Larger boolits with heat

[44man]

When I was telling you about removing the bevel base on this .357 mold, I said the boolits were coming out .3575 to .358 and a base at .359. I raised the heat to over 800 degrees and made more. I have left all of them sit for a week now and re-measured them.
The boolits that were cast hotter now measure .361 with a .362 base. Pushing them through a Lee .358 die shows no distortion and they come out at .3584. Since I need wiggle room to fit these to the throats when my friend brings his gun over, I feel real good about it.
If they are way oversize, all I have to do is cast cooler but I see no problems shooting as cast if they chamber. It might solve the terrible accuracy he gets with this revolver. We have trouble getting smaller then 3" at 50 yd's and some loads, whether loaded or factory, do much worse.
By the way, it is a brand new Freedom arms and has maybe 150 rounds through it. The bore is smooth and does not lead. I have not had a chance to measure the throats or bore yet.
Has anyone else kept track of the boolit diameters when fooling with the heat?
A chart would be a great thing to have but is too much work because every alloy and caliber boolit will react different. So too would the mold material. Then a pot would have to be able to vary the temp by, say, 5 degrees, very accurately. Then a baseline aging time would have to be set.
Hoo boy, I have to stop thinking about this, don't have any hair now.
I just know it is working like a charm with my alloy and Lee mold. I can't wait to get the gun in my hands for a few weeks. I will keep you posted if I can improve it.

[Dale53]

44man;
3" at fifty yards is hardly "terrible". That would equate to 1.5" at 25 yards. Now, I agree that I wouldn't be happy with that from a Freedom Arms, but I certainly wouldn't call it terrible... Now, if you say, "Less than expected" I would be on board with you.

Keep us posted, however, as we ARE interested.

Dale53

[44man]

OK, Dale, MUCH less then expected considering I get 9/16", 5/8" and generally under an inch with most boolits out of my .475 and 45-70 BFR's and an inch or under with my Rugers. I have always considered the .357 the most accurate revolver cartridge so it doubly does not feel right. I had an old S&W .357 that would hold under an inch at 100 yd's. If I can do it with revolvers that recoil that wild, I should be able to control the pipsqueek .357!
Then being a Freedom with all the hype associated with them, it should cut one hole.
Now I can't do it all the time because it is me behind the gun, but I do it often enough so I can blame myself when I don't. I can accept the occasional 2" group at 50 yd's. They don't happen very often though!
I am an absolute accuracy nut when it comes to my revolvers. I sold a new SBH Bisley Hunter because it would not shoot less then 1-1/2" to 2" at 50.
Yeah, I am a little crazy about it but it is fun, I just love to blow away rifle shooters and it is what I have been playing with since I got my first .44 BH in 1956. I was shooting small targets at 200 yd's back then before handgun shooters knew there WAS 200 yd's.
I wll never forget the time we were at a range and I shot a 5 shot 3/4" group at 100 yd's with my Witchita, 10" 7R, open sights, Creedmore position. The guy next door with his brand new Browning .300 mag took one look at my target, packed his gear and left. I think I warped his mind a little and we still giggle about it. I still have that gun and have kept 10 out of 10 on a 3" swinger at 150 meters with it. Then there is my MOA 7BR that has shot 3/8", 100 yd groups and the Rem XP100 that done as good, sold it to a friend and I will always be sorry. I made a custom walnut stock for it.
Everyone has a different view of what an accurate gun is and some are happy just hitting paper or knocking off cans. Not me! I think it is a rub off from my varmint hunting days when I was head shooting chucks with my .220 Swift out to 600 yd's. I once put 5 shots into 1/4" at 350 yd's with that old pre 64 Winchester with a Balvar 6X24 scope on it. My old .222 Rem shot many 1/2" groups at 200 yd's.
I also won the company trophy on the KD range with my M1 with an almost perfect score.
No, Dale, I am never happy. My spice of life is to do better.
3" to 6" groups offhand, now thats pretty accurate with the old age shakes I now have. Why do we have to spoil our shooting by growing old? We get smarter, get better equipment, then lose the smarts and the ability to use the equipment. Thank God for sandbags!
So bear with me, I am still crazy.

[lovedogs]

Hey, 44... I'm not quite up to your level as a shooter but I do often have fun with my Contenders when rifle shooters are around. The only one that won't shoot into an inch at 100 yds. is my Super 14 in .44. And it might if I had a little more scope on it. With its 2X Leupy it shoots into about 1 1/4 inches though. The rest, the .22's, .30-30, and .223's are pretty unbelieveable. The two .223's have always been 1/4 inch bbls. I'm a varmint shooter, also. And my rifles will shoot between 1/4 and 1/2 inch groups. But there's just something about having pistols that'll do that. But I've not gotten that good with my revolvers yet. I had a DW44 that, scoped, would do 2 inches at 100. I kick myself for being greedy and letting that one get away. Most of my revolvers are pretty much stock and are about like everyone else's, about 2 to 3 inches at 50 yds. Part of that, I'm sure, is old eyes and factory irons.

