50 questions

[powderburnerr]

working with a 50 cal W.E. freedom arms , 400 gn bullets
been from 10 brinell to 21 , and get the same thing lead the full length of the barrel ,
I am trying for a mid range load at 850-1000 , and dont really want to mess with gas checks ,
trailboss doesnt give the velocity ,
tried unique , & H 110
any suggestions?
The bullet is an LBT at .500 and is a snug no rattle fit in the cylender throat,groove diam is .500 and FA recommends a .500 cast bullet
I am not sure whats up ,

[Whiterabbit]

IMR4198 works for me in 460S&W

[subsonic]

Sounds like you need to try:
larger dia
different lube

Does the bore pick up copper fouling too when you shoot jacketed? Look into the muzzle at an angle with a flashlight and see if you see copper. If you do, maybe the bore is a bit rough yet.

[bobthenailer]

Dont load for a 50 W, but i do for 454 Casull , ive had great sucess with Tight Group powder from 8.0 to 10.0 grs with 260 / 275/ 300 gr cast bullets for loads between 900 to 1,100 fps fired from 3 different FA revolvers .
I also use it in 357 & 44 mag for loads from 800 to 1,000 fps with cast bullet also with good results.

[powderburnerr]

I dont shoot jacketed bullets .so that is a moot point , I am shooting a lead bullet reading another thread I think water dropping will help .I did have some of them but they leaded worse than my LBTS. The chamber throat will not take a bullet over .500 the bore is .500, and FA says to shoot a ,.500 so that is what I got to work with .500 for a diamater.

[lar45]

I've been loading for a 500 JRH in a BFR. I'm loading a .501" 400 with 13gns of HS-6 for about 950fps. My bullet is gaschecked and I'm lubing with Carnauba Red, no leading or fouling at all. Wheel weights and water dropped.

[Whiterabbit]

leading is getting worse as the bullet gets harder? 800 fps, potentially?

Have you considered you might not be obturating? Have you considered going to a SOFTER lead?

That and I agree with the goofing around with lube a bit. I bet that's the only combo needed.

[dubber123]

Have you slugged the bore as well as the cylinder? Despite the specs they give you, FA does occasionally let one out with a larger bore than cylinder throats, (I have one).

[mellonhead]

X2 on trying HS6. I have had excellent results with it in a 45 Colt and 475 Linebaugh. My 500 WE is not here yet, but it will be the first powder I try in it.

Toby

[44man]

I dont shoot jacketed bullets .so that is a moot point , I am shooting a lead bullet reading another thread I think water dropping will help .I did have some of them but they leaded worse than my LBTS. The chamber throat will not take a bullet over .500 the bore is .500, and FA says to shoot a ,.500 so that is what I got to work with .500 for a diamater.
You are reading, not measuring yourself.
Seen too many Freedoms with over size and out of round bores.
Cylinders seem to be all good but I have lost faith in their barrels.
If the bore is actually .500, the throats should be larger and .501" boolits should slip through with finger pressure.
Whoever makes their barrels are SLOPPY, SLOPPY.
My friend had a .357 with nice .357" throats and out of round .3599" grooves. Took 3 barrel changes, fighting, screaming and a lot of money to get one the right size.
Freedom does nice work but they depend on the barrel maker too much and should measure and reject bad ones. Profit is the bottom line and they do not want to spend money for better barrels.

[Love Life]

All you people with 500 WE are making me jealous. Maybe it is time for me to liquidate all the firearms I don't play with much anymore so I can get me one.

To answer your question I would slug the barrel. My FA 454 casull had tight .452 throats and a nice fat .454 barrel. I had to shoot relatively soft to keep accuracy and leading under control. Now that I look back at it I should have had the throats opened up, but hindsight is 20/20.

[powderburnerr]

actually if you read the post you will see I have measured it , the cylender measures 500 ,the bore slugs 500 ............................................ and the litereture says to use 500. that was just added , not used as a measurement .

, I tried a 501 and it wouldnt chamber .so this cylenders throats are tight.
I did try the softer bullets , and the results were the same , the first bullets I got I bought while waiting for the mould ,they were 498 499 and gas cut badlly and soldered in the bore they were 18 brinell .

