44 mag load

[chevyiron420]

guy's, i need some load help for my redhawk. another member loaned me a lee mold. its a 215 swc. after a week they measure .430--.4305 and are plain base, cast from ww's water dropped. my throats measure .4305-.431. the boolits push thru without drag or slop. the barrel is .429. i dont have a die for the sizer yet, so i tumble lubed them twice and loaded with 11 grain unique. i fire 20 rounds today and the accuracy was bad and it leaded badly all along the barrel. this gun has been a good cast boolit performer in the past with 240grain gc. am i driving the plain base boolits to hard?? will the LLA work for this? i want to use unique for this. what charge do you recomend? im thinking i should slow it down. what do you think?-phil

[Bass Ackward]

Boy I am jealous with measurements like those? How come I get all the bad ones? :grin:

Your on the right track. Cut back, mold harder, or change lube are the big three at this point.

[Lloyd Smale]

Im not one to ever preach the alloy is to hard to bump up theroy but id about guess in this case thats what your running into. Id try heating some of them to about 400 degrees in your oven and then letting them cool slowly and try them agian. I also am not a fan of tumble lube. It works when all the stars align but if theres anything that isnt quite right it falls on its face for me. I lube them in a lubesizer using a good lube and size them to 430 and try that too.

[44man]

Your results mirror mine with LLA. I got leading no matter what boolit size or alloy I tried. I don't like the Lee boolit with those tiny GG's because of it, I would rather have decent GG's and a good lube.
You could try slowing it down but I don't think it will matter. The size should be OK too.
I shoot a lot of plain base boolits very fast, as fast or faster then my GC ones, with no leading in all of my revolvers
Next, the boolit is also too light for a RH, the gun shoots better in the 240 to 300 gr range. Too short a boolit with a fast running start in the faster twist can skid more, opening channels for gas to go past the boolit more.
Some will say to make the boolit softer, but it only makes the boolit smaller in diameter and needs that awful "bump up". I never liked shooting putty balls! The idea of casting the most perfect boolit without any flaws and then mashing and squeezing it all out of shape when shot doesn't appeal to me.

[USARO4]

I am a believer in the alloy can be to hard and soft alloys "bump up" to fill the bore theories. Differant people with differant guns and differant bullets at differant velocities using differant lubes get differant results. Thats what makes our obsession so fascinating. You have to experiment. I would try air cooled WW bullets tumble lubed with JPW.

[Lloyd Smale]

im actually more with 44man on this. I just wont buy that a bullet that has to distort to fill the bore will ever be extreamly accurate. The only thing it MAY do is compensate for a crappy gun. A good gun will allways shoot a properly sized hard bullet better at about any velocity.

[44man]

Thanks Lloyd, I use pretty hard .431 boolits in my Ruger with .4324 throats and a .430 bore without any leading and accuracy that is hard to believe. I now have several 1", 100 yd groups and a bunch from 1-1/4" to 3" with a cast boolit of my own making. It weighs 330 gr's. All of my boolits run 18 to 19 Brinnel for all of my revolvers. I add tin and antimony to WW metal. After working for years with every alloy I could come up with, I have settled on this. It works in every new gun I bought, why change?
All of you see pictures of my groups. Would I ever go to bump up? Not on your life. Fix the gun or fix the mold.
The way I size my brass, the dies I use, neck tension and the bore alignment of the boolit is more important. Next is the proper lube and LLA is not one of them.
Next I would add the proper ignition for the case and the powder charge.
I have shot oversize boolits for the throats, throat size and a little undersize too and as long as the boolit is bore size or a little over, I have no problems.
By the way, my BFR's have the most perfect throat to bore dimensions of any revolvers I ever bought. No variations like Rugers, but Rugers will still shoot.

[Maven]

chevyiron, Bass , Lloyd & 44Man are right: 11gr. of Unique is just about maximum. Drop back to 8 - 9grs. Also, LLA works OK at the velocity generated by 8gr. Unique and 240gr. SWC's (Lee's TL, RCBS' Keith and Ly. 429421) in my Ruger SBH, but other lubes are better.

