Cast Boolits questions?

[plmitch]

I recently bought my first mold and tried my hand at casting some boolits today. They are not very pretty but I think they will work OK. They are from a Lee DC C312-185-1R mold, so my question is do I have to size them if my barrel slugged at .311 and they are making a .312 boolit? Also, is it a must that I use a gas check on these?

[geargnasher]

I recently bought my first mold and tried my hand at casting some boolits today. They are not very pretty but I think they will work OK. They are from a Lee DC C312-185-1R mold, so my question is do I have to size them if my barrel slugged at .311 and they are making a .312 boolit? Also, is it a must that I use a gas check on these?

I'd say they're perfect as-is. You don't have to use a gas check, but if you don't, your accurate velocity limit will be much lower, like around 1400-1500 fps most of the time. It's really the pressure that creates this limitation, but accuracy can be quite good with mild loads in a decent gun.

If you shoot them without checks, pay special attention to the fillout on the driving bands, they need to be sharp, clean, and no wrinkles for best results, although if you're looking for minute-of-popcan accuracy at 25 yards you'd be surprised how well ugly boolits can shoot. Cast fast, about three to four pours a minute with that mould until it's good and HOT, hot clean moulds make for good fillout and no wrinkles.

Hope this helps,

Gear

[rintinglen]

I've never had really good results with gas-checkless, GC boolits, but as Gear says, for plinking, they work just fine. I used many thousands of RCBS 38-162 sans checks, back in the days of my youth, with complete satisfaction, until one day I put a gas check on them, and found out I was a better shot than I thought I was! Still, for just getting your feet wet, or allowing you to shoot enough to get comfortable with the gun, they'll do. Just don't get carried away by the velocity bug, and they'll do all right. You can always spend more money later buying gas checks, installation tools, sizers, different molds, bigger pots, better sizers...It's real easy to "save" money in this hobby. I think I've "saved" enough over the years to make a fair sized down payment on a car...

[noylj]

You almost never HAVE to size a cast bullet.
In your case, having slugged your barrel, the bullets are already at the minimum recommended dimension. Get a size die the same size or 0.001" larger for seating the gas check.
I consider GCs as necessary if one is shooting at much over 1500fps and, a cast bullet for gas checks, will do best with a GC. One doesn't have to do much except be safe,

[plmitch]

Thanks for all the info everyone. I have some gas checks coming my way to try out and I'm sure I'll have some more question as I start doing more of this.