While I wait for my casting equipment to arrive I have been doing my reading. I will be starting out with boolits for 38/357 since I shoot a lot of them and the casting should be relatively forgiving. However, as soon as I feel like I have gotten the technique down I will be moving on to casting for rifles, specifically 35 Rem at first. My goal will be a gas checked, flat nose boolit that is suitable for mule deer and hogs, but which I can also use for general target duty.
For 38s, it seems like straight COWWs (perhaps with a bit of tin) will do it nicely. What about for 35 Rem? The Lyman cast manual gives nice data but everything is cast of Lyman #2 at 16 BHN and they strongly suggest keeping velocities to no more than 1600 fps to avoid leading in microgroove barrels (which is what I have). OTOH, I see posters here using considerably softer alloys (50/50 WW/lead) and driving such bullets at 2000+ fps. Is there a good place to start as far as alloys go? Water quenching necessary? I would think that something in the neighborhood of 1800 FPS would probably be my goal for a hunting load and as a meat hunter I like the idea of a slower lead boolit that damages less meat than a very high speed jacketed projectile. After all, that is why I use the 35 instead of the30-06 for hunting in the first place.