Hollow point questions
So I finally tried out my NOE 232 grain brass four cavity mold. It looks much nicer than it works for me. I had one cavity that constantly stuck. Smoke from a bic lighter only helped for one or two pours. I even tried rubbing in some powdered graphite with a q-tip and that didn’t do anything either. Moving forward I intend to put a flat point pin in that cavity to see if it helps. But I don’t want to use up tin-rich alloy casting flat points (or cup points).
So I got a quick coat of LLA on the survivors of the first casting session and ran 20 through the new .451” Lee sizer. Success! No more hard chambering and hitting the back of the slide to go into battery!!
So now the next disappointment is I didn’t recover any in my water jugs. I set up a DEF container behind a washer fluid jug and they blew right out the back from my 4” barrel. So I tried the 5” barrel and it blew on through as well. I was at starting load levels of N310 powder. 3.7 grains to be exact. Guessing low to mid 700s for velocity. Why cast troublesome HPs if they don’t expand? Moving forward I intend to try 3N38 powder with a near maximum charge on my next water vessels. Book velocity for max is 997 FPS and over 500 foot pounds of energy!
Now for what was in the pot. It was probably 1/2 full of whatever was casting well last time. Some unknown blend of wheelweights and my other purchased ingots. I was told that they were bullet cores from a military range. I filled up the 20 pound furnace with the backstop ingots and added probably 1/4 roll of solder for tin.
I’ve always dropped my cast boolets in a 5 gallon bucket of water because it was the easiest way to land them without damage. Never tried any other method.
I’ve paid retail price for two 5 lb ingots of pure lead and have most of a bar of pure tin. I was thinking I might need to attempt a 40:1 or 30:1 alloy to get expansion. Not sure how rich it needs to go with tin for good fill-out.
I was hoping the backstop blend would have shown expansion because I have a ton of it. I smashed some of the rejects with my pocket pliers and they weren’t brittle but harder than I had hoped for.
I ended up the day casting with two other new molds. I got about forty five 7/8 ounce slugs before the screw came out of the core pin. It may be stripped. Haven’t looked at it very close. Stuck it and the attached slug in the freezer.
The real joy of the day turned out to be the Lee 500 grain two cavity .458” mold! They fell out when I opened the mold and I finished the pot with it, and called it quits.