I got a lee mould and cut out the gas check and they were 501 , they wont chamber ,,, the LBT mould that arrived is a 500 + . and just barley fits in the cylender ,I have started with 30-1 and went up 2 brinell at a time trying to find a good alloy .so far all have leaded badly.
I have been using titegroup powder and it appears to be melting the bases of the few bullets I finallly found, I am going to give unique a whirl.

[subsonic]

What weight is the LBT boolit? What lube?

I would open the throats to .501" or pay to have it done.

You mention BNH, but don't mention what alloys you are trying.

It's fairly easy to miss a couple of zinc WW in a pot. I am becoming much more careful with my WW. I now use side cutters and try to cut all of them. I found some of the "regular" WW I had been using are much harder than the others. Also, some of the "regular" WW are much softer than "average". Your BNH tester only tells you how hard your alloy is, but doesn't tell you anything else.

Just some things to think about..... good luck!

[powderburnerr]

the LBT bullet is a 400 gner , LBT blue is the lube .
my stash of ww is mostly from 30-40 years ago and there is no zinc in them it is pre zinc ww .stuff ,
my alloys are 30-1 lead tinto , 11-1 lead tin ,ww , quenched ww., lino and ww, quenched lino/ ww to name a few
I have no control on the ww but the lino is pure and new old stuff and the lead tin is my BPCR alloys .my feeling is to open the throats , but I wanted to try a few things before workng the gun over ,

[Love Life]

You are using a good lube and doing everything else right. Opening the throats may be the way to go.

On a side note how do you like the 500 WE?

[stubshaft]

Opening the throat is not going to help if the boolit won't chamber. My FA 83 in 454 has to be sized at .452 and the barrel is .4515. Anything a hair larger than .452 won't chamber fully. My usual alloy for it is hardball (50/50 lino/pure) with either Felix or LBT blue.

[44man]

You are using a good lube and doing everything else right. Opening the throats may be the way to go.

On a side note how do you like the 500 WE?
That would be what I would do.

[thegreatdane]

i thought you mean you had questions x50.

[powderburnerr]

ah yes 50 questions , I appearently tapped the period key too softly

.50 questions does look better , and .50 WE would have been even better , and there is probably 50 questions with this beastie , but I am attacking them one at a time,
so when you read , do you say calibre 50 if it has the dot or do you say 50 cal or do you say 50 and assume it is a 50 cal ,,, This is ponderous man ,,,really ponderous.

I cannot find the chain smiley so I will say I am jerking your chain. its why I do not post much , I dont type fer schmidtt

[lar45]

Maybe switch to something real fast like Red Dot to bump the pressure up and hope for some obturation to help seal the bore?
10 gns of RedDot should give around 1000 fps at 30k with a 400, from Quickload.

[ombesb]

have been using titegroup powder and it appears to be melting the bases of the few bullets I finallly found, I am going to give unique a whirl.
My can of titegroup is waiting on a shelve to give to someone. I had quite a leading problem with a 44 mag. I did 2 things. Mainly switched to Trail boss for target or Unique for longer range/more speed. I also seat my bullets slightly long so they ride just slightly into the throats. Now I only clean the gun when I feel guilty, but not because of any leading.

[powderburnerr]

ombesb.
please expand on your statement about titegroup, does your experiance mirror mine , ? interested to know your findings , thanks

[Lloyd Smale]

try a mix of 1 part linotype to 2 parts ww. I bet size isnt your trouble. Most of the fA guns i had did tend to like smaller bullets. I would guess that .500 is spot on and i even asked my buddy who shoots one and thats what he sizes to. Try that alloy with 13-14 grains of hs6. thats a load that works real well in both my 475 and 500 linebaughs. Also i didnt see anywhere how or what your lubing with?

[ombesb]

