Streamlining Softnose Production

[7br]

Aw heck, I know that I am going to spend three or four hours this weekend fussing with soft nose bullets. You all should be ashamed. Convincing me to drive myself to distraction with this project.

I will be using a lee 5lb pot for the pure lead and an old saeco bottom pour for the WW. I will probably crank the saeco pretty high in hopes that the alloy will be able to at least partially melt the pure lead.

Has anyone tried this with a nose pour mould? Seem like the higher melt temp of the pure lead would do a better job of welding the seam together.

[BruceB]

Now, people....

PUH-LEEEZE go back and READ THE THREAD!!!

There is no "welding", there is no "joint", there is no "seam", there is only the pouring of two LIQUID component alloys into a heated-to-the-maximum mould...a mould heated as hot as possible right in the furnace, sitting in the melt, with the furnace itself heated as HOT AS IT WILL GO (electric furnaces, of course, not temperature-unregulated gas -fired pots).

THAT is the "secret" of making homogenous softnose cast bullets:
THE HIGHEST-POSSIBLE TEMPERATURE of EVERYTHING INVOLVED.

Once the mould is filled with the two alloys, cool it on the wet pad, as I wrote several times already. Otherwise, resign yourself to a wait of several minutes before the sprue freezes. The wet pad cools the bullet to solidification stage in about thirty seconds or so. A further ten seconds spent cooling the sprue on the wet pad ensures that the bullet is firmed-up enough to open the mould and drop the slug. No, it won't warp the mould.

Nrnut has given us a very good hint on minimizing mixture of the alloys, when he recommended slowing the flow from the furnace, and letting the stream fall partly on the sprue plate instead of directly into the cavity.

In posts #24, #25, and #27 on this thread, I have already described in detail how I successfully cast nose-poured softpoints in a LEE 45-405 hollow-base mould.

Now...if only someone can use one of his new cast softpoints on game (and recover the bullet) it would be very interesting indeed.

[7br]

Bruce, I have read the post several times. I have experiencemented with it for ONE (not a good test) morning. I still need to convince myself that the lead and the alloy do not mix. I will also probably cast up 10 or so of pure lead. My main use will be whitetail at under 75yards in a pistol. I do have several examples where there is no seam, a shiney nose and a frosty base. As I continued with the process, I got a more uniform frostiness.

Hardness testing seems to have born this out, however, what I thought was pure lead probably wasn't.

see post http://www.castboolits.gunloads.com/...ead.php?t=5845

[versifier]

Bruce, what you say is reinforced 100% by my observations.
It is easily seen that the two different metals do not combine. The base has one hardness, the nose has another. There is a very thin layer where they meet that some alloying occurs, but this layer is not a discrete boundary - if it is then you're working at too low a temp. The two metals have different densities, the pure lead being more dense and staying on the bottom, (in the nose), the alloy being less dense and staying on the top, (in the base). On the .30cal 180gr boolits I cast, this "region of interface" is about .1" thick. Putting the boolit poured at too low a temp (with a clearly seen joint) in the vise, I was able to take a pair of pliers and cleanly break off the soft nose. The same thing tried with the boolit poured properly hot would not come apart, but bent until the metal distorted enough to break in an irregular line. Not like a solder joint, but rather a fusion of the two halves with an alloying in the interface where one meets and joins the other.
When using the bottom-pour pot, I try to pour off-center so that it "swirls" into the mould, and I don't open it all the way so that the stream comes slower and at less pressure. I do this anyway no matter what mould I am filling as I have fewer spills/overfills, but it makes even more sense when pouring the bases of the soft-nose boolits. I suspect that injecting a hard stream of alloy bullseye into the filler hole would cause them to intermix to too great a degree.
I don't know for sure, but I don't believe it will be as easy to get good results with a nose-pour mould as you are putting the less dense alloy in first and trying to top it off with the more dense pure lead. While maintaining a high enough temp to keep both liquid, the more dense pure metal should have a tendency to sink to the bottom, displacing the less dense alloy. But, I am the first to admit that not everything that can be logically reasoned works out in the real world.
All my experiments have been and will be with .30cal moulds. To my way of thinking, it doesn't make too much difference if a .45cal boolit expands or not, the flat meplat is what insures its ability to disrupt tissue and kill cleanly. (Some expansion isn't a bad thing, just not as necessary). On the other hand, it is very important to get some expansion in .30cal - you don't have the weight of a heavy slug to rely on, and while a meplat definitely helps the performance a lot, some expansion would make it that much better. With jacketed bullets in the smaller calibers, we rely on velocity to give us the expansion needed. With cast we don't have that luxury, and if we are going to hunt larger game with smaller caliber boolits, we need to do all we can to insure clean kills every time.

