What happened?

[gunsablazin]

I have been casting .45 230RN with a Lee 6 cavity TL mold and was having OK results with it and the 45-45-10 lube, some leading, but not bad. The mold drops a bit small at .451, so I took the Lee FCD off my Dillon press and tried a standard taper crimp in its place, I also increased the powder charge from 5.2gr of 231 to 5.5 at the same time. The chronograph showed an increase of 50 fps, to about 765fps. The result of all this was a drastic increase in leading, and the boolit was apparently slipping on the rifling and causing the boolit to start tumbling. The alloy used was a %25 range scrap to %75 COWW, which worked with the old set up. I'm going back to where I started from and am going to try using two light coats of tumble lube instead of one and see what happens. Anybody got any other ideas i could try?:?

[epj]

The .451 size is probably the real culprit. Perhaps your mold could be lapped to a bit larger size? I shoot boolits sized and lubed at .452 and have no leading issues at all. Also there is a way to slightly adjust size through alloy and temp, but I'm not up to speed on these methods.

[Grapeshot]

Throw an ingot of Lino-type in your pot with your current alloy and it should give you a slightly larger sized bullet. Then size at .452.

Or, have the mold cavities lapped until they throw a bullet the correct diameter with your mix.

[94Doug]

Yup, I assume you're talking 45acp here, .452 would be more of a standard. With tumbling, perhaps you need a little larger yet? There is also a school of thought that auto boolits be super hard due to the lighter grooves in the bbl....

Doug

[462]

Beagle your mould (do a search) so that it drops at least .452". If that eliminates the problem, you can make a permanent repair by lapping the mould.

[Echo]

I would be leery of lapping a 6-banger - getting them all the same would be tedious. I like the idea of beagling, but I also like adding lino - adding the lino would be my first effort, followed by beagling.

[cbrick]

There is also a school of thought that auto boolits be super hard due to the lighter grooves in the bbl.... Doug

An undersize bullet and the harder the bullet the worse the leading. Make the bullet fit the firearm. Bullet fit is worth far, far more than the old wives tale of "hard cast".

The alloy used by gunsablazin should be just fine in the 45 ACP at the velocities he mentioned. I have used 6 BHN SWW HP's at 800-850 FPS in my 45 with zero leading but the bullet fit the gun.

Make the bullet fit.

Rick

[gunsablazin]

Going with the KISS principle, I'll start by adding lino to mix, I have about 1,300lbs of it on hand. Lucky me. Hopefully that will increase the diameter enough to make 'em shoot straight. If slowing the boolit back down and double lubing helps I'll post again. I'm not really concerned with a small amount of leading or velocity, as these boolits are used only for IDPA and practice for same. Thanks for the input guys.

[MtGun44]

Fit, fit, fit, fit.

Beagle up to .452, as said.

TL is marginal lube to begin with, easy to fall off the edge when it barely works.

Bill

[cbrick]

Think about it for a minute. You shot an undersized bullet at 715 fps with minor leading and then increased the charge and shot an undersized bullet at 765 fps and got worse leading. Your solution is simple, make the bullet fit. Beagle it, send it back for a proper sized mold or possibly an alloy change could gain enough to work but the solution is make the bullet fit and gunsablazin should be a happy camper.

An accurate bore slug measurement using a micrometer, not calipers will help in knowing what is a proper size bullet. All bores are not created equal but the odds are very good that .451" is too small.

Rick

[geargnasher]

Going with the KISS principle, I'll start by adding lino to mix, I have about 1,300lbs of it on hand. Lucky me. Hopefully that will increase the diameter enough to make 'em shoot straight. If slowing the boolit back down and double lubing helps I'll post again. I'm not really concerned with a small amount of leading or velocity, as these boolits are used only for IDPA and practice for same. Thanks for the input guys.

Nope, wrong conclusion. Hardening the alloy will exacerbate the situation. Try what everyone else has said about making the boolits fit.

Part, BUT NOT ALL, of your issue might also be when you switched to the taper crimp. If you use it, don't crimp. Just bump the case mouth in the die far enough to remover the bellmouth, NO MORE. Check this with a micrometer, keep adjusting the die down until the case mouth is .474" or so, then check in the chamber by removing the barrel and dropping one in there, it should go flush with the barrel hood with zero resistance.

As been said, your alloy is fine the way it is, and the lube, while marginal, will work if the fit is right.

