Leading in the forcing cone

[PacMan]

Been working with different powders in my new .44 special RBH.

Started out with Unique and Lil Gun and everything went well.
Decided to try Sheeters load of 7.0 grains of 700X. Just for testing i loaded and shot several rounds to get to the 7 grains that he used.
Loaded 6 up walked to the range and the first three shots were two toching and the thrid about 3/4 inch left.Thought this is gona be good.
Next shot 2 inches low and left,me i thought, next about 4 inches low,what, last shot way left and a little low.

Pulled the cylinder and looked down the barrel and the first inch or so of the barrel was fouled real bad along with the forcing cone.

Cleaned and tried again with same results.

Shooting two diffrent bullets. Noe 265 gr and LBT 250 grain both GC and sized to .432 and WD W/W testing at 23BHN. Yes they are a little big but waiting on my size die to arrive.

Is the 700x just hitting it to hard and maybe need a harder bullet or what?
The recoil with 700x is quite diffrent than it is with Unique and the accuracy my be better.

Any help appericated.

Dwight

[GBertolet]

It seems like your bullets are not sealing off the cylinder throats, and allowing blow by of the hot gasses, causing the forcing cone leading. Generally there are two causes. Undersize bullets and or, too hard of an alloy. Your bullets are likely large enough at .432, so I would try untreated WW bullets and see if that helps. The softer alloy will bump better up upon firing and seal better, keeping all the hot gasses behind the bullet. Possibly the other loads you tried were of higher pressure and bumped up the bullets more, allowing a better seal.

[PacMan]

GBertolet you may be right and i have thought about trying that. The reason i have not is that using the same bullets and Unique and Lil Gun there was no problem and the 700x load appears to be hotter than either of the other two loads but may not be. I know that there is a difference in the recoil but that also relates to burn rate so that may not matter.

The cases are not sticky using the 700x but they are enlarged some compared to the other two powders.I also tried backing off to 6 grains but accuracy went south.

Thanks for the info.
Dwight

[Bass Ackward]

You can try many things. What I find in situations like this is that your lube breaks down with that diameter bullet trying to size down with that pressure rate.

The front just can't get through before that back catches the blazes. That's why the slower and lower pressure Unique loads worked and why the Lil Gun (slower powder) worked overall. It gives that nose and bullet time to size and engrave before the base hardness and lube can't take it any more. And that's where your lead is most likely coming from if you can recover your slugs. That's also why a more gentle cone angle helps speed engraving and sizing.

There are always exceptions. But the slower I want to go the softer the bullet and the larger the diameter I can get away with. But the harder I make my bullet or the faster I want to run, the smaller I generally "need" (regardless of what I want) to be.

[PacMan]

Yea Bass, Gberolet sugested maybe a softer bullet also ,for a different reason, and i will give that a try.Will have to cast some up.
I sluged the barrel and at the frame it came out at .4295 and the cylinder throats are a tight .432.I can force a .432 slug through them with my thumb but it takes a good bit of effort. The barrel slug just drops through.
Thanks for the help guys.
Dwight

[C A Plater]

Have you measured the cylinder throats? I had similar issues with a .45 Ruger Bisley and when I measured the troats at the face of the cylinder the were around .443-4". I enlarged them with a .451" reamer and leading in the forcing cone and first inch of the barrel went away. I understand it is a fairly common in Ruger revolvers.

[PacMan]

Yea CA in the previous post,before your's, i stated that the cylinder throats are a tight .432 which is good i would think.
Dwight

[44man]

I am going to back away from the softer lead thing. You have increased the pressure rise closer to the case while the boolit is still in it. You might be slumping the boolit, compressing the GG's, driving out the lube through the gap and even the lead is trying to escape. Now you have a lube free boolit skidding the rifling and opening gas channels.
How do you know? You must recover fired, undamaged boolits and study them.
Shoot the same load with a jacketed of the same weight and see if it shoots good groups. If it does, why would you think a softer boolit of 10 or 12 BHN will cure the problem---it has to be a joke, right?
The boolit sounds perfect so go to a slower powder with an even pressure rise down the bore.
I would dump Lil-Gun, it can over heat the cone and barrel.
Go back to Unique and work towards 2400.
Do you believe gun writers?
I am 180* different then most revolver shooters and admit it but it can give you something to think about.