Powderburnerr,
Titegroup was one of the first powders I started with based on my immense knowledge of target shooting. Lots of other people used it .... so would I... end of brain power. But I was getting horrible leading. 50 shots then scrape, 50/50 mix, more Chore boy and so on. But I was smart enough to start asking questions and reading.... hence learning Titegroup is one of the hottest burning powders. And some will tell you that paper patches and wads have come out of guns unburned. Well my gun was burned and leaded everywhere. Somewhere in there I had a thought that if the bullet had to ride up over the step from chamber to throat it could well shave off tiny layers of lead, [very thin] that could be easily heated to melting. So the first thing I did was to long seat the bullet just so it starts into the throat. Better bullet/case alignment also seemed likely. Leading drastically reduced, but did not disappear. Switched to Trail boss, and too light of a load naturally in my learning curve. Leading had gone away but cases were black and sooty. I was trying to go for minimum recoil. Coffee,coffee,coffee brain refired, started walking the charge up till cases were clean, no leading, still well under any sort of max load, a bit hard to do with Trail Boss anyways.
So in a nutshell, do not go with the hot fast powders, seat long, use enough charge to stabilize the cartridge in the chamber. Oh yes, the bullets I am using for now are Speer swaged, dead soft. And no leading, just a light haze the same after 10 or 100.
Not to cross anyone but I am now in the group that does not believe that harder is better.... size is everything. With a grain of salt, I would suggest that if your bore is .500, and your throats are .500, that is on the edge. I would go with opening the throats to snugly accept .501, medium soft bullet, put the boot to it with a mid range powder. Of course.... this may fail terribly for you.:shock:

[powderburnerr]

ombesb and lloyd thanks for the input,I dont seem to be able to post

[powderburnerr]

update ,

shot 50/50 lino/ ww both quenched and not, And quenched ww , with trailboss and unique , 10 gns of TB was pretty clean but the 10 gn unique load was pretty dirty, but I only had a few flecks of lead and they all wiped out with a dry patch , my next run at this is to use heat treated ww and some HS-6 just to see , finally gaining some ground .I was getting some variance in temper water droping them, so tried out an oven full of bullets, just to see.

[bobthenailer]

Dont load for a 50 W, but i do for 454 Casull , ive had great sucess with Tight Group powder from 8.0 to 10.0 grs with 260 / 275/ 300 gr cast bullets for loads between 900 to 1,100 fps fired from 3 different FA revolvers .
I also use it in 357 & 44 mag for loads from 800 to 1,000 fps with cast bullet also with good results.

I never had any leading and excellent accuracy useing Tightgroup powder in about 20 different handguns , with water dropped WW alloy & plane base or GC bullets without GC installed.

[powderburnerr]

I finally got a week set aside to make this work , I got out the trail boss and unique and with the help of lbt got a short nosed wfn and a keith 50 , and found a soft spot to recover bullets ,
The trailboss load was melting bases and the bullets were skidding slightly as the rifling marks with ww were wider on the front , but quenched ww held up very well . .Did redo a couple tests with titegroupe and have decided it isnt for this revolver , it still melted bases and caused leading , the unique loads were ok but were dirtyier without much benifit over trailboss , so i guess I am going to accept TB and the keith as a good mid range load ,

My goal was to do it without buying lino ,I feel I got her did
With LBT lube I got a little lead on the first shot , but it never worsened and the 25th shot was as clean as the first , ...good lube , I am goiing to shoot this this summer and see how it goess when it warmes up .Thanks all for the helpfull insites on my project.

[Lloyd Smale]

one thing more ill ask. Are you actually getting leading or do you just get a gray wash that gets no worse as you shoot? If its a grey wash dont worry about it. If the leading gets worse till the point that it effects accuracy then you have actuall leading.

[JonB_in_Glencoe]

I just seen this thread.
I have used lots of titegroup for jacketed bullets in semi-auto pistol calibers.
I love it for that.
when I started loading these calibers with my cast boolits...not that long ago (18 months), using titegroup, I was OK with 45 ACP,
but had lots of trouble (lead fouling) with 9mm Luger and 40 S&W.
both of these are higher pressure loads than 45 acp.
Now I'm not familiar with 50 WE, But I am assuming the pressures are getting up there.
yes titegroup is a HOT burner, but I don't think you can get a leading problem
with it til you get up to 35k PSI and up...assuming the boolit fit and lube are up to their job.
Jon

[powderburnerr]

lloyd , they are just tiny flakes in the start of the dorceing cone , they never get worse , LBT lube works ,

Jon , the titegroup load wad running a little over 36, I recovered bullets that started out .500 and the recovered base was 480 the rest was in the barrel.

[Lloyd Smale]

In my opinion if thats all your getting id just ignore it and shoot the snot out of it.

[powderburnerr]

this is what I wound up with , origionally I had a solid strip of lead front to back , Yes I can live with the loose flecks ,it is a lot different pushing loose flakes out as opposed to getting out 20 tho , of the diamater of the bullet out that was soldered on,