[BruceB]

Cogitating about casting softpoints again, I got to thinking about the distinct possibility that the two alloys are indeed mixing to some degree due to the turbulence when pouring the harder base alloy into the cavity where the pure-lead component is also liquid. Others have raised this point, and I thank them for leading me to think this through a bit further.

"How to avoid this?", I says to meself. On with thinking cap. Hmmmm.

I believe I have it, or "EUREKA!!!"

What I plan to do is pour a measured amount of pure lead into the mould at normal casting temperature, and let it set up. Then, fill the cavity with the harder alloy, just as before, leaving a normal sprue, and let it set up, as well.

At this point, we are where a lot of previous experimenters have already arrived, and there's almost certainly going to be a seam where the two alloys meet. This seam is usually plainly visible on most such boolits of which I've seen photos, and it almost certainly represents a potential weak spot in heavy going through an animal. This concerns me. What to do?

This:

Simply change the routine which I've used to date, and instead of heating the living daylights out of everything BEFORE casting the two-alloy boolit, just wait until AFTER we have the two alloys in the mould, frozen in their correct positions, and THEN place the mould in the max-temperature melt for several minutes! The two alloys will then return to a molten state inside the mould. If we are careful not to jiggle/slosh/agitate the mould, the two alloys should almost certainly retain their proper positions WITHOUT MIXING, and the seam between them should disappear when they attain the liquid state.

Carefully (without jiggling) placing the mould's bottom on the wet pad until the sprue freezes will ensure the preservation of the alloy positioning. The nose almost HAS to be pure lead with this method, because nothing has caused mixing or circulation of the two allloys.

I'll try this on the weekend and report back.

[robertbank]

BruceB - The method you describe works well. I have just completed 20 170 gr .357 cast bullets. I poured in pure lead for a nose using a cut down 9MM case as a dipper. The mold I used was over the top hot. The tip sets up but probably not quitefully set up. I then pour my WW alloy asa shank.

When the bullets are air cooled you can see the difference in shading of the two alloys but there is no mixing. The 9MM case dipper pours exactly the nose of my bullet so the "seam" is barely visible. Not sure how they are going to work out of my K38 at 850 fps or a tad faster out of my Model 27 but will post results when I am satisfied I have the process and the bullets down pat.

Bushmaster (sp) has had some real sucesses with his rifle bullets nailing a Black Bear and Deer this year.

Take Care

Bob

[Shuz]

All--I was fortunate a few years ago to buy a Lyman 429625 A and B mould set at a gun show. This is the set Lyman offered for a short time that was supposed to enable a pure lead nose to be cast out of one mould, and a hard base to be cast out of the other and then the two were to be glued or epoxied together to create, in this case, of the .44 cal, a composite 429421. Well, I never was able to find a product that would hold the two together under re-coil. As I thought about it, I came up with the same idea that Bruce B mentioned concerning letting the nose cool. What I've done is to cast a whole passel of pure lead noses and then got a SC 429421 mould super hot...dropped a cool nose into it and then cast a harder base behind it. It works beautifully and the boolits hold together under magnum load recoil, because the nose piece has a little "tail" that gives the harder metal something to golomb onto. So far I've kilt a few phone books and the expansion has been great and the boolit holds together. Hopefully, I'll be able to kill a deer this year with this boolit. I'll keep ya'll posted.--Shuz

[BruceB]

"Eureka", indeed!

I selected a single-cavity Lyman 457125, a 500-grain roundnose, for the latest iteration of my cast softpoints.

First, the mould was warmed up a bit, and then I dropped in a dipperful (.40 S&W case) of pure lead, and waited for it to harden. The mould was then filled with 870-degree WW alloy which also hardened, and I left a decent-sized sprue puddle on the plate.

