So here's the deal. I just bought a very clean 90% plus 1884 Trapdoor Springfield. I slugged the bore and got .457"-.458". My 405gr bullets are sized at .459" and cast from the Lee hollow base flat nose mold. I'm using Lyman #2 alloy that I bought from Missouri Bullet Company a few years ago. The bullet lube I'm using to pan lube my bullets is 50/50 beeswax and crisco, that works fine in my .45 colt and .44 special revolvers with both smokeless and BP. In the trapdoor I got minor leading the last 4-5" of barrel after 10 rounds. Minor enough that it came right out with a bronze brush and some solvent. I was using 27grs of IMR4198.
Today I thought I'd load up some BP cartridges for the Trapdoor, I've previously done this for both a rolling block and marlin 1895. But back then I was using commercial cast bullets. My grandfather recently gave me 100+ lbs of pure lead that he has had for years, he and my uncle were really into muzzleloaders about 20 years ago. So I had this bright idea to cast some bullets out of pure lead. Well the issue arose when I went to seat said bullets, even using a powder compression die I'm still deforming the bullet nose when seating the bullet. The mold I was using was a Lee .459" 500gr pointed round nose. I'm also using a standard set of RCBS .45-70 dies.
I have about 100lbs of pure lead and maybe 20lbs of Lyman #2 left. My questions are #1 should I learn how to alloy my pure lead and just make the bullets harder? Is there another seating stem or something available so I don't deform my soft bullets? Or should I just stick with smokeless and try a new lube recipe? I'm not really sure how to approach this issue.
Thanks in advance for any advice.