windrider919
04-23-2009, 09:11 PM
Still no primers so no shooting but still experimenting for shooting. I read in another thread about a guy who was using pure lead to tip his bullets and casting the body harder. So I tried it and am looking forward to shooting them into some expansion medium.
What / How: Get some of the tape on wheel wheel weights that are all connected like a ribbon. It is segmented and each segment is marked 1/4. I used a deep sauce dipper set onto the surface of my lead pot and dropped in one ea of the pure lead segments. The adhesive on the back just burns up . I then poured the small drop of lead into the preheated mould, waited till it had solidified and poured my 20-1 alloy into finish filling the mould. the join line between the pure, soft lead and the hard body is invisible, they melt/join perfectly. The soft lead nose takes up most of the round nose section. I tested by putting one of the bullets in the vise, nose and tail on the jaws. when I tightened down slightly the soft lead nose mushroomed out to a larger diameter then the bullet body. when the nose had flattened out to about 70 caliber the harder body started distorting at the base and what was left of the nose. I was having to really crank down to get expansion on the harder lead.
This actually seems to work very well! the real test will be what it does at rifle velocities. Worst case would be the nose expanding and coming completely off the bullet with the base continuing on through but that would still leave a large wound channel. Sort of like a Nosler partition bullet does. Thinking about it a smaller caliber with a longer bullet might like this technique very well. What I liked about using the premeasured segments was that each one would be consistent in size / volume / weight. Years ago I had heard of pouring pure lead into the nose of a mould but the problem was getting the same amount for each bullet. With the weight tape that is all taken care of.
What / How: Get some of the tape on wheel wheel weights that are all connected like a ribbon. It is segmented and each segment is marked 1/4. I used a deep sauce dipper set onto the surface of my lead pot and dropped in one ea of the pure lead segments. The adhesive on the back just burns up . I then poured the small drop of lead into the preheated mould, waited till it had solidified and poured my 20-1 alloy into finish filling the mould. the join line between the pure, soft lead and the hard body is invisible, they melt/join perfectly. The soft lead nose takes up most of the round nose section. I tested by putting one of the bullets in the vise, nose and tail on the jaws. when I tightened down slightly the soft lead nose mushroomed out to a larger diameter then the bullet body. when the nose had flattened out to about 70 caliber the harder body started distorting at the base and what was left of the nose. I was having to really crank down to get expansion on the harder lead.
This actually seems to work very well! the real test will be what it does at rifle velocities. Worst case would be the nose expanding and coming completely off the bullet with the base continuing on through but that would still leave a large wound channel. Sort of like a Nosler partition bullet does. Thinking about it a smaller caliber with a longer bullet might like this technique very well. What I liked about using the premeasured segments was that each one would be consistent in size / volume / weight. Years ago I had heard of pouring pure lead into the nose of a mould but the problem was getting the same amount for each bullet. With the weight tape that is all taken care of.