[lovedogs]

I'll probably get hate mail and slapped down for heresy for this but I've had so much bad luck with WW's in the past I now will only use them if I cannot get good lead alloys and am forced into using them. Their mix is not always the same each time and who knows what you have when you use them. All of you can use them if you want but I don't like to. That's my story and I'm stickin' to it!

I, likewise, have no use for Lee's GG bullets. Their lube is a maybe, sometimes. But I still prefer to poke my bullets through a nice round sizer die and apply a good lube.

It all goes back to basics... use the right alloy, sized and lubed properly, running at the right velocity and it'll generally give good results. Violate any of these and you'll likely get undesireable results.

[44man]

I agree about WW metal. I never have as good of accuracy with it plain and get some leading. It's not REAL bad and is acceptable for plinking. Thats why I add tin and antimony. So far, no matter what the WW's have been made of, every batch shoots good. I have added just tin and even pure lead to it but nothing has been as consistant as just making it a little harder.
I have one gas checked boolit that does real poor with WW's but if I anneal the check, accuracy comes back. I have no idea why. Harder shoots good with a hard GC.
I have too much to do and don't want a different anything for all of my guns. They must all shoot good with the same stuff.

[chevyiron420]

thanks for all the wonderfull info folks. this mold that a friend loaned me is not a tumble lube boolit, its a regular one. i just dont have a sizer die yet for the 44. when i loaded these rounds i thought i was driving them to hard, i dont know why i didnt listen to myself. its just that i have heard so much good about LLA that i thought i would try it. also the idea was to make a lite load for me to get used to the gun again but i loaded too heavy for some reason. i just goofed up i guess. i also didnt like the soot all over my shootin bag and gun, and i think it came from the LLA. i may try 9 grains of unique and seating the boolit out to the greas groove so it will reach the chamber throats so it will center better. i also may finger lube the boolits with some 50\50. its a shame i have about 200 boolits lubed with the LLA. i recon ill try to wash it off. i swear it think the stuff was burning! my forcing cone looks like a coal bin and im having a hard time getting it clean.-phil

[45nut]

Mineral spirits will dissolve the LLA from the coated ones. It may be you had it too thick, it does not need a thick coat to do the job. Mineral spirits may do a good job on cleanup as well.

[Lloyd Smale]

44 man we agree on something else. This is getting scary. The alloy i use for my best accuracy and the alloy that gives the best compromise in bullet weight and hardness for penetration is 5050 ww/lyno and that gives about the same hardness as you are using. I can about bet in any load workup that that alloy will out do about any ohter.

[44man]

We are not scary, we just did the work and I bet you worked as hard at as I did.

[Bass Ackward]

Oh please ...............

The mutual admiration society is on another board. Match.com. :grin:

You are just to old farts too inflexible to adjust your technique. Pull hammer, aim gun, shoot. :grin:

And just like getting a little dirt on your hands, a little lead in your barrel won't hurt ya. :grin:

[44man]

Your right Bass, but we sure do have fun. Not very often any two of us agree on anything but it is much better then nobody agreeing with anybody, imagine the confusion!
There are so many different kinds of shooting, guns and shooters. Some just want to hear the gun and feel it go off, some want accuracy, some want power. That means there are a million ways to do things. It amazes me that we get any information we can use at all.
Put yourself in a beginners shoes reading the posts for the first time and getting a million different ways and opinions, how can he choose what to do first?
Us old geeks can shorten the process if we do agree once in a while.
And you know I agree with almost everything you post ---except when you start talking about shooting soft lead fast, HEE, HEE. I have to hurt your feelings once in a while too. Maybe you can do it but I have not learned the incantations and finding juice of bat tongue to coat the bore with is hard. I think you cheat and put that funny copper stuff around your boolits. C'mon, admit it!

[Bass Ackward]

And you know I agree with almost everything you post ---except when you start talking about shooting soft lead fast, HEE, HEE. I have to hurt your feelings once in a while too. Maybe you can do it but I have not learned the incantations and finding juice of bat tongue to coat the bore with is hard. I think you cheat and put that funny copper stuff around your boolits. C'mon, admit it!


Never admit your lies. :grin:

Is there really, really, really such a thing a Zero leading? And should that be everyone's goal?

