Softer boolits in revolvers

[44man]

I have never shot soft boolits in my revolvers. I use from water dropped WW's to WW's with tin and antimony added. I keep reading here and in books that to get accuracy the boolit has to be soft and objurate (spelling?) to prevent gas cutting, etc. and to be accurate. I thought I was missing out on better groups. I spent hours making boolits with 1 to 16 and slightly harder with a small amount of antimony added for my .44 and .475. I loaded reduced loads up to just below max for both guns. I spent most of the day shooting and cleaning between alloys and loads.
I thought things were great when the first 3 shots cut one ragged hole at 50 yd's, but things went to hell in a hurry. After each test I had to pound the rod down the barrels. I never seen so much lead since I had to clean police .38's used to shoot wadcutters at the Cleveland police force range. Those were so bad I almost had to use a torch to melt it out.
These boolits were all throat size and could barely be pushed through, unsized and hand lubed. I was getting sprayed with stuff with each shot. The guns were filthy after each session with fouling and lube all over the guns.
The lead to the throats were packed with lead and took a lot of work to remove. It's a good thing they were a BFR and Ruger with smooth bores. the lead cleaned out with just 4 tight patches.
All of you can keep your soft boolits, never again will they grace my revolvers! Not once did I approach the groups I get with hard boolits.
Maybe this worked with the old black powder loads and BP lubes but I am convinced it does not work with modern powders and lubes.
I shot 175 rounds today from light, fast powder loads to almost max with slow powder. NONE WERE ANY GOOD.
By the way I used 2 different plain base boolits for each gun that usually give me groups from 1-1/2" to less at 50 yd's when cast hard.
I will stay with the hard stuff, thank you!

[Bass Ackward]

I spent hours making boolits with 1 to 16 and slightly harder with a small amount of antimony added for my .44 and .475. I loaded reduced loads up to just below max for both guns. I spent most of the day shooting and cleaning between alloys and loads.


44,

If I remember right, you use the tight brass technique for ignition and shoot heavier bullets. For a 10 BHN bullet, you were probably loosing diameter. Maybe up to .005. That would explain the leading.

Sometimes diameter loss is great enough that it doesn't completely straighten out the crimp until after the bullet has gone. Then the bullet is damaged and shows a lot of leading in the ramp area. And you get a lot of spatter. The dirt and lube tells me that you did indeed lead up.

It seems as though you may be discussed at this point. One day you might try loading one and then pulling it for measurement just to see what was happening.

[45 2.1]

44,

If I remember right, you use the tight brass technique for ignition and shoot heavier bullets. For a 10 BHN bullet, you were probably loosing diameter. Maybe up to .005. That would explain the leading.

Sometimes diameter loss is great enough that it doesn't completely straighten out the crimp until after the bullet has gone. Then the bullet is damaged and shows a lot of leading in the ramp area. And you get a lot of spatter. The dirt and lube tells me that you did indeed lead up.

It seems as though you may be discussed at this point. One day you might try loading one and then pulling it for measurement just to see what was happening.

A very good synopsis of what happened. Your technique was not correct for what you were trying to do.

[44man]

Bass I took care to expand the brass a little more. I used my old RCBS .44 expander and a home made .475 stepped expander instead of the Hornady's. I knew not to squeeze the boolit down. If you remember, I posted about that problem once.
In my BPCR I only size enough to hand insert the soft boolits, no expanding even needed. I jack the die off the press with a thick spacer.
I am very familiar with the problem.
Thanks for mentioning it though.
I also did not crimp hard and they opened fully. It wasn't worth the trouble to change my setup all around to try them. Now I have to re-adjust everything.

[KCSO]

All my best results with soft bullets in the revolver have been with black powder. I load a 45 Colt with a 1-20 230 grain slug sized 454 and push it down on 28 grs of FFG and a felt wad. This load will run right at 2" at 25 yards from my 4 3/4" Cimmarron/Colt. I get NO leading with black, switch to 7.5 of Unique and the same bullet will lead at the forcing cone. Switch to a w/w bullet sized to 452 and no leading with the smokless load.

My conclusion is that smokless powder is the curse of the devil, and the leading is Gods way of telling you to use black with soft lead.