[44man]

I guess I started doing all the work because I never had expensive guns to start with and I wanted them to shoot as good as possible. Some guns just won't do it and there is a limit to what I can get.
I sure wish I could afford a bunch of Freedom guns, been trying to talk one of my friends into selling one but no luck. They can't get any accuracy from them but I know if I owned one, I sure could. It takes more thinking and work then they want to apply. Thats why I outshoot them.
It is still fun shooting with the rifle guys. I was at the club one day and the rifle guys had a 6" swinger at 400 yd's. I asked if I could take a few shots. My red dot was sighted at 100 yd,s so I picked a spot on the 500 meter berm to aim at. It took a few shots to adjust and I hit the swinger 3 out of 5 shots with my BFR .475 and my cast boolit. I gave it to my friend and he hit it twice. If you think the rifle shooters were surprised, you should have seen us! I didn't think the big flat point would hit anything that far. I managed to clang the 500 meter ram with it quite a bit too. Had to aim at a tree. No way I was going to fool with the red dot just before deer season.
Another reason is that recoil doesn't bother me unless the gun starts to cut my finger.

[Lloyd Smale]

44man next time you sell a 44 because it will only do about 1.5 at 50 yards PLEASE let me know. Cause any gun with open sights that i can get to shoot two inches at 50 is something youd never pry out of my hands.

[44man]

Lloyd, when I was younger with good eyes I could shoot 1/2" groups at 50 meters with a model 29 with open sights. Now I can't do it unless I have a scope plus I wiggle more. My Rugers or BFR's will not match the S&W but the S&W was grip sensitive and when I put down the gun after 5 shots and picked it up again, the group could be as much as 10" away from the first so I don't have them any more. It would still be 1/2". Now if I would shoot one shot, put down the gun and pick it up again for every shot, I would have a 10" group. Talk about something that would drive a guy nuts! It can happen with any gun and is a cause of a lot of large groups. At least the hogleg handles on single actions are far less sensitive. Handguns are the hardest things to be consistant with because any change in the recoil at all will open groups. So don't feel bad about 2".
A strange thing is that the SRH does not act like the S&W. The regular RH is a little harder to control.
What gun are you shooting and what is your exact load? Maybe we can tweak it a little but I can't help your eyesight if it has gotten like mine.

[cbrick]

I am an absolute accuracy nut when it comes to my revolvers. Yeah, I am a little crazy about it but it is fun, I just love to blow away rifle shooters..

Great minds think alike.

And not just the rifle shooters, in handgun silhouette I take great joy in listening to guys leaving the firing line mumbling something about being beat by cast bullets. A few years ago I won the California State Revolver Championship with a perfect 60x60. I beat several of the sports best revolver shooters and every one of them were using condom bullets. My cast bullets beat the very best bullet money can buy, you shoulda heard the mumbling that day.

Everyone has a different view of what an accurate gun is and some are happy just hitting paper or knocking off cans. Not me! No, Dale, I am never happy. My spice of life is to do better. So bear with me, I am still crazy

Exactly, accuracy is a relative thing. If your happy with what its doing then that's accurate. For me, and especially for my revolvers, its simply never accurate enough. There is always something else that can be done, just need to figure out what it is and do it.

I too have sold revolvers that would only shoot 2" at 50. That's a bare minimum of 8" at 200, what possible good could that be?

Rick

[cbrick]

44man, BTW, larger bullet diameter by casting hotter? Interesting, its always been my experience that casting hotter causes more shrinkage when cooling.

I have a couple of moulds that have square lube grooves and this can cause bullets to stick in the mould. I cast hotter with these moulds and the tad more shrinkage helps them release from the mould.

Rick

[44man]

The nice gentleman at Rapine told me this long ago and it has worked. The blocks expand more making the cavity larger. There are a lot of variables that could effect it like the alloy. I see it with my .475 boolits too. My mold throws a .476 boolit but when I raise the temp and age them a few days, they will be .478. Thats how I shoot them too, no sizing.
I know what you mean in silhouette, I won Ohio state with 79 out of 80 with my SBH. It was only my third shoot. I won the state .22 the same year with 57 out of 60 with my Ruger Mark II and no sight settings. I didn't know it was the .22 shoot and went to shoot big bore. I threw the .22 in the car in case I had time to shoot it. My spotter seen the misses on the first pig, turkey and ram so I was able to adjust. I used WW Wildcat ammo, it was good when it first came out but went to pot soon after.
I shot many, many 40's with my single shots but it was never as much fun as the revolver.
I wish I could see as good as I did then, my sights and the target were all in perfect focus.
When I moved here to WV, shoots were too far after they stopped shooting Quantico. In VA the guys had a lot of money and would sign up for 5 to 6 guns and keep the line tied up all day so I dropped out.
I am glad someone agrees with me that cast will shoot as good or better then jacketed.
When I lived in Ohio, I went to a shoot in PA in the spring. There was still a lot of snow on the ground there. Guess what? The targets were painted white!

