or crimping die is undersized for what he needs. Run a .360 boolit out of super hard lead alloy through a .358 die and see if it comes back out at .360 if you don't believe me.

[Old Caster]

A seating die only seats the bullet. How can it make anything smaller. -- Bill --

[462]

A seating die only seats the bullet. How can it make anything smaller. -- Bill --

I quit using Lee seating dies, because they were swaging down my fat-for-caliber boolits. Too, there was an RCBS .38/.357 seater that wouldn't accept a .358" boolit.

At least, with dies that use a sliding sleeve, like Lyman's Precision Alignment and Hornady's New Dimension, the sleeve can easily be enlarged to accommodate fat boolits.

[Bret4207]

A seating die only seats the bullet. How can it make anything smaller. -- Bill --

You've never had a seater or crimper that's cut for jacketed that squeezes down the boolit? You're a lucky guy. Very, very common issue with our "fat" boolits that are often .003-.004 over their jacketed counterparts.

[Old Caster]

I checked a Lee 32 long seating die, Lee 9mm, Pacific 38, Lee 40, a Lyman 44 mag, and a Lee 45 ACP with a fired and unsized case and the tightest was the 44 magnum which probably only had about .010 play. The loosest was the 40 which probably had .040 play. If they were sized there would be way more room. I can't imagine what you guys are doing, but you should think about cleaning the die or check the caliber. There would be no reason to ever make a seating die so tight that it would even come close to sizing the brass. -- Bill --

[subsonic]

The Hornady dies have a sliding sleeve that fits tight to the boolit or bullet. Think benchrest in-line seater. These CAN size the boolit or cause them to hang up and yank the guts out of the die. I also found that if you have the seating stem above the crimp ring by a significant margin and the boolit has a long front driving band, the crimp ring can size the boolit. And then there is the Lee pistol style factory crimp die that is basically just another sizer die that mashes everything to hell once assembled.

[462]

"There would be no reason to ever make a seating die so tight that it would even come close to sizing the brass."

I agree, however, reality says otherwise. The worst Lee instance was a .44 Special seating die swaging a .433" boolit down to .430".

There are many cast boolit problems that some people have not experienced, but that doesn't mean that they aren't real. I only speak from my experience.

[Bret4207]

I checked a Lee 32 long seating die, Lee 9mm, Pacific 38, Lee 40, a Lyman 44 mag, and a Lee 45 ACP with a fired and unsized case and the tightest was the 44 magnum which probably only had about .010 play. The loosest was the 40 which probably had .040 play. If they were sized there would be way more room. I can't imagine what you guys are doing, but you should think about cleaning the die or check the caliber. There would be no reason to ever make a seating die so tight that it would even come close to sizing the brass. -- Bill --

Bill, it happens with some seaters or crimpers. Look though some of the archives here and you'll find many people with this issue. Also many people finding their dies cut so that they cannot properly seat a "fat" cast boolit. Everything is cut for jacketed now.

[44man]

Bill, it happens with some seaters or crimpers. Look though some of the archives here and you'll find many people with this issue. Also many people finding their dies cut so that they cannot properly seat a "fat" cast boolit. Everything is cut for jacketed now.

That is hitting the nail!
A guy wants to load cast so a Lee set is cheap. But RCBS and Redding costs a lot more but are supposed to be good. Lyman is reasonable.
So one is chosen. The big problem is you do not know what they are doing when you load. You buy special seat dies and crimp dies but still do not know what they do to cast. Just so much out there and tons of money to spend.
You must learn your tools, change them or buy others. I will tell you your choice is limited. Hornady makes my best revolver loads but if you use such a large boolit the seat die sizes it, fix the seat die.
Profile crimp dies can RUIN loads. "M" dies can RUIN loads. FCD's can RUIN loads. But each will work for somebody so don't push them on another. Some shoot a Bisley and others hate it.
Will you please sit and stare at your loading bench, days if it takes it, and imagine things. The answer will come from you.
If you can't tighten a wing nut, nobody can help!

[Char-Gar]

Seating dies can be a real problem, swaging down cast bullets, particularly with bottle neck rounds. I use a Starret hole guage and micrometer to measure the bullet seating area of the die. You will find many of them smaller than the bullet you want to use. Bad things happen then.

Pistol and revolver dies give less problems in this area, but often the expanders are too small for use with soft handgun bullets.

I will second the old Lyman Precision Alignment (PA) seating dies. The seating sleeves will be several thousand over nominal jacketed bullet size and most often will do just fine with cast bullets. But you still need to measure the ID if the sleeves,

I also have oversize sleeves made for my Vickerman seater so cast bullet will work.

I also buy and make special Wilson type chamber seaters with oversize seating holes.

I don't use the Lee FCD, but awful things are written about them with cast bullets, so I have cross them off my list of things to use with cast bullets.

If you are a cast bullet shooter, you just can't grab a set of dies off the store shelf and start to load ammo. As you said above, you really need to know your tools.