44 mag 429421

[chevyiron420]

i got rained out cuttin grass today so i cleaned up the first of the lyman molds that my buddy loaned me. it had a little rust in it and a little steel wool and some PB blaster solvent seemed to clean it up good. after a good cleaning a poured a few hot ones with a batch of WW that was in the pot. soon it was dropping nice ones. i cast maybe 3 pounds and stopped. i always bought my cast boolits for this gun, so this is new to me. also the boolits i bought were gas checked, so here is my question. assuming a good fit, and 50\50 lube, how fast can i drive these plain base boolits, and with what alloy? i have WW's, a little bar solder, and some linotype. i noticed my lyman book is calling for linotype. the boolits i cast today with WW's are dropping at .430 and they are only snug in the cylinder at the parting line, and arent tight 90 deg from the parting line. i dont know, but i may have to use lino to get a big enough boolit. what do you think? oh yeah, the powder will probably be 2400 and the gun is a older redhawk.:cbpour:

[44man]

They should shoot just fine the way they are. You can also shoot PB as fast as you want from your revolver.
If you get some leading, water drop the next ones you cast.

[Bret4207]

Start low and work up. .430 may shoot fine, see what the gun says. If the boolit fits and the alloy is decent and your lube is workable you should be able to go near full house loads.

[Lloyd Smale]

I pretty much limit plain based bullets to 1200 fps but you can go a bit higher if your accuracy doesnt start deteriorating.

[Bass Ackward]

oh yeah, the powder will probably be 2400 and the gun is a older redhawk.:cbpour:


Let me commit the cardinal sin and admit to leading.

I need to fess up because chances are good that you are going to need to know. 2400 can be problematic when you are first starting out. It is for me anyway.

2400 has a fairly high nitro content that can increase cutting if your charge isn't correct for your hardness with PB bullets. I also think that the carbon residue left behind doesn't provide as much film to act as a lubricant as other powders do that don't burn so hot either. So even if you seal, you might still get leading up the pipe sooner (velocity wise) than you otherwise would, depending on lube.

I use 17 1/2 grains with ACWW. At 16 grains I begin to get some leading that will negatively affect accuracy until it builds and stops from a clean gun. Most new folks are paranoid about leading, but if you just keep shooting, and it doesn't continue to build up to where your rifling can't hold the slug, accuracy will tend to come back. Chances are, be better than it was before the leading began depending on your lube. Velocity will pick up too as the lead rides on lead instead of steel. Sort of like 22LRs. :grin:

Just resist cleaning if this works for you. If you are a cleaner, you may want to change powders and use a harder slug.

[Shuz]

In a lot of my .44 mags, I've found that 18g of 2400 and 429421 at from Bhn 10 to 14, shoots real well and doesn't lead. My boolits are sized to .431, even tho most of my Smiths have .429 throats! Seems to work fine, and .429 sized boolits definitely lead my Rugers that have .431 throats.

[lurch]

21gr. 2400, ACWW works pretty well for me. I get a little leading that moves around in the bore from shot to shot and never seems to accumulate. A single tight patch & kroil is all that I need to make it shiny again. YMMV. Boolit fit & lube are also a part of the equation as has been alluded to.

[chevyiron420]

i hope i dont bore you guy's, but let me give you some history on me and my redhawk. i dont remember the year but the redhawks were new and all the rage at the time. my wife and i hung out and shot with a friend that was a reloader, boolit caster, swager, and more. he ordered this gun for me and had me shoot about 300 rounds of factory threw it first. after that we switched over to cast. the load was 22 grains of 2400 and his 240 or 245 grain semiwadcutters with gas check. the combo was extreamly accurate and powerfull. sometimes i would have a small amount of lead on the leading edge of the rifleing but usually not after 100 rounds. my casting equipment was growing but there just wasnt any need at the time to buy the molds and sizer for the 44 cause boolits from my freind were cheep and worked perfectly. then he moved to arizona!!! so i lost my place to shoot and my boolit supply. i switched to 240 grain XTP's for a wile and they worked real well but i couldnt afford to keep that up so the gun sat in the case for years. my first atempt to get restarted with the gun came when another friend loaned me a lee 215 semiwadcutter plain base mold. i cast up three tubs full of boolits. they are water dropped ww's. they fit tight as cast so i tumble lubed them twice and loaded over 10 grains of unique. i think it was 10? anyway, i got a chance to try it out and after 10 rounds the gun was covered in soot and so was i. the rifleing was burried in lead and so was the cylinder. it took me 2 weeks on and off to get it clean. so i am Parinoid! i usually have to rely on my son to take me shootin anymore so its hard to get range time to experiment with load development, plus our range is closed right now cause there moving. the mold im using now, the 429421 is also borrowed so i need to cast up a good supply of boolits that have the best chance of working good and then return the mold. i also would like to get back to the 2400 load that i have had alot of success with in the past.:coffee: