Boolit Casting Advice for Marlin Lever guns

[M&PManiac]

I am getting the gear together to cast boolits for the following firearms:

Marlin 1894 in 44 mag (Micro Groove Barrel)
Marlin 1894 in 44 Mag (Ballard rifling)
Marlin 444P
S&W 629
Ruger Redhawk 44 Mag

I have a Nice Lee 6 cavity mold in .429 240 Gr that I intend to use for the pistols. Based on my reading, I will have better results with the rifles if I use a different mold (bigger). Based on the above, here are my questions:

What size mold should I purchase for making rifle boolits for the rifles listed above?
Should I slug the bores of the rifles before purchasing the molds? Will it help.
What brand of mold and what material (aluminum, brass or iron) would be best? Cost is a minor consideration - I want to get the best bang for the buck!!
What specific boolit type do you recommend? I want a boolit design that is fun to shoot at paper, but will take care of a deer as well. Also important is that this boolit will be used in a lever gun
Gas check or no gas check? One of each??

I want to get all of this stuff once and then use it for many years to come. I appreciate your assistance in advance.

[btroj]

I would want something that went .432 or .433 for the Marlins. My Ruger Super Redhwak likes a .432 bullet as well.

[geargnasher]

That's quite a fleet. I've been down this road looking for a one-size-fits all boolit for a similar fleet of .45 Colt revolvers, lever guns, and single shots, and I wasn't able to to it WELL with all of them, so I have some optimized loads and some 'general use' loads that do for all of them.

First off, the .44 Magnum rifles are notorious for having slow rifling twists, and they often don't stabilize heavy-for-caliber boolits very well, so that can be a challenge. 240-grain boolits might be ok, might not. Wide, flat nose boolits are difficult to stabilize at long distance anyway, and the slow rifle twists tend to exacerbate this. You'll just have to build some loads and see.

Next, you have feeding length (cylinder length, what the rifles will cycle, throat length in the rifles, and cylinder throat diameter and length in the handguns) to consider. The .444 probably isn't going to like the same boolit that the M29 does, but you never know.

After that, you have sizing diameter considerations. The thing to do is measure the CYLINDER THROATS of the revolvers, and do a pound cast (impact slug, pound slug, pound cast, etc.) or chamber cast of all three rifles. Take precise diameter measurements to determine the largest common size that will fit all guns. If there's too much discrepancy here, you may have to segregate ammo. The MicroGroove guns can shoot very, very well with cast using the appropriate projectile, and the main trick to getting them to do so is to make the boolits absolutely as large as will safely chamber and fire in the gun. .433" isn't out of the question here sometimes.

Gas checks? You can do a lot without them if you understand the basics, so I'd say don't worry about it for now. Either way will work, and gas checks can be a nice cheat, but I'd say learn with a plain base and only worry about checks if you have to. I don't use gas checks in any of my .44 Magnums and push simple lead/tin alloy very hard with excellent accuracy.

Once you have all that data on size, cast some of your Lee boolits and see how they come out. Air-cooled clip-on wheel weight metal with about 1% tin added is great for starting out, and will do most of what you want including perform well on game. If you don't have a real, name-brand, 0-1" C-clamp style micrometer, you will need one for this. Calipers won't do it.

You'll need to establish seating depth (usually provided for you by the crimp groove) and make sure it works in all the guns. Making "dummy" ammo with no primer or powder will help check these things. You will need to roll-crimp in the groove so that the boolit cannot "telescope" into the case when subjected to recoil forces in a tubular magazine, and also not "pull" under recoil in the revolver cylinders. Case tension on the boolits does most of the holding work, but the crimp is icing on the cake and adds insurance in the revolvers.

You'll need to religiously remove every trace of copper fouling from all the the guns if they've ever been fired with jacketed bullets or you can have some serious lead fouling issues even if you do everything right with the powder type/charge weight, lube, boolit alloy, and boolit fit. Fit IS king and is the key to accuracy and preventing leading.

My best advice is to pick ONE gun and work with it until you're happy, then move to the next. I'd start with one of the pistols first. There are a ton of details to work out with each gun, things to check dimensionally, things to stress over and lose sleep over, or you can just cast some boolits, load them with some starting loads, put them downrange, and see what happens. You might get lucky, you might not. We're here to help when you have specific problems.