[462]

Dwight,
My S&W 624 (.44 Special) was experiencing the same problem.

The fix was two-fold:
1. Air-cooled wheel weights.
2. Alliant 2400.

Aside: The Rock Chucker is the pride of my reloading bench.

[PacMan]

44Man- as i said in my first post i thought that harder might be the way to go.
Also what does beleiving gun writers have to do with this. I have not read anything about the load other than i saw it on a list of loads on handloader and thought i would try it. If it does not work out so be it. As far as Lil Gun goes i agree that it is hot burning but i have got excellet accuracy from it along with velocity. I have tried to ween myself off of it but it sure is easy to get excellent accuracy with it.
I have a good load worked up with the Unique also.

I have some 2400 and also plan to work with it also.Only so many hours in a day.

462-the Rockchucker is always tops.

Thanks guys
Dwight

[PacMan]

Just another thought.If i was blowing all of the lube out at the cone would it not lead futhur down the barrel?
Just a thought.
Dwight

[2 dogs]

Here we go again. Rather than guessing, start from the beginning....

http://gunblast.com/FerminGarza-Firelapping.htm

[Frank]

dwight hardy:
44Man- as i said in my first post i thought that harder might be the way to go.
Also what does beleiving gun writers have to do with this.
Because Keith liked his boolits dead pan soft. Then there was that notorious SWC design dubbed the Keith bullet that's plagued shooters for years. Out with the old, in with the new. The new design, called a boolit, has a tapered should which self aligns.

[btroj]

Try softer. Try harder. See what works in your gun. It does not matter what other guns like, only what your likes.
I have had more leading due to hard, undersized bullets than from anything else.
You will get answers on this ranging from size smaller, size bigger, go rock hard to dead soft. In the end the only opinion that matters is that of the gun. That gun with that load will have a sweet spot for size and hardness. Find that spot and stay there.
I have also found that some leading can be due to lube. What are you using?

This is the real challenge to shooting cast. Find what your gun needs and you will have true success.

[PacMan]

As far as lube i am using LBT soft. Have been using it for a year in everything,Marlins,Rossi and 3 RBH. First leading problem i have had. Ony have that using the 700x. I have a bunch of the power and am hoping to have somthing to shoot it in.Also meters much better than Unique. I think that like 44man sugest it is hitting it to hard to fast and i supected that might happen.
I am sometimes relentess in my pursuits and this may be one of those.
Thanks guy's
Dwight

[Frank]

Get away from 700X. If it makes you have to use harder boolits, the game has gotten not fun. Now you have to juggle alloys.

[44man]

44Man- as i said in my first post i thought that harder might be the way to go.
Also what does beleiving gun writers have to do with this. I have not read anything about the load other than i saw it on a list of loads on handloader and thought i would try it. If it does not work out so be it. As far as Lil Gun goes i agree that it is hot burning but i have got excellet accuracy from it along with velocity. I have tried to ween myself off of it but it sure is easy to get excellent accuracy with it.
I have a good load worked up with the Unique also.

I have some 2400 and also plan to work with it also.Only so many hours in a day.

462-the Rockchucker is always tops.

Thanks guys
Dwight
Nothing against gun writers but they don't do what we do anymore. They have too many deadlines and can only write a page or so. So when they suggest a load, it might only be good for their gun and they might have a hundred guns they fool with.
Handloader has not been the same for a long, long time. I get nothing from it anymore. Same tired stuff and 5 minutes of paging through it. I think if I search all the issues, and I have them all, every load for a caliber will be exactly the same from day one.
I agree that Lil-Gun is accurate and fast, but with what little I have used it, it can do damage to a revolver. It is, when you get down to it, made for the .410 shotgun. Pressures are good and even but it burns way too hot in a revolver and it might be the higher pressure making the burn different.
But you are on the right track, slow the burn rate before fooling with the boolit. Change lube. Yours sounds OK to me. Just change what you kick it in the butt with. :Fire:

[44man]