[44man]

I have been trying to picture what might be happening. I think the soft lead expands into the slight gap in front of the brass, this would cause the leading at the start of the throats. Then when the boolit enters the forcing cone, it acts like a plug of putty and fills the entire forcing cone so the boolit looks like a shuttle cock, with portions actually entering the cylinder gap as fins and being blown away, which is why I was getting particles sprayed out. From there it is sized back to bore size. The lube is squeezed away at the forcing cone and is blown on the sides of the cylinder where I had a buildup. Now there is a tight, unlubed chunk of lead scraping down the bore, leaving long strands behind. The boolits whole integrity is long gone before it exits the muzzle. The nose has most likely slumped back too. There might also be some skidding involved. Picture shooting a heavy marsh mellow.
My problems might be caused by the heavy weight of the boolits too. Just too much inertia.

[David R]

44 man,

I have been thinking about soft boolits, and I think you saved me a whole bunch of work. I have been casting them "too hard" for many years and have no problems. I think I'll stick to it for now.

David

[357tex]

I always shot straght WW in my 357's untill I loaded some 38's for the grandkids to learn with.Out of my2.5in md 19 3.5gr green dot with158gr tumble lube bollit it leaded bad after 50 rounds had lead strings coming out .I know it was not going very fast .So I cast some bollits using 7 lbs.of soft lead and 3 lbs. of WW they shot great at 38 speed out of the short pistol.I tried them at 357 speed 1300fps they still shot great.No leading thats all I use now in my 357's.I have about 100lbs of soft lead from old shower pans I need to use anyway.So it works out good.
By the way that 1300fps is out of 6in blackhawk,in the 2.5 md 19 its 975fps. 6gr greendot.thats fast enought for me and most of my shooting. :lol:

[Char-Gar]

Soft and hard are meaningless terms as they can mean whatever folks want them to mean. In traditional thinking 1/16 with some antimony would be "hard cast". Although by what some folks do today it would be considered as soft.

Sixgun bullets can be too soft and too hard depending on the pressure of the load. Also bear in mind that not all leading is the result of the alloy.

At one point in time, I thought the harder the better, until I cast some 38 wad cutters our of Linotype and shot them over 2.7/BE and has a good K-38 full of lead and coulnt not figure out why.

I now use only 3 alloys for sixgun use.

1. Straight WW plus a little tin - This works just fine for velocities from 800 to 1,100 fps. Some foks push them harder, but my tolerance for lead in the barrel is zero. Put a gas check on this alloy and you can push it as fast as a bullet can be pushed in a handgun.

2. Good ol Lyman No 2 is used for "magnum" loads with plain base bullets. I have never found any need for a harder bullet in a sixgun.

3. The only binary alloy I use any more is 1-20 which I use for hollow points in the Magnums.

Folks can use harder and softer alloys than the above for some applications, with good results, but the above three cover the entire range for my use.

[Bass Ackward]

Sixgun bullets can be too soft and too hard depending on the pressure of the load. Also bear in mind that not all leading is the result of the alloy.

Chargar,

I pretty much agree.

It seems to me that everything in the cast world works "best", in rifles or handguns, when you get your mix just hard enough to prevent leading for a particular load. Barrel temperature, whether ambient or from shooting, will affect this as well. So if you want to shoot fast and high pressure, then hard can't be beat. Then after I gain confidence in the load, I fine tune my mix / hardness.

But in addition to pressure, you have to consider bullet weight because of inertia. A 200 grain bullet at say 24,000 psi will be moving faster when the 24,000 peaks than a 300 grain shot at 24,000 psi unless you slow powder burn rate considerably. Max psi for the 300 grain may actually happen while the bullet is still in the case. So you "may" need a harder bullet for the 300 grain at the same pressure / velocity levels. People often don't consider that when someone quotes a load and technique.

[44man]

Right on guys! Very good answers and they mirror my thoughts on the subject. Match the hardness to the weight, caliber, velocity and gun condition. Then you also have to consider the powder and primer used.
Ya know what? Makes my head ache! I will stick with what has worked for me. But this was an interesting experiment. And I got to shoot more in the bargain.

[Bass Ackward]

Bass I took care to expand the brass a little more. I used my old RCBS .44 expander and a home made .475 stepped expander instead of the Hornady's. I knew not to squeeze the boolit down. If you remember, I posted about that problem once.

44,

Sorry. I am lucky that I can find my way home at night sometimes. I forgot. And I should have considered that you would have considered that.

I still think that maybe you got the technique correct, but maybe took entirely the wrong approach. Most people I run into can take time with shooting a rifle, but they just crank a cylinder full out with a wheeler. Often barrel temps get pretty warm this time of year. So soft failure today might be soft success in January. That's why most experienced casters say work up your loads as hot as you will shoot, then accept less accuracy in cooler weather or soften.

