Need some support

[lead4me]

I'm new here & new to casting boolits, but I can read and sometimes I even understand what I've read. But I'm having a hard time convincing my friend at work who got me into this casting "mess"[smilie=s: that the reason his 1911 is leading so bad is twofold 1) He cast his boolits to 14/16 BHN (Lee tester) & 2) He's sizing to .4515 with a tumble lube. He's shooting a officers 1911 & a Lee 230 RN over 4.0 Unique.
We slugged our bores and they are .451 with a Micrometer. I'm telling him to cast his boolits to 7/8 Bhn & leave them as dropped @ .4517/8 and try again. But he read somewhere that harder is better (jacketed bullet hard) & thinks that he is not high enough & want's some of my monotype to enrich his alloy.
I'm going to send him a link to this thread so he can read it himself, maybe some of you can shed some light on his "problem" & save my type metal for when I start loading for my rifle's.

[mooman76]

The 45 ACP is a relitively slow and low pressure round. He does not need that hardness he is wanting so in otherwards you are correct and he is wasting good alloy. I would also shot them as dropped especially when they are dropping so close anyway. Ask him to just try 10 rounds or so. What could it hurt.

[HeavyMetal]

Think your best bet is to change one thing at a time try it and then go back and try something else if it fails.

Checked the Lee manual, yes I know they don't do there own load data but they do list presuures, and found 5.0 grains of Unique as a start load for 230 grain lead boolits. Pressure is listed at 11,800 PSI.

Your friends 4.0 grain of Unique load seems a bit light, I'd bump the powder charge!

Then I'd play with a better lube, never liked LLA and then with boolit diameter in this case un sized!

Some where along the way the leading will go away. I'd worry about the hardness of the alloy last.

Now if he insists on staying with the 4 grain load he should make the boolits both softer and bigger in diameter, say .452.

A little experimenting will give you what you need but tell him harder ain't it!

[randyrat]

Size to .452....Also is his die squeezing/swaging the bullet down....Or is he
Crimping too much. I wouldn't use a hard alloy for a lght load - waste.....

Sized to 4515?
Where did you get a sizer die .4515

There are some that like using a hard alloys, but all the stars are lined up or everything is set just right. They clam good accuracy.

[Marlin Hunter]

I have both Lee .452 Tumble Lube molds. The rounds nose does not lead, but the truncated cone does. Both are about 18 BHN. Bullseye Powder seems to work good.

[Buckshot]

............Superb accuracy is had in the 38 Special using swaged or cast Pure Lead boolits, and that poor slug has to jump the barrel cylinder gap to boot. I routinely shoot my K38, Smith M67, 2 Victory models in 38 S&W likewise an Iver Johnson break top with pure lead. Great accuracy and no leading.

Since your buddy casts his own and you have a hardness tester, suggest a simple experiment. Have him cast 50 good slugs @ 10 bhn, and 50 @ 8 bhn over the same 4.0/Unique (I'd use W231 for such a light load, but go with what ya got). Since he's using LA do NOT size the slugs but shoot them as cast. Have him shoot five 10 shot groups with each, checking for leading after each 10. This is assuming there is no mechanical problem causing the leading issues.

..............Buckshot

[lwknight]

Sized to 4515?
Where did you get a sizer die .4515

It works out that sometimes with harder alloys. A 451 sizer might drop out .4515 because the higher antimony alloys are slightly springy.

[Halfbreed]

I cast mine at .452, use LLA, do not size, water quench WW, after digging a few out of a tree. They were in good enough shape to reload again.
Accuracy was pretty good as well. I have tried other ways of doing it, but this is the way I normally stick to.
Some friends who are much more knowledgable than me in this, guesstimate the BHN in the mid 20's.
Can somebody say hardball?
John

[Village Idiot]

If he is insiting its bullet harness have him water drop a few right from the mould, then let them sit at least a week (3 would be better). This will bring the hardness up without buying mono. I would doubt its harness with that soft a load. 1st thing I would do is load one exactly as he is doing now without powder or primer then pull the boolit and check it. My bet is the boolit is getting swaged in the crimping process. Is he using the lee full case size and crimp die for crimping? They are real bad about swaging lead boollits down when dealing with lead. Even with reg taper and roll crimp dies its easy to over do it and swage the bullet down especially with the tumble lube design as the bands are so narrow. I would also try loading as dropped without sizing the bullets. A harder boolit may resit swaging better than a soft one and fix the problem. However, if crimping is the problem it may not. Also some guns can have a tight chamber and a case loaded with a .452 boolit will not chamber. If this is the case going softer with the lead and boosting the load may help the boolit obturate and seal the boolit in the bore.
Let us know what the out come is, we may learn something also.
V.I.

[lead4me]

Sized to 4515?
Where did you get a sizer die .4515



Don't know what he's using to size with I think a Lee sizer. We had talked about his reloads not fully seating and he sized & I set mine deeper by .025, COL on his 1.220 & mine 1.195 It looks as though their is more to it than I thought. I like a challenge & part of finding a combo that will shoot great & have min leading is part of the journey. I have sent a link so that he can read this & join this site. So much info here shame to not take advantage of it.
Thanks for all the reply's.

[Bret4207]

Fit the boolit to the gun first then play with hardness. I thinl he needs a fatter boolit to start with.