Just another thought.If i was blowing all of the lube out at the cone would it not lead futhur down the barrel?
Just a thought.
Dwight
More to it then that. Depends on slump and skid. Skidding the worst because gas channels let high pressure gas past the boolit that erodes lead. Once pressure drops, the erosion gets less.
One thing nobody considers is that with a clean bore, there is no lube at the front of a boolit so it is lead against steel and it causes no harm or leading. If there is any, the rest of the boolit will just push it out.
But erosion at the base will lay down lead that will not go out in front of the next boolit and it will build up. Now any lube will not correct that.
Lube should keep fouling soft so the next boolit removes everything and I am not convinced that the lead itself needs lubed. I see this with both the BPCR with a poor lube and also LLA that burns and leaves hard ash in the bore. Now you run over the ash with the next boolit and strip lead. This leading will be at the front of the bore.
I have shot just one shot in a clean bore and cleaned and checked the bore and found only carbon so why did it not leave any lead? Maybe because the boolit had nothing to run over.
Some BPCR boolits were made with a "scraper groove", get real, there is 10 times more fouling then the groove can hold.
Does lube really prevent leading? Only if it works but I know that the wrong lube will cause leading because it burns and leaves hard ash behind, way more then the powder did.
I tried SPG in my BPCR and the last ten inches of the bore would be so hard and dry I could barely get a rod through it. I had to soak the patch. Now a better lube would let the rod slide through with no effort and I would have a grease ring on the muzzle.
Same amount of lube so what happened. I think the SPG itself was burning, not that it ran out.
The lube burns AFTER the boolit passed and left lube behind, not while it is in the grooves unless gas gets where it shouldn't.
I know, I ramble a lot. The point is, do we know what happens for sure? Heck, don't ask me! :coffeecom

[03lover]

I have delt with leading in both revolvers and semi auto's. I tried all the suggestions to use hard and softer lead, checked bullet size and bore size along with chamber throats.

I finally tried powder slower than the Bullseye, 700X and 231 that I use a lot. Some times Unique and AA 5 helped, but when I went to AA 7 many of the loads that had been leading with the faster powders, quit leading.

I think with some guns and some lead bullets the fast powders, having a very rapid pressure curve cause skidding as the bullet enters the bore at fairly high velocity. Powders with a slower pressure rise allow the bullet to enter the bore at a lower velocity reducing or eliminating the skidding.

This helped me with several revolvers and semi auto's.

[Char-Gar]

Leading in sixgun barrel forcing cone?

1. Rough forcing cone
2. Bullets too hard
3. Bullets to small

Any combination of 1,2, and 3 above.

[robertbank]

Ruger cuts their forcing cones to 5 degrees. Have your forcing cone checked. If it is five degrees have it cut to 11 degrees. The 11 degree angle is much better for lead boolits particularly if yo are going to shoot LSWC.

You should be able to push sized 431 boolits through each of the cylinders with little effort. If you can't then they do need to be reamed out.

Also what CVharger said.

Take Care

Bob

[PacMan]

Lot of answers here and i see merrit in each one from my limited experience. As i stated earlier when using unique there were no problems so i worked up a load to close to max with 2400 and got excellent accuracy ,best yet,and no leading.
I really beleive that by changing powder i have found the easy way out.I am sure that if i had the forcing cone reshaped and smothed up and worked with a different hardness and possibly size i could make the gun shoot the 700x without problems. Is it worth all that for one powder?i say no. Now i may have those things done at some point to improve overall performance but that will be later if needed.

Thanks for all the great replys.I now have a much better understanding of the role that each part of the gun and component's play in the overall scheme of things.
Dwight

[Bass Ackward]

Lot of answers here and i see merrit in each one from my limited experience. As i stated earlier when using unique there were no problems so i worked up a load to close to max with 2400 and got excellent accuracy ,best yet,and no leading.
I really beleive that by changing powder i have found the easy way out.I am sure that if i had the forcing cone reshaped and smothed up and worked with a different hardness and possibly size i could make the gun shoot the 700x without problems. Is it worth all that for one powder?i say no. Now i may have those things done at some point to improve overall performance but that will be later if needed.

Thanks for all the great replys.I now have a much better understanding of the role that each part of the gun and component's play in the overall scheme of things.
Dwight



Boy you do understand.

One more thing. The gun may clean up on it's own to allow 700X to work as you want to shoot it without changing variables. You just have to shoot something else in the mean time to get to that point in the future.

At about 10k-12k all the positive change will take place, so if it doesn't work by then ................................