[9.3X62AL]

My shrinkage experience parallels that mentioned by CBRICK--casting cooler (675* instead of 800*) gains me between .0005" and .0015" in 45 caliber rifle molds--Lee 405 and RCBS 300 FNGC, at least. I suspect that an "equation" involving mold block metallurgy and temperature, alloy composition and temperature, and flow rate of alloy enters into it. Along with a zillion other variables, too--but save me the headaches, if it fattens my 45 rifle boolits, I'm a happy caster.

[cbrick]

The nice gentleman at Rapine told me this long ago and it has worked. The blocks expand more making the cavity larger.

Interesting, makes sense.

I shot many, many 40's with my single shots but it was never as much fun as the revolver.

Same here, any more I'll just shoot everything with the revolver and leave the single shots at home.

I wish I could see as good as I did then, my sights and the target were all in perfect focus.

Anymore I would settle for just seeing the sights like I used to, I could probably figure out where to point them if I could see them.

I am glad someone agrees with me that cast will shoot as good or better then jacketed.

Amen. What a lot of people seem to refuse to believe is that in a revolver the handicap goes to the condom bullet not the cast.

When I lived in Ohio, I went to a shoot in PA in the spring. There was still a lot of snow on the ground there. Guess what? The targets were painted white!

In the late 90's The NRA Nationals was up in Washington State where it always rains. When wet the the soil is very dark, almost black so the NRA put it in the match program that targets would be painted white. Well, it didn't rain and the background turned a very light grey, almost white and because it was in the program as white the NRA refused to change target color. I got a cast bullet 80 with the XP but it was tough.

Rick

[imashooter2]

The nice gentleman at Rapine told me this long ago and it has worked. The blocks expand more making the cavity larger.

The blocks surround the hole. If they expand, why don't they make the hole smaller?

No idea what causes the happy phenomenon, just can't see block expansion as the reason...

ETA: Thinking about it a little more, they heat connecting rods to expand the holes for inserting the wrist pins. It clearly works, but I still don't understand how. Must think on it some more...

[Treeman]

Ima2. It is a little easier to wrap your mind around when you think about a metal ring. If it wont quite fit ove rthe rod cold you can heat it and get a slip fit. How does the metal expanding make that work? The expansion takes place in all directions. Even though the thickness of the ring must increase the length must also increase (Imagine you cut the ring and laid it out in a straight line-it would get longer!) Therefore the internal diameter of the ring becomes larger.

[44man]

Like I said, there are a lot of variables involved. I know if I use straight WW metal, I don't see the same results. I don't see the same results with iron molds because I don't think the iron expands much more with more heat.
I can say that I never really paid enough attention to it before, I just cast and shot what I had.
But there is something going on that I can't put my finger on and it could very well work the opposite way with certain alloys too.
I just thought it would be an interesting subject to find out what happens with everyone elses experience and if anyone else has seen it happen.
It just happens that the boolits that are coming out larger are the ones I really want larger and I call it good fortune.
I still have to try it with some of my BPCR boolits with the soft alloy to see what happens. I have a bunch to cast for my friend (He has a little boy at the terrible two's that ties up all his time.) I will start casting his at the lowest setting to get a good boolit, then up the temp so I can find out.
I will never state this a gospel but if someone needs .001" more on a boolit it just might be worth a try to vary the temp up and down to see if there is somewhere there that will add the extra diameter.
One thing I didn't mention was that with a two cavity mold I was seeing a small difference in size between the cavities and always chalked it up the mold. By raising the heat, that seems to have gone away. Needs more testing though.
I also have not gone into the frosted boolit region, my casting pace keeps the mold temp pretty even so I would have to go even hotter to get frosted ones. That might change something too. It could even make them smaller, I just don't know at this point.
Anyway, I just knew there was something to creat more work for you casters, Hee, Hee.

[MT Gianni]

THink of driving a pin out of a hole. You heat it and the heat makes the pin expand it should be harder to drive but you also heat the area surrounding the pin making the larger piece of metal expand. Because the heat has made things expand it has also made the area of gap surrounding the pin expand, so you can drive it out easier. There may be a correlation between alloys and expansion rates where iron, meehenate, and aluminum reach maximum expansion at different temps but I don't know where to find that info. Great reading guys. Gianni.