2 years later, my boolits are to hard to expand

[xacex]

Well, my nice 50/50,p/c Mihec 200 grain 45 ACP will now go through 4 water jugs without expanding. Seems the loaded rounds age hardened a bit. They expand well when fresh, but this wont do for long term storage. I did a 75 Pb, 25 COWW mix today that had a little copper put in the COWW. I am hoping it will stay a little softer, and allow for storage, and function of the h/p. Any ideas or tips going down this path for loaded ammunition?

[RP]

Test you alloy lets say 3 months after casting to give it time to settle into its natural hardness. When you first cast the lead is at its softest stage unless you water drop them. Then it takes time to harden as far as I know the date on how long it takes for water dropped bullets to return to this point is still being tested. But just casting and air cooling the general rule is around 30 to 45 days I say that's depending on temp so I play it safe and say 3 months. So if you have a hardness tested I test what my fresh bullets hardness are then the aged ones and go from there.

[xacex]

Thanks RP, I was going to do a hardness test of one of the expanded boolits, but I don't think it would make a difference because the fired boolit would have hardened up a bit over 2 years as well. It looks like I will need to put the data on hardness in the log as well as alloy used, and temp over an extended period. 75Pb/25 COWW I hope will keep the alloy soft enough, and shouldn't be a problem due to the coating. I will have to see what it does to accuracy.

[Echd]

In a .45 you should be able to shoot nearly dead soft lead with little trouble, especially with powder coat.

[RED333]

Shoot then into sand and see what they do.

[Freightman]

now you have hard ball ammo :bigsmyl2:

[xacex]

now you have hard ball ammo :bigsmyl2:

Yup! Started out as a nice H/P boolit, turned to hard ball.

[snuffy]

I too have that mihec mold, a great tool as well. When I cast the first boolits with it, I was using lead I scrounged from where I was working. A massive multi spindle drill that had 33 90 pound lead counter weights to counter-balance the drill head. They turned out to be nearly pure lead, with maybe 2% tin to make the castings fill better and reduce the temp needed to melt.

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This was cast then air cooled. Since I can detect no presence of antimony, I doubt very strongly that they would age harden. I could do a hardness test on some that have been cast for well over 3 months, but again I doubt they have age hardened. In fact one of the first batches of powder coated boolits were some of those, I fired them into my wax test media to recover them to prove the HF red PC stayed on the boolits, and survived the trip down the barrel and the rifling didn't cut through it. At the same time, I got to see if the PC would inhibit the expansion.

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The one on the left is the 200 RNFPHP from the mihec mold, the other is a lee 230 TL cast hard.

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Two 9's cast from the same soft lead, too soft for the 9's, but the PC prevented the leading that would certainly have happened. Accuracy was lousy, the 124 TL missed the entire target from 25 yards. The lee 124 RN was reasonably accurate, but not up to the normal acc. of the CZ 75B.

Cast of the correct lead, you should get expansion down the road. The important ingredient is the antimony, without any in the lead, it can't age harden.

[xacex]

May keep the 50/50 for 9mm hollow points, but the slow speed of the 45acp will need something different. Hopefully this 75-25 mix will do the trick. If not the next step will be 90-10, but I am afraid I will lose accuracy.
If you haven't seen the picture before, this is what it was doing up until last year on the left, and what it would look like now if fired into the same media on the right.
http://castboolits.gunloads.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=71431&d=1369440623

[tomme boy]

The 50/50 is still too hard. I was shooting some 9mm's yesterday into some really soupy mud. I was able to find a couple of the 124gr Mihec hp's and they did not do anything. These have sat on my bench for 2 months. Then they were sized and loaded and have sat another month.

I am going to reblend some alloy to 2/3 COWW to pure with a little tin. I use these for carrying and so does my old lady so I want them to work.

[snuffy]

The 50/50 is still too hard. I was shooting some 9mm's yesterday into some really soupy mud. I was able to find a couple of the 124gr Mihec hp's and they did not do anything. These have sat on my bench for 2 months. Then they were sized and loaded and have sat another month.

I am going to reblend some alloy to 2/3 COWW to pure with a little tin. I use these for carrying and so does my old lady so I want them to work.

Change that COWW to SOWW, then a bit of tin, you would have the right softness. 45 acp s a low pressure slow velocity cartridge, so leading and excessive boolit upset is not a concern, Especially with the powder coat.

[tomme boy]

Sorry about that I meant 1/3 COWW to 2/3 pure with a little tin.

[Love Life]

I like 20:1 or even 40:1 for my cast HP boolits.