[Houndog]

What Bret said +1
I size my 45ACP boolets to at least .452 and like .453 If the chamber will allow it. I cast my boolets in 50/50 mixture of wheelweights and pure lead and air cool them.
I also think his powder charge is on the low side.I'd bump it up to at least 5gr Unique, or better yet, go to something like 231, B eye or WST. Too low of a powder charge/ pressure WILL cause leading faster than an overload.

[runfiverun]

the most common complaint against most commercial cast is "they are too hard and too small"
followed by their lube or blamed on their lube.
i use ww's and stick-on's 75-25 air cooled with either titegroup or unique.
sized at 452.
i'll oil the slide and even clean where necessary but rarely clean a bbl.
there are a hundred mistakes you can make other than using a soft enough alloy to achieve the blistering velocity of 830 fps.
i water drop this same alloy for rifle loads in the 2200 fps range and over 40k of pressure.
a harder alloy is one thing but missing the diameter and not lubing properly or squeezing in a die will mess you up as much.
it's not the alloy it's something else.
still i'd air cool,leave the largest diameter that'll fit reliably and lube properly.
for some it's a coat you can barely see through lubing again.

[mdi]

If he is using a Lee factory crimp die it may swage the boolit down as it applies the crimp, making it even smaller than the .4515" you mentioned. This is why I don't use them for my .44 mag reloading; I size my boolits to .432" to fit the bore, and the FC die will swage them down a couple thousandths more, making them undersize for my guns.

[fatelk]

I have both Lee .452 Tumble Lube molds. The rounds nose does not lead, but the truncated cone does.
I wonder why that is? I used the RN TL bullet for years with no problems, recently bought the TC TL mold and am now going through struggles with leading.

I don't know if it will help or not, but here are my experiences working with loads for the Lee .45 truncated cone TL boolit:

I tried a number of things with this mold, as some may remember, but the most recent slugs I made were cast of stick-on WW lead. I don't have a hardness tester, but they are somewhere between pure and clip-on WW for hardness (pretty soft). They measure at .453" and are unsized. I give them two coats of alox/jpw tumble lube. For some reason these supposedly 230gr molds drop 245gr boolits, at least with this lead.

I have two .45 pistols. The one slugged .4525" and the other about .4505" (two extremes). I finally settled on 5.0 gr of Unique and they clock at 700fps. This load with these soft boolits does not lead in the tight barrel, but it does lead in the .4525 barrel. My next step is to use some harder boolits in the larger barrel, see what happens.

I'm still not quite sure what's going on with these bullets, but thought that since I was using a similar slug and the same powder I would add to the discussion.

[mpmarty]

I recently got a six hole 230gr TL TC LEE mold as my XD didn't like the 200gr semi wad cutter at all. My two 1911s work fine with the 200 gr over five gr of Red Dot. The 200 gr boolits never left anything in the bore but the 230gr TC TL leads the s**t out of the XD barrel and my 1911s too. I'm casting WW with a bit of mono added to bring up the tin levels. They cast pretty hard. I'm going to cast a bunch with a WW/pb mix and soften them up a bit to see if that helps any.

[lead4me]

I don't know if this matters but his & mine boolits are not the ones made for the tumble lube system. They are the ones with the single lube groove, I have pan lubed 75% of mine & tumbled the rest he is 100% tumble lubed. I was able to shoot some today, I shot the tumble lubed boolits around 75 shots. I have very light leading in my bore but my boolits only checked 7/8 BHN with lee tester. How much lead is "normal" after a shooting session? Should I expect 0 lead or is a little ok?

[MtGun44]

Tiny streaks of lead that do not increase with more shooting are fine. These will clean out
easily if you want, but don't build up so no problems. For most of my guns I get no lead
at all, even .44 mag max velocity or .357 max velocity, plain base relatively soft alloy. In
a few cases, maybe a light grey wash, barely visible with a bright light, but not
built up streaks.

I'm with Bret, get the boolit BIGGER, plus note that harder is totally NOT necessary, even harmful
if they are too small. I have only used the Lee mule snot a couple of times and am not much impressed
with it except that for a beginner it is dirt cheap to get started. I'm worried that this marginal
lube system is causing beginners to have poor results. Please try using real lube, too.

Bill

[lead4me]

20019

I made this tool to help with the pan lubing it is made out of ampco bronze it has a pusher that is spring loaded & works like a charm. The I.D. is .453 and you just set it over the boolit and push down. The boolit is left in place. no cleaning required pick it up out of the lube ready to load. Leaves the lube in the groves before I had problems with the lube being pulled out of the grove when I tried to push them out with a dowel stick.

[RayinNH]

[QUOTE=randyrat;
Sized to 4515?
Where did you get a sizer die .4515[/QUOTE]

Randy about a year ago I sold a Saeco sizer on this site that had a .4515 die in it. It was a Saeco die not an aftermarket one...Ray

[fredj338]

I'm also betting too hard a bullet for the low pressure & the crappy TL bullet deisgn. If you do not have enough lube, it's like shootign a naked lead bullet. You can try double coating w/ Alox, pan lubing & shooting them as cast. I run pretty much straight ww or even 50/50 ww/lead & have no leading issues from 800-900fps.