The mould was then immersed in the WW melt, right up to the handle slots. After a bit of a wait, a minute or two, the sprue finally liquified and the mould was carefully placed on the wet cloth roll. About 50 seconds later, the sprue froze and the mould was inverted on the pad for 20 seconds or so, to make SURE that everything in the cavity was solid.

Dropping the bullet showed a perfect, crisply-formed boolit with an OBVIOUS color change in the middle of the long nose. The pure lead was shiny, and the WW had the usual gray-galvanised appearance. There is NO visible structural weakness, wrinkles, lines or any other indication of the two parts, except for the difference in coloration and shine. Thumbnail testing demonstrates that the nose is butter-soft, and the base portion much harder.

So, after all these various softnose experiments, it turns out that the way many folks over many years have done it, was basically correct.....EXCEPT that I think they stopped one step too soon. Once there's a two-alloy bullet frozen in the mould, all that's needed to make it perfect is to REMELT the boolit inside the mould, which absolutely eliminates any "joint" or mechanical weakness caused by possible imperfect welding of the two components.

Next comes some fine-tuning as to just how much of a given boolit should be pure lead, and how much should be harder alloy. My present thinking still trends to 1/3 of the weight being PL, to retain some serious penetrating ability if the nose overexpands or parts of it are lost on impact.

My taste for hunting rifles with CBs still tends to the heavy side, beginning with the .338 for deer etc., and going up in caliber and bullet weight from there. My .416 Rigby load of last hunting season is a good example, with a 365-grain softnose at 2100 fps, grouping three rounds in 1.5" at 100 yards. This made it a very serious 200-yard rifle and I was confident...too bad it wasn't in the cards to shoot an elk with it!

There you have it. This is how my softpoints will be made from now on, and I dearly hope to get an opportunity for a live-fire test on game animals....and I REALLY hope to recover a boolit!

[waksupi]

Bruce, very interesting. It would seem to me, the pure lead in the nose, being a heavier specific gravity, would stay in the nose, as the lighter alloy would float, so to speak. I'm sure there would be a cut off line, to where they amalgamated (right word?). Worth more study!

[Nrut]

Yep you sure came up with the answer of how to get rid of that unsightly seam between the soft and hard lead....I read your 11/02 post above and got to thinking about those 4 ugly .377 softnoses I casted a few weeks ago....So Sat. morning I put 2 of them back in the mold (with a little chunk of ww in each sprue hole) set the mold level on a propane camping burner turned on my timer for 4 minutes and waited for them to re-melt.......Bingo just like you said...beautiful softnose bullets that should be as good or better than store bought ones for hunting........way to go and thank you for keeping at this BruceB!

[BruceB]

Howdy, Ric.

I found that the weight difference in my 416-365s between softpoint and all-WW only amounted to four or five grains or thereabouts. I suspect that the POSSIBLE turbulence of the harder alloy filling the mould might just overpower that minor difference in density of the metals when the components were both liquid, so I was looking for a way to get the two metals into intimate contact and THEN fusing them seamlessly without any physical disturbance.

Today's trial had both parts absolutely motionless, of course, since they were frozen. The remelting was simply to ensure that there was no flaw in the bond. Incidentally, I also noticed that the "color line" is apparently very nice and level, not being canted one way or another.

When I saw that you'd posted to the thread, I thought I'd be getting mildly chastised or kidded about my choice of rifles for cast-boolit hunting. I wouldn't mind taking the '06 and a heavy .30 cast softnose after deer, etc, but I'm fortunate to have quite a few decent rifles of varying chamberings so I can pick and choose. Hence the .338 as a "preferred" starting point. Believe me, I KNOW it doesn't take a .338 to kill a deer, or moose either, as I've taken a few meese with .303 British loads which are very similar to some of my cast-bullet recipes in that caliber (215 JSP @2100 fps).

[BruceB]

....beautiful softnose bullets that should be as good or better than store bought ones for hunting........way to go and thank you for keeping at this BruceB!

Nrut, pard;

I'm mighty pleased that it's working for you.

Maybe if a few of us can manage a successful hunt or two, and recover some of these boolits, it will write the final chapter about the process. Frankly, I'm confident enough that I'd predict very effective results on anything in North America. I truly believe I could carry these softpoints with no worry about game performance...but it would be nice to SEE some recovered boolits.