I know this is a lot to take in, but the answers to your questions (which are all quite good, by the way), can be quite involved and impossible to answer directly without knowing a lot more specifics than you provided, and I'm sure that being new to this you probably don't have a clear idea of WHAT to ask.

With regard to knowing some of what you need to know and questions you should be finding the answers to, if you haven't read From Ingot to Target, a cast bullet guide for handgunners, and Glen Fryxell's fantastic articles on shooting cast boolits in the Marlin leverguns, you owe it to yourself to go to the lasc (dot) us website and check them out.

Gear

[winelover]

I don't think you could go wrong with NOE's 265 version of Ranch Dogs' RNFP. Here's a description.

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?77300-432-265-RFGC-Supplemental-Group-Buy

Winelover

[44man]

.429" is actually too small for most revolvers although I get one to work fine.
I never got the .44 Marlin to shoot anything beyond 50 yards, like Gear says, stupid twist. I tried from 220 to 330 gr boolits, even the 265 RD, every load. From .430" to .434", nothing worked so I sold the gun. I contacted Marlin and they sent me a copy of Greenhill.
The .444 was changed to 1 in 20" and should do well.
Go back and read again what Gear says.

[fred2892]

My marlin 44s luurve my Lee 6 cavity 429-200 grain rnfp. Every cavity drops nicely at .433 and are sized and lubed at .431. Its good out to 150 yards or so. Depends if you want long range/accuracy or cheap n cheerful plinking.

[Sensai]

I don't think you could go wrong following Geargnasher's advice. The only thing that I would add is, after getting your measurements, do your load developement and fitting one gun at a time. I've had my most frustrating moments when I tried to work with more than one gun at a time. Each is different, and demands to be treated that way! :D ;-) :D

[Shuz]

M&PManiac--I have owned the 2 types of 1894 Marlins you describe. I was never able to get either of them to shoot to my satisfaction with cast boolits from 200g up to 270g. Even .432 sized boolits, soft or heat treated, nothing seemed to work so I sold both of them. I also own a Marlin 444SS with a 1:38" twist and it shoots cast boolits sized .432 wonderfully. I own many 44 mag handguns, both Rugers and Smiths and shoot cast boolits very well in all of them. My point is this.....Every gun is an individual situation, perhaps with unique problems, but if you go back over Gear's excellent post and take his advice, I'm confident you will get many, if not all, of the guns you listed to shoot well with cast! Good luck!

[44man]

My marlin 44s luurve my Lee 6 cavity 429-200 grain rnfp. Every cavity drops nicely at .433 and are sized and lubed at .431. Its good out to 150 yards or so. Depends if you want long range/accuracy or cheap n cheerful plinking.
I always thought the Marlin .44 was a round ball gun! :kidding:
I will not hunt with a 200 gr boolit in the .44. NEVER to 150 yards with any boolit.

[M&PManiac]

thanks to all for the assistance to a rookie!!

[Chicken Thief]

The 44MAG Marlin 94's has a .432" 1:38" rifling so the 265gr Ranchdog is about max.

http://www.marlinowners.com/forum/attachments/marlin-data/5932d1320865705-marlin-bore-dimensions-different-models-calibers-nominal-bore-dimensions-doc1.pdf

And as you can see the 444 (depending on its age) also has a 1:38" twist.

My RD mould casts .433"-.434" and i size to .432" with gascheck for excelent results in my 1972 Marlin 94 in 44MAG.

[44man]

The 44MAG Marlin 94's has a .432" 1:38" rifling so the 265gr Ranchdog is about max.

http://www.marlinowners.com/forum/attachments/marlin-data/5932d1320865705-marlin-bore-dimensions-different-models-calibers-nominal-bore-dimensions-doc1.pdf

And as you can see the 444 (depending on its age) also has a 1:38" twist.

My RD mould casts .433"-.434" and i size to .432" with gascheck for excelent results in my 1972 Marlin 94 in 44MAG.
The early .44 did have a 1 in 38" twist and some boolits were able to reach enough velocity but Marlin got too many complaints so they changed it. However , they stood to their guns with the .44 and refused to change it. I wanted a .444 1 in 20" twist barrel put on my .44 and I was asked if it was still under warrant, course not, what is that short warranty?