I always start hard and then work softer until I maximize performance. My water driopped might be 24-25 BHN. Then I boil them for 15 minutes to get 18-20 and try that. Then I drop to 14 range. If it goes down to 10 BHN, then so be it. But I never just grab 10 BHN bullets and say let's see what happens. Especially a heavy PB. I have some loads that shoot top notch at 10 BHN, but they wear checks too. Most of those exceed throat diameter by .002 too. The faster and the heavier the bullets I go, the smaller diameter I go and the harder the bullet I use. Then I fine tune.

[felix]

Actually, leading is a function of shear strength. I personally have been calling this boolit "toughness". A high antimony boolit can be extremely hard (via quenching, for example) and still lead up a barrel because the boolit's shear strength is lacking. Adding enough tin to cover enough of the antimony will toughen up a boolit considerably. If the resulting boolit becomes to soft by "accident", adding a smite of copper (from high coppered low speed (lead based) babbit) will help cure the boolit making the antimony hardness not as important. ... felix

[9.3X62AL]

Very interesting thread here.

I currently use only 3 metals/alloys for my casting. 1) Unalloyed lead for M/L and C&B applications. 2) WW for revolver and non-critical autopistol boolits (NOT 9mm and 40 S&W, in other words). 3) Taracorp (92/6/2) for rifles and the PITA pistol calibers. Leading seldom occurs for me--damn seldom. I don't expect expansion, and don't push rifle velocities much past 1800 FPS very often.

I brewed some 30:1 for black powder cartridge work a while back. This did superb work in the Ruger #1 x 45-70 using the Lee 405 plain base, but was less successful in the Win '73 x 44-40. In that case, the first 6-7 shots did quite well, but the barrel fouled out after that and the rifle "went shotgun" on me. No leading, though--the metal didn't have a chance to do so with all that charcoal clogging up the works. It occurred to me at the time that the 38-40 might have been developed in black powder days to use in fouled-out 44-40's, but perhaps not.

It sure was fun shooting the old original fuel in that '73, though. A boolit with more lube capacity than the Lee 44-200 and maybe a Wonder Wad and card between boolit and the Holy Black (as in the 45-70) might produce better results. A scraper groove, too--upon seeing the bore's condition, the concept of "gas check front" briefly dawned. Well, never mind that.

[KCSO]

Keep working with lube in that 44-40 you should be able to get at least 25 shots without losing accuracy. You may also need to switch powders, I am having good luck right now with Schutzen. Goex is awful dry and Elephant is soft fouling, but dirty. Ned Roberts used Curtis and Harvey and claimed that he could shoot 125 rounds with the last shot going into the same group as the first.

As to alloys I use w/w and 1-20 for all my revolver shooting and I use 1-10 for my 45 ACP and 9 MM. It was the leading from soft 45 Auto rims that got me into casting for handguns may years ago. Some of those old Remington loads would lead you out in 10 shots.

[Char-Gar]

Sixguns are special needs children when it comes to cast bullets. There are few things I know for certain and a few things about which I continue to ponder. I am not very scientific, just an old geezer who has been shooting sixguns for a long time. Here is what I know for certain.

1. There is no such thing as melting the base of a sixgun bullet. They don't melt.

2. There is such a thing as gas cutting on the sides of the bullet if they don't obdurate to seal the bore.

3. Bullets which are too hard for the pressue don't obdurate and a bevel base seem to make the problem worse.

4. Sixguns bullet, depending on the temper of the alloy and the pressure can obdurate in the cylinder throat a small amount..up to say .003 or so.

5. However bullets the same size or a couple of thou over the cylinder throats don't need pressure to seal and seem to do best.

6. A small, shallow or rough barrel forcing cone will induce leading no matter what you try.

7. Some barrels are filled with micro burrs and other machine hickies and will lead no matter what unless they are removed.

8. Bullet lube is not as critical in sixgun as it is in rifles. Although some of this commercial hard wax stuff is pretty much usless.

9. Gas ckecks will reduce or eliminate leading in most cases.

10. Bhn 15 is as hard as anybody needs in any sixgun bullet.

There may be one or two more that have slipped my mind..but the above is true from my experience which is considerable.

None of this means much without a standard of what leading is or is not. I will run a good fitting bronze brush, soaked with a good solvent down the barrel and give it no more than 20 two way passed. Follow that with a couple of solvent soaked patches and then a couple of clean ones. If there is any lead left in the barrel after than, it is unacceptable.

