I have been using W231 in my .45's for lo these many years. Right now, it's not on anybody's shelves around here. So I loaded some test rounds with various potential substitutes. All that is by way of introduction to my question. I decided to make things fair, by weighing up some 185 gr. commercial cast boolits I've had in the inventory for some time. Don't know who cast them, I just bought part of a lot from a co-worker and have never loaded any. I figured they would probably be more uniform than any I pour. I don't usually weigh boolits, because I don't shoot competition with cast and only need minute-of-pop can at 15 yards. Besides, it's tedious and takes away from loading more ammo to shoot. I guess I was surprised to find a fair amount of weight deviation between these boolits. So, I decided to compare some .45 boolits for Standard Deviation (Sd), Mean or average weight and Extreme Spread (Es). All weights in grains of course.
Here's what I found: 1)Unknown 185 gr SWCs AW=188.3 ES=4.7 Sd=1.6 2)Speer swaged SWC AW=200.0 ES=0.4 Sd=0.13
3)My Lee 230 gr. TCFP AW=233.9 ES=2.6 Sd=1.05 4)My 452374 AW=224.2 ES=1.0 Sd=0.4
5)My Lee 452 200 RNF AW=207.5 ES=0.6 Sd=0.2 6)Mid-Kansas 230 gr. RN (looks like the RCBS 230 gr. RN) AW=230.4 ES=0.9 Sd=0.5
7)Missouri Bullet Company 230 gr. RN (looks like the Mid-Kan, but with different lube) AW=230.1 ES=0.9 Sd=0.4
8)Unkown make of SWC similar to 452488 from a friend AW=199.0 ES=6.4 Sd=2.5 9)452488 cast by a friend of a friend many years ago AW=197.4 ES=3.1 Sd=1.2
9)My 452460 AW=202.2 ES=3.1 Sd=1.7
I guess my question is, I'm curious what are YOU satisfied with as far as boolit weight uniformity for general plinking and the occasional furry varmint.