New guns checked for shooting cast?

[pmer]

I thought I would ask a question to new gun buyers. Would you pay some amount more to buy a hand gun "Knowing" it would shoot cast boolits without leading.

Like maybe a manufacturer would shoot 25 rounds and if there was little to no leading they could set it aside for a CB shooter.

[Old Caster]

I have never had a quality gun have a leading problem. As long as you watch the bullet size, and match the hardness to the velocity a good gun won't cause you any problem. If the gun is junk, the size is wrong, or the alloy is incorrect for speed, any one of these will cause leading. If a quality gun is worn so it is out of time or the barrel is ruined somehow, it is no longer a quality gun.

[btroj]

The manufacturer would probably test with factory lead so many potentially very good cast shooters would fail. My Supr Redhawk leads horribly with the "standard" .429 bullets but is great with a .432 bullet. I doubt Ruger is going to develop loads for this kind of testing.

I don't think these are many guns out there that are absolutely unable to shoot lead reasonably well. Key is to decide what your criteria are and go from there. Heck, we can't even agree on this board what acceptable accuracy is or how lead bullets should be cast, lubed, loaded,or shot. If I can't agree with guys here that know what they are doing how am I expected to agree with a bunch of guys at the factory who are making a gun but aren't always shooters themselves.

[Love Life]

Short answer: No
Long answer: No

[rintinglen]

No way would I pay a premium for a cast boolit gun. First off, as has been mentioned, too many guns would fail for spurious reasons, so the cost would escalate way beyond what I am willing to pay.
Secondly, why bother? I have found very few decent guns over my 40 years of pistol buying trading and selling that would not shoot at least semi-decently with a properly fitting boolit. I had one old colt 38-40 that would not shoot cast, and a couple of 9s over the years that were less than stellar, but most every other pistol or revolver that I have owned (and were talking dozens here) has shot cast bullets to at least a minimally acceptable level of accuracy. I've a couple of Rugers right now that shoot cast better than factory lead, so why pay more for what I already am getting?

[pmer]

I think I would pay some amount extra to be assured a new revolver would do what I want it to do with cast and not get the dreaded letter that says "sorry but it performs to our design criteria". There are plenty of threads here about the new guns going back for warranty.

No offence but btroj's Redhawk would'nt have passed this standard CB shooting test. In the end it didn't matter because he went through the work to figure it out.

I guess I don't know if I can go to the Smith Peformance Center and ask for a perfect forcing cone and throats .001 bigger than the bore. I understand it costs more to hold tighter tolerances, being an ex machinist.

I picked up a few revolvers over last couple years and most of them are fine. There's 2 with smallish throats and one of which might have cone trouble too. These are used 38 cals so I have to fix them or get them fixed.

[btroj]

In the end it will never happen ecause the manufacturers don't care. They would rather sell 100 guns to the average guy than 1 to a person who wants "precision". Easier to make money that way- sell more with lower costs.
Sadly we are at the mercy of the manufacturers. Luckily we know many ways to make these guns work.

[subsonic]

I did pay extra. I bought a BFR vs a Ruger. And had problems with it.

It's great now. After three trips back to MR (at no cost to me).

I think this would be a very rare circumstance, but it did happen.

As mentioned above, it's hard to acheive an undefined goal. How about would I pay extra for a gun that has a hand lapped bore, properly sized and shaped throat(s), bore, and chambers. And for revolvers: tight BC gap and good cylinder alignment with no or minimal thread choke.

The answer is yes I did. And many people do. Look at the success of Hamilton Bowen, John Linebaugh, Gary Reeder, Alan Harton, etc.

All you have to do is open your wallet. The problem is that most people won't pay what it costs, and for every dedicated cast shooter that knows the difference, there are 100 customers that don't know, can't tell, and don't care. It's an easy business decision to make.

[pmer]

Yea I now its a tall order, the thought occured to me because some revolvers of the same model shoot cast with no trouble while others have trouble. This tells me the tolerances that "Acme Gun Works" are using in production are fine; but the sum or accumulation of these tolerances sometimes don't add up to be cast friendly.

When I used to be machinist I would have a good idea of where my more critical demensions are running within the blueprints zone for tolerance - in order to run more parts with out stopping to adjust or replace tooling.

I'm just thinking that maybe these machine operators could set aside their "slighty better demensioned" parts and assemble these guns as they normally would. I might pay extra 5 or 10 % for that. It might be 35 to 70 dollars on a 700 dollar production gun.

[Love Life]

I paid top dollar for a performance center gun and it was a piece of junk. All my used older revolvers have been awesome cast shooters.

[9.3X62AL]

The shooting of cast boolits is not a "one size fits all" proposition. To a large degree, it is our place as the operators of the firearms to finesse the boolits into doing the right things for the right reasons, by means of fit--metallurgy--and lube characteristics.

