lead for 45 acp

[dragonfire]

So other then ww's can any lead be used for the 45acp ? i found a good source of soft lead and need to know if it can be used with out having to mix or add ww's to it .

[Buckshot]

So other then ww's can any lead be used for the 45acp ? i found a good source of soft lead and need to know if it can be used with out having to mix or add ww's to it .

..............The 45ACP has kinda shallow grooves. Need to know how soft your soft lead is. If you can get a sample of it, try casting some up and give it a try. Who knows?

...............Buckshot

[R.M.]

The Bullseye shooters at my club just love the Star (or it's replacement) swagged .45 heads. They are about as soft as you can get, yet they shoot like Jack the Bear. This makes me believe that soft cast bullets should work. The swagged bullets don't have lube grooves either.

[calsite]

I've recently experimented with my .45acp, my mix was pretty soft but shot very well. After 50 rds. there was some leading in the barrel but that came right out with ten strokes of my cleaning brush and a few patches. The bullets I was using came from a Lee .452, 230 gr. tumble lube mould and were lubed with liquid alox. I read several accounts of people using a 50:50 mix of soft lead and WW's and having pretty good luck with that.

[dragonfire]

I found about 800 pounds of lead that was used for the old cable lines or something of that nature , 800 pounds!! i have to find a way to use that ,no way i will ever come across another find like this .

[Lloyd Smale]

buckshot kind of hit on it. About any lead will work for acps but with there shallow rifling harder is better. When i shoot competition with my 1911s its usually with a 5050 ww/lyno mix. Id use straight lyno if i could afford it. For practice is usuallly use wws but my loads all shoot slightly better as the hardness goes up. What i would do if i were you would be to mix that lead say with 25 percent ww to get some arsenic in it or add some mag shot to it for the same reason and water drop your bullets as you cast. Its kind of a pain to do it but id about bet your going to see smaller groups out of your gun. We tested 4 1911s and 3 625s once using 3 different bullet and 3 differnt powders with bullets out of 5050 pure/ww, ww, #2, 5050 ww/lyno and lyno and with only one exception the guns shot better all the way through the test as the lead go harder. The only exception was one 625 really liked the 200 lyman swc casted out of #2 and it didnt improve as the lead got harder but then it didnt get worse either. Keep the soft lead for guns that have adequate rifling dept or for bullets like wad cutters that have a lot of bearing surface to grab the shallow rifling.

[Woodwrkr]

I tried some "hard cast" bullets from Midstates Bullet and they left a tremendous amount of lead in the bore of my .45 ACP Series 70. Accuracy started off only mediocre and got continually worse until the bullets wouldn't even hit the paper!. Harder may work well up to a point but when the bullets get hard enough that the bullet won't obturate to fill the bore severe leading will occur.

[USARO4]

I mix 2 parts WW with one part pure. It works quite well in 45ACP. If you have trouble getting a good mould fill out add a little lead free solder for the tin.

[BD]

I've never had any issues with soft lead in .45 acp with "normal" target loads. I've shot up a bunch of reclaimed indoor range lead which made ingots of BHN 6 to 8 with no issues at all. That stuff was about 95% .22 rimfire boolits.

In fact I can't recall ever even getting concerned about hardness in the .45 acp. I was never that good of a bullseye shooter that the composition of the boolit entered into my thinking. I was always happy just to keep them in the black.

If it were I, I'd cast up a few hundred and see how it worked. IMHO most of the minor leading I've seen in 1911s has been due to folks using .452 boolits in .450 bores with no throat to speak of. The front edge of the chamber and the start of the lands take just a bit off of the front drive band of the swc's which the next round smears down the tube.

BD

[yeahbub]

I've gone as soft as 7-8 on the LBT scale and got good results on paper. In .357 and .44Mag, I was getting expansion pretty easily. Probably an iffy thing in the .45acp. . . . . .

[Stevejet]

Neither my Colt 80 Series Gov't. Model or S&W 1911 ever show any leading, wether I shoot my casts from WW with standard Lyman black lube or commercial Bear Creek, Silver State or Hardcast bullets. I shoot 190 & 200 grain casts at 860 to 900 fps and 230 grain casts at 830 to 880 fps. I don't have the means to hardness check my casts and have never worried about them anyway. My melt is fluxed with canning wax about every 20 - 25 minutes and when I have to add a lot of new ingots, but that is only to remove dirt.

Revolver leading in .38/.357/.44/ and .45 is minimal and a Lewis Lead Remover does a good job for me. However, soft swaged Speer bullets over a years time (couldn't cast during that time) really "lined" my handgun barrels until the riflings looked like smooth ripples! Lewis Lead Remover to the rescue.

[mroliver77]

No offence intended Loyd but I dont see where water dropping is a pain. I set 5 gallon bucket on top of another just to the left of my pot.I use a large towel draped over and into the bucket. I pour, move left to a pan with wet cloth for a second on sprue plate and then cut into cake pan and drop into the bucket ala Bruce B technique. I only move mebbe 18 inches in all. This goes very fast and Boolits can be dropped quickly into the bucket never having to stop to arrange like dropping onto a pad. When done I gather up the corners and lift the towel filled with boolts out of water to be spread onto a dry towel and put my hologen lamp close by to dry them. It works so well I water drop even boolits that dont benefit from it othe than the wuick cool and less chance of damage. But back on topic I agree with Lloyd that ww/soft lead water dropped works well for .45acp for me. J