offshore44
12-29-2014, 02:28 PM
The spousal unit got me an RCBS 44-250-K for Christmas, and I got a chance to do a little shooting with it this weekend. Yee-Hah!
After cleaning the mold well, I cast up about 130 or so using my default alloy of 94-3-3. After the normal heating up process the mold is dropping a rain of nice boolits. It seems to like the alloy to be run just a little colder than normal and the mold just a little hotter than normal. Alloy temp at 650° F, and the mold temp dropping just on the edge of frosty. Perfect fill out and perfect sprue cuts. The bullets are weighing in right at 255 grains +/- a half grain. The diameter is running right at 0.429" plus a hair. I loaded up 120 of these with 14.0 grains of Blue Dot, and roll crimped them at the bottom of the crimp groove. That COL fills up the cylinder chambers nicely and falls easily withing specs for length and load from Lyman cast reloading manuals.
My Super Blackhawk is an older iteration, well loved and well used. Good strong rifling, minimal throat erosion and good solid lockup for a middle aged 44 Mag. The throats are generous, to say the least. They measure about 0.431" or so. Pretty uniform. The bore measures about 0.429" all the way through. Lucked out with no barrel constriction at the frame on this one.
Anyway, we shot about 60 of the 120 that I loaded. My skills with a big single action suck at the moment. Sometime in the last six months, I went from popping clays at 80 yards on a regular basis with my other mold and load to shotgun patterns at 30 yards with this one. Everything was going high and left, and a group about 18" in diameter. Not going to blame that on the pistol or the load. Mea Culpa.
This is a nice load, easy rolling recoil and no general craziness involved at all. It's an "all day" load. Which is good, because I'm going to need a lot of practice to get back in the groove with this thing.
Oh, two pulls with a bore snake cleaned the barrel. Not a bit of leading and very minimal antimony wash. This mold and design is a keeper for sure!
After cleaning the mold well, I cast up about 130 or so using my default alloy of 94-3-3. After the normal heating up process the mold is dropping a rain of nice boolits. It seems to like the alloy to be run just a little colder than normal and the mold just a little hotter than normal. Alloy temp at 650° F, and the mold temp dropping just on the edge of frosty. Perfect fill out and perfect sprue cuts. The bullets are weighing in right at 255 grains +/- a half grain. The diameter is running right at 0.429" plus a hair. I loaded up 120 of these with 14.0 grains of Blue Dot, and roll crimped them at the bottom of the crimp groove. That COL fills up the cylinder chambers nicely and falls easily withing specs for length and load from Lyman cast reloading manuals.
My Super Blackhawk is an older iteration, well loved and well used. Good strong rifling, minimal throat erosion and good solid lockup for a middle aged 44 Mag. The throats are generous, to say the least. They measure about 0.431" or so. Pretty uniform. The bore measures about 0.429" all the way through. Lucked out with no barrel constriction at the frame on this one.
Anyway, we shot about 60 of the 120 that I loaded. My skills with a big single action suck at the moment. Sometime in the last six months, I went from popping clays at 80 yards on a regular basis with my other mold and load to shotgun patterns at 30 yards with this one. Everything was going high and left, and a group about 18" in diameter. Not going to blame that on the pistol or the load. Mea Culpa.
This is a nice load, easy rolling recoil and no general craziness involved at all. It's an "all day" load. Which is good, because I'm going to need a lot of practice to get back in the groove with this thing.
Oh, two pulls with a bore snake cleaned the barrel. Not a bit of leading and very minimal antimony wash. This mold and design is a keeper for sure!