I have had several stubborn sixguns over the years that have wanted to lead..but persistance have forced all of them to become acceptable. I have never thrown one in the river yet, although I was tempted a couple of time. I just refuse to be beaten by a souless hunk of steel.

[Char-Gar]

Dippity Al..

Your alloys are pretty my like mind. Taracorp and No 2 give about the same hardness. Taracorp does it by using more antimony and less tin than the older Lyman mix. I also use No. 2 for most rifle applications.

[9.3X62AL]

The price of tin keeps me from trying #2 Alloy. I did some Linotype casting years ago, but for my uses the Tara does just as well.

I'll be blending some more Tara next week after I pick up some WW ingots and foundry type. WW/FT at 90/10 will get ya pretty close. I did score some more WW metal on Saturday from my wife's uncle--he got close to a ton of the stuff from some Tijuana metalshop to use for ballast in the sailboat he's building. This was put up in 2" x 4" strips 1' long, and 1" x 4" strips 18" long. These he cut with a 7-1/4" circ saw to fit the bottom of the hull. Altogether, I've recovered about 120# of ends and pieces, and a 5 gallon bucket of shavings. The shavings have yielded 22# of ingots, and it's about 3/4 emptied out. The metals people in Mexico weren't real judicious about fluxing out dirt, but it's for sailboat ballast--not boolits.

[BOOM BOOM]

HI,
1)My experence w/ store bought 38 wadcutters, 38 semi wadcutters, & 44 semiwadcutters was always dissapointing as they were soft & leaded.
2)They were certainly no more accurate than my cast air cooled ww.
3)I am happer now w/ H2O quenched ww. I think the groups are better & I can shoot 38s, 357S,& 44s hotter.
4) I tried to make lyman #2 alloy a long time ago but didn't see enough difference in pistol preformance to justify it.
So I stay away from soft except in muzzel loaders for hunting. There I use 1# Pb to 4# ww. At about the same vel. as the mag. pistol loads. I've read that some folks have had success w/ straight ww in muzzel loaders, but I haven't succeeded at that yet.

[lar45]

Water Dropped WW is about all I do. When ringing out the 454 we tried air cooled WW, water dropped WW, oven hardened WW, 50-50 WW-lino. Nothing seemed to shoot better than water dropped WW.

I may need to do something else for rifles, but water dropped WW is working fine for me.

[buck1]

I must be lucky or something. WW+2% tin air cooled , handles all my 44s just fine up to 1200FPS. Sometimes I get a small bit of leading that comes right out. They shoot GREAT. ....Buck

[Newtire]

And...speaking of revolver accuracy...I am a novice when it comes to revolvers & cast bullets. I have this H & R .32 Mag that I haven't been too impressed with. Haven't given it much chance but just don't know where to start. With rifles, I have always gotten best accuracy seating bullets out closest to rifling. I was wondering if I should seat the bullets a little deeper (farther from the barrel) maybe in order to give the bullet a chance to obturate before leaving the cylinder? I am seating them longer than the oal calls for right now just to get them closer to the barrel throat. I am using a .314" RCBS SWC 98 gr. PlainBase water dropped WW. the front of the cyl. measures .3135". Bore slugs at .3115". Don't have any leading or lead cutting going on. OK...so my question is if seating the bullets a little deeper might affect things in a positive way?

[Bass Ackward]

And...speaking of revolver accuracy...I am a novice when it comes to revolvers & cast bullets. I have this H & R .32 Mag that I haven't been too impressed with. Haven't given it much chance but just don't know where to start. With rifles, I have always gotten best accuracy seating bullets out closest to rifling. I was wondering if I should seat the bullets a little deeper (farther from the barrel) maybe in order to give the bullet a chance to obturate before leaving the cylinder? I am seating them longer than the oal calls for right now just to get them closer to the barrel throat. I am using a .314" RCBS SWC 98 gr. PlainBase water dropped WW. the front of the cyl. measures .3135". Bore slugs at .3115". Don't have any leading or lead cutting going on. OK...so my question is if seating the bullets a little deeper might affect things in a positive way?


NT,

Whole new ball game from rifles. Seating deeper improves ignition. But it raises pressure too. There are multiple techniques (ways) to achieve success. Each has merit for different applications, like for fast powders or slow. So you need to read through these threads here to get an idea. A lot of information to digest. If you have some misalignment, you might need to drop diameter some. See what happens. As a general rule I have found that the smaller the bore diameter, the closer to it you want to size. For your, you might need to drop to .312 and try it.