[robertbank]

I know Barry S out of Francois Lake has taken a bear and a deer this fall with his cast bullets formed the same way you guys have done it. When I talked to him on the phone he mentioned both bullets had gone through both animals but left a fairly large exit wound.

He got a ton of snow two weeks ago and my not yet have power but I'll give him a call tomorrow and get him to chime in here with his observations.

Just remelted a bunch of my rejects this afternoon. Wish I had read this earlier probably could have saved most of them. Won't be doing any more casting until my Pro Melter arrives end of this week or next. Going to build a piggy back system for my pots with my Dripomatic on top with the RCBS Melter on the bottom. Should work real slick.

Waiting to collect some more 4 litre milk jugs to test my .38spl/.357mag bullets for expansion. Then I'll try making some soft points for the '06 and .45LC.

Take Care

Bob

Take Care

Bob

[Nrut]

I know Barry S out of Francois Lake has taken a bear and a deer this fall with his cast bullets formed the same way you guys have done it. When I talked to him on the phone he mentioned both bullets had gone through both animals but left a fairly large exit wound.

He got a ton of snow two weeks ago and my not yet have power but I'll give him a call tomorrow and get him to chime in here with his observations.

Just remelted a bunch of my rejects this afternoon. Wish I had read this earlier probably could have saved most of them. Won't be doing any more casting until my Pro Melter arrives end of this week or next. Going to build a piggy back system for my pots with my Dripomatic on top with the RCBS Melter on the bottom. Should work real slick.

Waiting to collect some more 4 litre milk jugs to test my .38spl/.357mag bullets for expansion. Then I'll try making some soft points for the '06 and .45LC.

Take Care

Bob

Take Care

Bob

Bob you are sure right about the snow...I live about an hour east of the east end of Francios...usually snow does'nt start sticking untill the end of Nov.....with last nights snow we have more accumulation than all of last year....last few years snow has been light however.....feel sorry for the deer...

[robertbank]

PM me your email addy and we will get in touch. Next time I go out I intend to stop in and see Barry, maybe we can all get together for coffee and donuts and tell lies. Came up here to avoid the traffic and darn it is getting pretty crowded along Hwy 16. Francois Lake is about three hours from Terrace isn't it? How is the hwy out that way?

Take Care

Bob

[Nrut]

PM sent....I'll find out about the hwy tomorrow as I have to go to Prince George to pick up a stock being repaired and get some bedding compound...it should be bare & good if we don't get freezing rain tonight....looking forward to meeting you and Barry at some point...take care yourself..

[BrushBuster]

Well hunting season ended abruptly for me on Oct. 26. A three foot snowfall knocked out all power and telephone lines, and only emergency road plowing was being done. We are still getting six inch snowfalls most nights, and I was just too pooped to put on snowshoes and chase after game before the moose season ended Nov. 5th here in central B.C.

I had hoped to add a moose to my terminal ballistic info. with soft nose boolits, but It will have to be next year. I did succeed in taking a nice muley buck and a fat black bear with these specialized hunting boolits.

I was enthused about casting a soft-nose boolit from the get-go when BruceB first got his thread going, and I applied myself to their production early this fall. The calibre of choice for my initial effort was the .348, and the boolit was the N.E.I. #108 which is a two diameter round nosed brute that drops from my mould at 269 grains. Since the quarry was primarily moose, I wanted a stout load at the maximum velocity that I could shoot without flinching. This worked out to be 56 grains of ReLoder-19 topped with a few grains of PSB to provide full load density and a velocity of 2150 fps.. With the iron-sighted M-71 I'm usually content with a load that gives me 1" grouping at 50 yards, and I was getting that consistently.

My outdoor bush range provided me with penetration info. on the soft-nose as well, because I tack my targets up on the side of bone-dry beetle-killed Pine trees that range up to 24". I was able to extract several spent boolits that had penetrated over 15" of Pine, and was pleased to see that the bond between the pure lead and 20-1 alloy had held together. These appeared to have fully expanded, and though there was some weight loss their retained mushroom shape spelled success. The pure lead portion on my boolits begins just forward of the crimp groove.