"Fit" is not just diametric in the wheelgun--boolit length can influence accuracy as well. This applies as much to jacketed bullets as to castings. By this, I mean that I have never been able to achieve with 110-125 grain bullets the accuracy that is possible with longer/heavier bullets of 140 grains or more in the 38 Special/357 Magnum. This trait spans a couple dozen revolvers, and follows suit with shorter bullets in 41M, 44M, and 45 Colt. My belief is that the bullet/boolit needs to be fully engraved into the barrel's forcing cone before its shank/drive band section clears the front of the cylinder face. This assures more proper alignment of the bullet with bore axis, assuming the cylinder is "clocked" reasonable closeness.

[btroj]

Problem is that YOU might be willing to pay more for these guns- most will not. The fewer that are sold as a "special" gun the most the cost goes up.

Again- it is simple math. Ignoring "better" guns means more guns made. More made means more sold. More sold is more money. It may well be cheaper to make 100 "normal" guns than 25 "special" guns. The biggest cost in manufacturing isnt parts or materials- it is labor. Setting stuff aside costs TIME. Time costs money- lots of money.

I prefer to look at it as a "project" when I get a new gun. The fun, and frustration, comes from finding what it takes to get the results I want. I would almost be disappointed to get a gun and have everything work out perfectly from the start. Yawn.

[runfiverun]

it is kinda anti-climatic when the first thing you try works or exceeds your expectations.
i don't think i would pay a premium for something matched from the factory.
i would just like them to figure it out, i'd then pay 50.00 more.
dropping a pin guage through some cylinders and down a bbl wouldn't cost that much.
cutting a forcing cone don't cost that much.
and cutting threads properly don't cost that much either.
most of what we complain about needs to [and can] be controlled long before the parts are made or assembled.

[Ragnarok]

Lewis lead remover

[btroj]

I am with run here- don't want a "select" gun, I want one that was just made right.
As one of the barrel makers says- we don't have select barrels because we don't sell any bad ones.

Make them all correct, have real QC, and I would gladly pay more. Until then, I will keep my bag of tricks handy.

[pmer]

Well I can see there are some "heck no" and some negative responses followed up by ideas that pretty much agree to what I'm saying. There would have to be some standard boolit used for it to make sense. Like a proper flat base or gas checked boolit at a near mag load for a magnum cartridge gun.

I don't consider this to be a high standard but they seem to be making guns for jbullets. Maybe cast shooters should get together and push for a standard.

"it is kinda anti-climatic when the first thing you try works or exceeds your expectations."

Thats what happened with my 50th aniv. flat top. I saw that my sized Mihec503's fit in throats good and it shoots mag loads with no fus. So I know they can do it.

[MT Gianni]

I might get leading with the same gun someone else doesn't get leading or vis-versa. It is about fit but not solely fit. There are too many variables. If I were a mfg and certified a nonleading gun someone would fill the case with H-110 and a 9 bhn, tumble lubed boolit that fit then whine when his bbl leaded.

[btroj]

Yep. Can't make everyone happy.
I wil, also ask this- what percentage of the handgun buyers in the country eier reload or shoot cast?
Bet it is a very small number. I am willing to bet that less than 10 percent of handgun users shoot any reloads and only 1/4 of them use cast. That means that "we" are maybe 2% of the buyers. We just aren't worth worrying about.
As for your 50th Anniversary flat top- was it "made right" or was it just a happy accident?

[Wayne Smith]

Buy a cap and ball gun?? Most of them, even the new Italian made ones, are known shooters.

[Markbo]

pmer I entered into reloading relatively late in life and casting even later - when I turned 50. One thing I decided pretty early on in the reloading learning curve is to simply never shoot any new handgungun with cast bullets without first shooting jacketed bullets through it. I don't have a bore scope, but unless it is a high dollar semi custom, chances are there is some roughness is most off the shelf guns. I had purchased a couple of SAA look alikes before casting and both leaded.

After getting the cylinder throats all matched up, the forcing cones cleaned and actually measuring everything, I was able to match the bullets to the gun. I had (mistakenly) thought that I could shoot any old .452" slug in any .45 Colt gun and it would work fine. Ignorance was bliss I suppose.

Maybe that worked back in the blackpower days but not now. Then I found THIS site and starting hearing about matching diameters and hardness to velocity and all that turning gold from lead talk... well after some very minor leading in one of those two sixguns, a treatment of Tubbs final finish bullets and another set of jacketed bullets I finally have all my bullets and loads right.

No more store bought hard as stone hard cast bullets, use the right diameter for THAT gun and no more problems. Long story short, it doesn't have to be a known... they will all shoot lead if you do all that needs to be done to assure it.

Sometimes I wish I could just throw any old bullet and any old powder into whatever case I found in a box and they would all shoot great without side effects, but this is the real world and sometimes it takes a little more work than that.

Darn it! :wink:

[pmer]

Thanks everybody for enduring my wanderings on this. I guess it didn't hit home for me till got a few 38 cals and started noticing differences with them. And I'm sure it's luck with the flat top.