[44man]

I always heard and thought that the boolit has to be close to the forcing cone until I got my BFR 45-70. The boolit is so far down in the cylinder you need a flashlight to see it. This thing shoots better then most rifles. I have had less then 1" groups at 75 yd's and sub 2" groups at 100 yd's. I have shot a bunch of 1/2" groups at 50 yd's. I have shot it to 500 yd's with better accuracy then I get from my BPCR.
So, I have changed my mind about this and no longer worry about it. It is more important to find the load your gun likes.
Don't worry about the boolit obturating ahead of the lead and throat because you will get a lot of lead at the lead. Just shoot them as close to throat size as you can get them. My best accuracy has always been with boolits so hard they can't expand at all. I add tin and antimony to WW's but I don't want them to be brittle either. Hard, but still ductile. Water dropped WW's also work good.
It is better if your boolit just enters the throat and is a snug fit. Some of the round nose bullets have no support in the throat and can enter crooked. Seating these out a little can help but don't worry about how close it is to the end on the cylinder.
My opinion anyway!

[Cherokee]

:Fire: About all I use now is WW+2% tin, air cooled. Use these in my 45 Colts & ACP's, 38 Super, 9 MM, 357 Mag, 38 Spl, 41 Mag, 44 Spl, 44 Mag, 32-20 rifles and pistols and 30-30 rifle. Mind you, I am not going for top velocities but none are wimps either. I also use one of those hard wax commercial lubs. No Leading.

The only leading I get is when I use those commercial hard cast bullets, or when I load up some of those old hard bullets I usta cast.

But that is what works for me. Makes my hord of tin and Lino last a lot longer too.

[Blackwater]

I started casting when I got out of the Navy and went back to college with a wife and a son, so $$$ kept me using straight WW's for a long, long time. Only when I got a Lee 150 SWC HP mould did I splurge and buy some tin, to see if it'd keep the petals from that expanding HP from splintering off. It worked, but I never really saw much difference in the results of game I shot with them from what I'd seen with plain WW's. The tin added bullets DID seem to usually shoot a little better, but not by enough to really be concerned with when baby needed new shoes.

Also shot a lot of .45 ACP and .44 mags, almost all straight WW's - again due to needs elsewhere for tin money. Never even knew about water quenching, or don't remember that I did, and once I found the right temp to cast at, it the bullets were pretty darn consistent. Those pistol bullets were pretty easy to cast, and the aluminum moulds helped cool them quicker, so I could shoot more for the time I had to use casting.

Now that I've gone and got myself a BPCR, I've REALLY started to want to learn how to cast "perfect" bullets, and I'm more frustrated than ever! This USED to be such an EASY thing! Ain't it funny how that works??? :coffee: :Fire: :shock: :lol:

[Newtire]

Thanks guys! Got the thing about deep seating raising pressures, so will be careful there. I'll try seating them to depth recommended in the tables instead of way out there & see how they do then. I'll try the .312" diam. Guess I got another project!

[w30wcf]

Interesting discussion! So the question now is:

How did Elmer Keith use the 16/1 lead / tin alloy in the .44 Magnum with 22 grs. of 2400 so successfully? Hmmmmmm..........



Personally, I have found that w.w. + 2% tin air cooled works great in my .45 Colt Ruger blackhawk - 250 gr keith / 4227 / 1,350 f.p.s. and no leading.

w30wcf

[David R]

I dunno about Elmer, but I use 9 lbs wheel weights and one lb 50/50 solder and can shoot 22 grains of 2400 behind a gas check all day with out leading. Air cooled.

I am going to try 9 lbs wheel weights and 1/2 lb 50/50 solder quenched and see if they shoot the same. I think they will as long as the mold fills out.

David

[9.3X62AL]

Thanks guys! Got the thing about deep seating raising pressures, so will be careful there. I'll try seating them to depth recommended in the tables instead of way out there & see how they do then. I'll try the .312" diam. Guess I got another project!

I would be more inclined to size boolits at .314", given the throat dimensions you indicate. My RCBS 98 SWC drops at .315" in Taracorp, and about .0005" smaller in WW. My S&W in 32 Mag has throats just under .313", and groove is .312". .314"-sized boolits do nice things in that roller, regardless of boolit metal. I don't run them real hard most of the time--around 1100 FPS. I just got a #313631 (100 grain SWC/GC) that will get some firewall loads assembled, just to see what occurs. I'd like to run them fast enough to still be supersonic at 50 yards--dunno if that can be done safely.

