Hi All,
I am looking for some advice on a 45-70 load I am working on. I have a Henry 45-70 All Weather that I recently purchased. It will shoot store bought cartridges just fine, but it hates my particular load.
I am casting a 457-340-F Lee boolit from straight wheel weight lead. It is then tumble lube with LLA. They mic’ to .459-.462 and weigh 348-351gr with the above alloy. These boolits are not sized. My bore slugs at .457 in the grooves. This is a plain base boolit. Seated to a very low OAL of 2.460, Anything larger results in rifling engraving on the ogive and its obviously hard to close the action.
I am experimenting with solely IMR 3031 over Winchester LR primers in Starline cases. I attempted to work up a load using a similar weight jacketed bullet out of a lyman 49 manual. I started at 47 grs of 3031 and worked up 1 grain at time to 51 grains.
Could not even get it on the paper some rounds. Went back to the range the next day with some store-bought rounds and got the result in the attached picture. 3 Winchester factory loads in the middle, and that hole on the far right was my 51 gr 3031 hand load. Shot another round that didn’t even hit the target.
I am stumped. Should I be sizing these boolits? I haven’t because I was reading that a lot of guys shoot these as cast.
Maybe switch molds to a gas check design? (I have great luck with the lee soup can in the 30-30).
Is that OAL totally messed up? Don’t really know how to fix it without switching mold designs.
Thanks for any advice!