Guys,
I have finally managed to get up and running in boolit casting and have produced two lots from my two rifle molds.
The first ( and much easier to cast boolits ) mold is an inherited single cavity version of the Lee C309-180-R mold. I cast a batch of ten bullets from almost pure lead as an experiment (I'm toying with the idea of using a soft lead bullet in a subsonic hunting role and want it to expand in a controlled manner) and ten from an alloy of 10% Linotype to 90% pure lead ( ~ 0.4% tin, 1.4% antimony, balance lead) .
I put the former through the lubrisizer to fit gas checks and lube and ended up with these:
A bit squashed and a bit bent...
I then tried the same with some Hollowpoints cast from a Milhec Ness safety bullet mold very kindly supplied by a member of this forum and found that the got even more squashed and bent...
Despite using the correct, supplied nose punch, the nose section that previously measured almost bang on 0.300" now measured 0.325"...
I remelted these bullets down and some lino to the alloy to bring the composition up to the figures given above and tried again.
This time the Lee bullets came out looking much better after sizing ( the marks on the nose are from the bullet seater die) although some of them exhibit significant run out in the loaded round...
the Ness bullets again still squashed down ( nose section measures 0.305 ish) but looked better:
Any ideas chaps?