dual lead cores

[BT Sniper]

A while back while surfing this sight I came across a thread the boolit caster's were attempting a soft nose cast boolit. There was a lengthy post as to how to make it sucessfuly yet it took several steps and took a long time. I couldn't find it in my 30 minutes of searching, if somone can locate it feel free to post the link.

So in my attempts to make a perfect 45-70 bullet I attempted a dual core as well. I can hear you all say you should only swage with pure lead and I agree. Yet my ability to gather wheel weights vs. pure lead seems to be on the side of the wheel weights.

I have used both and I must say I like the wheel weight alloy better. It will hold the edge of the bullet nose alot better then pure lead and with some caution it has worked well for me. Now if I had a ton of pure lead I would probably sign a different tune.

So I cast 150 grain cores from pure lead a while back. These became my soft nose for the .458 bullet core. I heated up a pot of ww alloy in the lee pot. On top of the melt I left a standard cast iron dipper to keep hot. I would place one of the soft lead 150 grain cores in the dipper and speed the melt with a tourch (about 8 sec to melt) I would then poor that into my bored out 340 grain core mold followed very quickly by the bootom poor of ww alloy from the pot. If I was to slow from pooring the pure lead to adding the ww alloy there would be a noticable division between the two lead cores. When I got the hang of it there was no division line.

The final weight of the new dual core came out 5 grains heavier than with all ww alloy. This was to be expected as the soft lead is heavier. Variation in weight was very close with the few I weighted, about +or- .5 grains.

I'll post some pics soon. I was able to score the soft lead tip with my finger nail but not the base. I think it will work out very well. A 400 grain .458 bullet with 150grain soft nose and a hard core.

This process is pretty slow compaired to dropping cores from a 2 cavity mold, and if your used to a 6 cavity mold it will be unbaribly slow but for a few 100 hunting bullets I think it will be worth it.

Good shooting,

BT

[jimrk]

You might look here. can also search youtube for ammosmith
http://www.ammosmith.com/bullet-casting-and-swagging/casting-softnose-bullets-3-part-series.html

[BT Sniper]

Thanks for the link. I'll have to look at it more closly later. I was actually able to achieve good results. I have turned my one bullet mold into a core mold so I can't get a pic of what a cast bullet would look like coming out of the mold but you can see the different lead in the rough core I have pictured.

You can see the slight division gap in the cores I was not quick enough in adding the base alloy to. It actually was not that difficult and I'm sure I could get very good results from a cast bullet if I wished.

I experimented with water droping some of the cores and compared to air cooled. The base was considerably harder. I ran my thumb nail up and down the sides of the cores and swaged core to test the hardness. I was able to dent the nose of all. The water dropped base I could not, nore the swaged core of either, yet the air cooled ww alloy seemed like I could just barly leave a mark.

Anyway as soon as I get the die together for the 45-70 it should make some interesting test results.

Good shooting,

BT

[windrider919]

I was the one with the thread on making soft nosed bullets a while back. But it turned out I was just re-inventing the wheel because another guy had done pretty much the same thing a year or so ago. As per where the pure lead came from: When I got my last 5 buckets of WW from the tire shop there were a lot of the stick-on type weights mixed in. These come in a ribbon of lead with deep part grooves and in use the tire guy just breaks off how many he needs. So the segments are exactly the same, and weight 1/4 oz. So I melted 1 ea pure lead and poured it into the mould, waited a couple of seconds and finished filling the cavity with WW. I had no cold join line after I turned the pot temp up high and cast fast. I water drop all my bullets because I don't like dings on my bullets and the water softens their landing. I don't do it to harden them but since I am shooting 1800 to 2000FPS hard is better. You can see the different lead on my bullets by the different colors. I have not had a chance to shoot any yet but when crushed nose to tail in the vise the nose expands to about 70 cal before the harder tail does anything. It looks like it will expand in firing quite well.
The secret seems to be to cast hot and fast.

By the way, another member is actually holding his mould down in the lead pot to remilt the pure lead then quickly pouring in the harder WW alloy. I tried that but it took forever to remilt and then it seamed that the two leads were mixing too much. Some of the bullets made this way had lopsided soft noses when tested by scratching on several different sides of the nose.

[Adam10mm]

So are you casting a two piece core, swaging it to uniform, then seat/swage to form a jacketed bullet?

I tried something remotely similar to that a year ago I think when I first got my 10mm CH4D swage dies. I used 2 RCBS 38-90-RN boolits and a 9mm casing to swage a 245gr JFP for the 10mm. Way too much core.

The second pic I used a cast 357-185-FN for the core plus a 38-90-RN on top. I should have tried to roll the jacket mouth over the HP like you did before but didn't think of it or how to do it.

It was a fun learning experience.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v239/freakshow10mm/Bullet%20Swaging/P3270003.jpg

Loaded 10mm JHP
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v239/freakshow10mm/Bullet%20Swaging/P3270002_02.jpg