Gear

[gunsablazin]

Gear,

You're raining on my parade. I was hoping to make this easy! Oh well I guess I'll have to learn how to beagle a mold after all. Wishful thinking had me hoping the lino would drop the boolit larger, no such luck huh?:(

Thanks,

Robin

[fryboy]

it will a lil bit .... sounds like u mite need a lil more , cant deny that fit is king and for the 45 ( a relative low velocity round ) a billion things will work for lube , i'm curious....u state u wonder if a second thin coat of lube will help .....if tumble lubed and sized they should have two coats ( mostly anyways ) and if ur not sizing i would recommend two coats but a lube no matter how good wont make up for poor fit ,i've used recluse's mix on alot of faster boolits with no leading it's also possible ur crimping ermm swaging ur boolit a bit with the FCD , as stated the 45 usually needs no more crimp than turning the bell back in , there is one thing i would definately suggest , when loading and checking out things it's usually alot easier to figure out what happened ( good or bad ) if u change but one thing at a time

[lwknight]

OK gunsablazin , while everyone is hollering Fit Fit Fit even though you said that you had evidence of skidding the rifling. Win 231 is a realitively fast powder and a 45 caliber is harder to spin up to rpm. Your take off might be too quick for the alloy.

Maybe you just barely had fit and maybe taper crimping was the last straw.
As I see it , you have a few choices:
1. Harden the alloy.
2. Use a slower powder for a smoother take off.
3. Go back to the original recipe.
4. Try a larger boolit.
5. Try without taper crimping or back off the crimp a little.

If its not for hunting , my favorite choice would be to harden the alloy.

I believe that if you are skidding , that it a result of the problem that leads to leading
and that lube has nothing to do with it in this case.

If nothing else , maybe I give you some ideas to ponder.

[geargnasher]

LWKnight makes a series of excellent and very accurate points, although I maintain that hardening that alloy alone won't solve your problem. It would help to know it you are actually skidding or gas gutting. Gas cutting can happen from undersized boolits, too-soft an alloy, or too-fast a powder, whereas skidding is only caused by too-soft an alloy and/or too fast/too much powder. A really close look at recovered boolits would reveal the culprit.

After fit comes load balance. Caliber (diameter of base), powder burn rate, shape of case, length of barrel, bearing surface, and desired velocity all come into play to create a balanced load. I wouldn't try to use Bullseye to get 950 fps out of a .45 1911 with 8 bhn boolits. I might get 650 or so with 8 bhn and HS6, but I'd rather do it with 12 bhn and Universal or Unique.

If you have a ton of lino (or nearly 3/4 ton actually, figure of speech intended!) you can add some, but if that boolit is too hard it won't flex enough to keep a good seal, and the microbands on Lee tumble-lube designs are notoriously weak at holding gas pressure, rifling, and pressure from the case squeezing them when seated.

Straight linotype (the eutectic variety, 84/12/4) will only add .0005" (half a thousandth) to your current alloy, so a pinch won't make all that much difference.

Gear

[Mk42gunner]

Sounds to me like the boolit is about a thousandth of an inch too small, the others have covered how to test that. Same for the lube.

The easiest way I know of to adjust a taper crimp dies; is to use a factory cartridge, and screw the die in until it just touches the case, then lock it in place. In my experience, a .45 doesn't need a lot of crimp.


Robert

[Bret4207]

Don'tcha just love free advice?

On the lino addition- I realize you're trying to fatten the boolit to get better fit. It's worth a try, but I might also try straight WW, not because you need a "harder" alloy, but because it tends to cast a little fatter than softer alloys. That range scrap may be keeping you at .451 when the mould would like to cast .452. Worth a look.

To the other posters- Thank you for sending him in the right direction. It does my heart good to see FIT mentioned right off the bat. Recent trends here had me concerned that we were backsliding into the advertising hype or HARDCAST again.

[gunsablazin]

Thanks guys! I'm going to make this work, the savings alone is worth the minor headaches. [smilie=b:

[gray wolf]

OK it's early in the morning and I need my coffee so here I go short and sweet.
All of the advise is great but.
if the mold is undersized and you are new at this--save all the trouble and just send the darn mold back. Get one that will drop at about .4535 and size to .4525 or shoot as is. I think you will find a bullet of reasonable hardness--1/2 lead half WW should be just fine for any 45 ACP. Don't try to break the sound barrier, be reasonable with your bullet speed.
Use a decent lube --

[gunsablazin]

O.K. I double coated the boolits with 45-45-10 and went back to the Lee FCD and reduced the powder charge to 5.1 gr WW231. With no chance to test them to see what they would do I shot them at last Sat. IDPA match. I fired 75 rds at the match and the bore was very nearly spotless after two passes with a bore snake. There were no issues with accuracy etc. Between the boolits working fine and me doing my part I finished 1st CDP and HOA with the fewest points down, 2 for the match. I'm quite happy with all that.:bigsmyl2:

[Wayne Smith]

Congratualations! You know how to load that boolit. Now you also know, if you want to push things faster, make a bigger boolit.

[gunsablazin]

Thanks Wayne,

They are fast enough to "kill" cardboard!;)