That is another problem I have with posts on this board. That is what is "acceptable" leading. Everytime I get a guy here that says he never leads, I ask to test it. About 50% of the time, he is leaded by my definition, and just doesn't realize it or has a different definition of what constitutes leading. When I show them they are leaded, their reply is that ain't leaded. You can still see the rifling. So they simply get to the point that it doesn't bother them and they shoot on.

Ray Thompson was heralded as the second coming when he slapped a gas check on a handgun bullet. Remember, the 357 was the most popular choice around then. That speaks volumes to me. Look at what a man does, not what he says. That tells me that many people were happy with the increased flexibility that checks offered. If you run through the check list that Veral Smith has on his WEB site under "Selecting a Bullet", he is very tactfully steering 98% of shooters away from PB. That speaks volumes too.

Is a harder bullet less susceptable to leading? You bet. Will the increased freedom allow you more options to find things that work? Yes. Are hard bullets then more accurate? For you yes. But not necessarily if you alter technique. Is this play on words significant? Depends on the person and what he needs to achieve.

No matter what load I use, if I shoot fast enough in the summer, I am going to get some leading eventually. Even with a check. Ah .... so what? It comes right out and life goes on. Probably so with a rifle too, but then I shoot a rifle differently. I never heat one up. So my standards are truely different with a handgun and a rifle because my rates of fire and accuracy standards are different.

I consider "zero " leading a must in my rifle. Because leading becomes a fouling or bore obstruction and will ruin the seal limiting velocity. So the faster you are going, the more important it is to remain gall free.

Even if nothing comes out on a patch, is zero leading really and truly ever zero though? You still have microscopic pores in steel which is why alot of guys don't like shooting copper until they really burnish their bores. Then it matters less and less as you move through the life cycle of a barrel and pores are closed or more correctly, worn away.

Ingnorance can be bliss though.

[felix]

The harder the boolit, the straighter it will size. The straighter the sizer gadget (die-punch/barrel-bolt), the softer the boolit can be to still size straight. ... felix

[44man]

There is always a few specks of lead, no such thing as none at all. But the lead I get are just small flakes that comes right out with a patch. Any in the bore is shot out with the next shot and never builds up. Far different from the build up that takes a week to remove. Any I find is gone with the first patch because it doesn't stick. Sometimes when I clean and inspect the patches, I don't see any at all but most times there are a few flakes. Nothing at all to worry about.
Anyway it doesn't effect my accuracy. I can shoot my guns for months without cleaning and still shoot tight groups. If any is in the bore, I don't care.
I don't consider that leading. Leading is when it keeps getting thicker and is very hard to get out. I remember the .38's shooting soft wad cutters that didn't have any visible rifling. Soft lead and alox or LLA leaves large slivers and I have to scrub for a long time to get it out and when I think it is clean I run a tight patch back and forth only to find gray marks so I have to scrub more.
I have begun to think alox is a soldering flux.

[Bass Ackward]

There is always a few specks of lead, no such thing as none at all. But the lead I get are just small flakes that comes right out with a patch. Any in the bore is shot out with the next shot and never builds up. Far different from the build up that takes a week to remove. Any I find is gone with the first patch because it doesn't stick. Sometimes when I clean and inspect the patches, I don't see any at all but most times there are a few flakes. Nothing at all to worry about.
Anyway it doesn't effect my accuracy. I can shoot my guns for months without cleaning and still shoot tight groups. If any is in the bore, I don't care.
I don't consider that leading. Leading is when it keeps getting thicker and is very hard to get out. I remember the .38's shooting soft wad cutters that didn't have any visible rifling. Soft lead and alox or LLA leaves large slivers and I have to scrub for a long time to get it out and when I think it is clean I run a tight patch back and forth only to find gray marks so I have to scrub more.
I have begun to think alox is a soldering flux.


44man,

Just so you know, I wasn't meaning you specifically. I was talking all posts. It's just that it can be misleading to not include that information.

Felix,

Yes. I suppose that is it exactly.

[44man]

I knew that Bass, just tried to explain the difference. Leading is BAD. A few flakes or pieces doesn't mean much. Not much different then copper from those funny bullets.