[Buckshot]

http://www.fototime.com/9A2690ACC2C49CA/standard.jpg]http://www.fototime.com/F62E788DB7547E8/standard.jpg

The above are the best and the worst targets shot with my Ruger Vaquero 45 Colt using swaged pure lead boolits.

http://www.fototime.com/350C9999B0095F7/standard.jpg

The 2 boolits on the right were the ones used. They also have a pretty deep hollowbase. The loads were mild, as the swage die was made with an eye to target shooting. Lube was javalina. The revolver has .451" cyl throats and a .451" groove.

The slugs swaged to .454". There wasn't a trace of lead anywhere after firing 50 rounds.

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

[44man]

Very light target loads would most likely work with soft boolits with a powder that has a pressure range like BP, as does BP. I use a lot of pure lead with BP without leading. But I shoot medium to very heavy loads all the time. Even light loads with the powders I used gave me a lot of leading. I think the choice of powder has a bearing on the problem also.
Buckshot, How far were the targets? I would not be happy with the left target unless it was 50 to 75 yd's. I never shoot 25 yd's because every boolit and load from every revolver I own will do that at that range. 25 yd's will NOT prove a gun or load is accurate. Some loads that shoot tight groups at close range will fall apart as soon as the range is extended. In my opinion it is a waste of time and components to shoot close range. I even test my light, plinking loads at 50 yd's, minimum, because we also shoot the light loads to 100 yd's and beyond. My heavy loads are shot past 500 meters. I would be shooting much farther if I had the range.

[Char-Gar]

30WCF...The answer to your question/observtion is that you really don't need anything much harder in the 44 Mag. The operative word here is "need".

Shortly after the 44 mag was hatched, Ray Thompson did some load development work and started with 1-30 alloy. He found the bullets would compress/accordian due to the pressure. I settled on 1-20 as an alloy stout enough for the 44 Mag. There is very little, if no practical difference in the hardness of 1-16 (Keith) and 1-20 Thompson).

BTW the Thompson designed 429244 will outshot the Keith designed 429421 every day all day.

[LAH]

Quote: BTW the Thompson designed 429244 will outshot the Keith designed 429421 every day all day.

Interesting.

I shoot mostly air cooled w/w. Found in my sixguns the most important thing is fit. Believe it's more important than alloy or lube. Just my 2.

[Buckshot]

...........44Man, "Buckshot, How far were the targets? I would not be happy with the left target unless it was 50 to 75 yd's. I never shoot 25 yd's because every boolit and load from every revolver I own will do that at that range. 25 yd's will NOT prove a gun or load is accurate."

..........Well gee :D It's just a Ruger Vaquero with it's issue blade and grooved topstrap for sights. Sheesh, 50 or 75 yards:shock:!! You're killing me here. As I mentioned in my post:

" The loads were mild, as the swage die was made with an eye to target shooting." Notice the wadcutter? I thought it was kinda good except for that dad blamed flyer:cool:

I have a hard time with a peestol target :Fire: shooting at 25 yards let alone 50 or 75, HA! I don't have any scoped peestols and the old Mk1 Mod2 (have glasses) 52 year old eyeballs have enough trouble with a rifle sight out there maybe 40" away let alone a peestol at arms length.

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

[Char-Gar]

Lynn...You might not see the accuracy boost (429244 vs. 429421) at 25 or 50 yards, but at 100yards and beyond it becomes pretty obvious.

I agree that bullet fit in a sixgun is the prime factor in accuracy. Even the best alloy won't help a poor fit. However with a proper bullet fit, the correct alloy can make the difference between a so-so load and an excellent load.

I have found that bullet lube is way down the list of important factors in sixgun loads.

I am still shooting some of your WW 45 Keith bullets and they are still doing great in my 45s.

[LAH]

Chargar says: I am still shooting some of your WW 45 Keith bullets and they are still doing great in my 45s.

Glad they're working for you.

[Bret4207]

I'm with Chargar all the way. His observations match my own. My biggest question 44 Man is did you try to tailor the load at all, or did you just take what worked with your "hard" bullets and go from there? Also, were these GC or PB bullets and are they the same mould as your "hard" bullets?

[slughammer]

I never shoot 25 yd's because every boolit and load from every revolver I own will do that at that range.

Obviously a reason to go buy more guns. You need a challege, perhaps a few service Glocks and a nice 1911 with poor barrel fit?

We don't want you getting spoiled!