Bullet hardness

[Ball Caster]

Just how much difference does the bullet hardness make? I am finally getting around to working with cast bullets in my 6.5 x 55 Swede, and I am curious how much difference the hardness of the bullet makes.Based on my muzzle loading experience, I cast 100 to 200 balls and sort them, by 1 grain increments. The entire batch is usually within 4 or 5 grains, on a 215 grain ball.Since I have been told not to use pure lead for center fire bullets, I have a collection of wheel weights, solders, unknown alloys and even some Lyman #2 to play with. So the plan is to cast 100 or so 140 grain 6.5 bullets from these various lead alloys and sort them by weight.So the question is how much difference does the harness make, if the bullets all weigh within say +/- 1 grain. These will be sized, lubed and gas checked bullets, I plan to load to about 1800 ft/sec.

[Hickok]

You can run clip on-wheel weights up to 1800 fps if you use a gascheck. Lyman #2 probably a little faster. Add a little tin to the alloy (Some solder has tin of differing percentages) and it casts a lot easier, giving better mold fill-out.

The faster you push the speed, the more difficult and involved it gets.

[Yodogsandman]

Here's some good information on boolit alloys....

http://www.lasc.us/CastBulletAlloy.htm

[white eagle]

Alloy composition can and usually does make a difference
example/ I have a 44 mag pistol that I was using pb/sn alloy
in,I was getting fairly good accuracy. I thought I could do better
so on the advice of another I tried a different alloy that consisted
of isolead and linotype at 3-1 and water quenched them.After sizing
and lubing them they were fired in same handgun and made a consistent
better accuracy in that handgun,so in that case it did make a difference.
So experiment and keep records of your progress

[Yodogsandman]

The 6.5x55 Swede is a tough one to start loading cast boolits for. Try to read up on it as much a you can before starting out by searching the Google Search box at the top of the page.. Best accuracy will probably be about 1500 FPS using an alloy approximating clip on wheel weight alloy, due to the fast 7 1/2 to 1 twist rate of the military Mausers.

Weighing will only show that lighter boolits have some antimony or tin in them. Weight will not tell you how much of one or the other. So, it won't tell you how hard the boolits will be.

9.0 gr to 11.0 gr Unique would be a good place to start for early success. I get about 2" groups at 100 yards using it in a scoped, M38 Swedish Mauser.

[vzerone]

If you have another rifle in a more suitable caliber I highly recommend that you learn on it first or the Swede will exasperate you. Then you may give up on cast in rifles all together.