I wanted to cast a very hard shanked boolit that would continue penetrating larger game after the soft-nose had completed its destructive path. Initially I had some difficulty getting the two alloys to keep separated and was not content with the inconsistency that I was getting after oven heat-treating. Like others, I eventually twigged onto the method of allowing the pure lead nose portion to cool down before bottom-pouring the 20-1. My technique is to lightly jiggle the hot mold as I base cool it on a level wet towel draped block. Watching the pure lead closely as it cooled off, I would quickly make the bottom pour when the jiggling stopped. I would then reheat the mold in the pot until the ample sprue had fully liquified, carefully avoiding excessive movement. The second heating of the mold pretty well assures that the bond between the two alloys is strong without excessive dilution. Cooling was always done from the base only on the wet towel, and as has been mentioned earlier allow ample time for the sprue to set and then some. If your going to have fill-out problems, it will be at the base, and I still have a reject rate because of this of about 25% even with extra tin.

How did they perform on game? Both the buck and the bear were shot through the rib-cage broadside; the bear at 50 ft. and the deer at 60 yards. They both ran approximately 50 ft., and were dead when they hit the ground. According to plan, the boolits had penetrated completely and were not recovered. When I skinned the animals I could put my finger tip into the entry hole, but here's where things got interesting. By the time the boolit had exited the entry side, it had created a 2" wound channel, and the exit wound on the opposite side was in excess of 3". All indications were that the boolit had expanded immediately, held together as it expanded fully and continued on without leaving a trace of lead fragments. The results were identical on both deer and bear, and they even died identically. I could not imagine better performance.

I must add one caveat. I have now killed a number of deer with cast boolits, and generally the wounds are fully penetrating with minimal flesh damage. You can eat right up to the hole as the saying goes, and this holds true for my experience with the soft-nose boolit. However there is one difference. The degree of bloodshot meat is much higher with this boolit than I have observed previously. The opposite side of a rib-cage shot animal is affected in a radius of about 12" around the wound channel. This is not to say that the meat is damaged, only that the blood vessels are ruptured. I do my own butchering, and it was not a difficult matter to open up the layers of meat and clean up the blood without loss. "Hydrostatic Shock" is a controversial subject and some say it doesn't exist in wildlife wounds, but my thinking is that this is what the rapidly expanding nose on the soft-nose boolit transmits across the wound channel. I was hoping to compare this effect on a larger animal like a moose, to see if it was present in the same manner as seen on both the deer and bear that I shot. Perhaps the larger body cavity would absorb this effect? Maybe next year I can answer this, but I would say that those using the soft-nose should expect to see this in smaller game.

For me, the soft-nose hunting boolit works well, and I'm still improving on it. The hard shanks provide accuracy and follow-through penetration. The soft nose expands dramatically and destroys major organs and arteries. Game dies fast, and for me that's success.

[robertbank]

Well that answers the question whether you folks had power yet. LOL. We got our snow two days ago and again last night. Now it is raining like there is no tomorrow so I imagine the snow will be gone by morning OR we will have two feet of snow.

Looks like there is three of us within yelling distance along Hwy 16. Do you know Mike?

May not get through before Christmas, will let you know.

Very good report on the soft nose bullets. Will let you know how I make out with my handgun rounds after the next test.

Take Care

Bob

[Marlin Junky]

I need to try this with SAEC0 352 and my supply of stick-on WW metal. Only problem is the lightest boolit I can cast right now is from my SAECO 322 4-banger. What mold should I buy for the "nose" portion: a Lyman 311252 or 313249 in 4-banger configuration or a 6-cavity Lee 311-093-1R or 311-100-2R? I want to be able to drop a pre-weighed "nose" in the SAEC0 352, pour the harder alloy on top, heat the 352 until the sprue becomes liquid again and top it off. I'd be using a Rowell#2 for the entire operation.

MJ

[Nrut]

This might work MJ....cast a pure Pb or your stick on WW metal bullet in your SAECO 352....take a look at that bullet and cut it with a pair of side cutters or hacksaw where you think the softnose should end....weight that and go from there....When I want to make different lenghts of softnoses I just cut a Lee soup can pure Pb bullet where I think it would make the lenght I want....I have 3 different lenght softnoses casted up for milk jug/H2O tests next spring.....

Should have mentioned I just put the piece of lead to be used as the softnose in a small ladle floating on the WW melt...I have one of those LBT softnose casters but my casting area is pretty far from my power source and don't want to run two pots off one ext. cord/breaker.....