Post by J Miller on Oct 19, 2009 21:15:29 GMT -5
In the now closed thread: Why bore size difference for 45-70 & 45 Colt? a poster asked if we could imagine shooting such an over sized 458" bullet from a .451" bore. Well, I've done it and here is the who, what, where, when, why and how.
I own an early 80s S&W 25-5 in .45 Colt with a 4" barrel. When I bought it I was totally thrilled with it. It was to me the best balanced, nicest handling double action revolver I'd owned and used to date. And the double Dutch chocolate icing on the cake was it came in .45 Colt, my favorite caliber.
I carried that revolver on duty when I drove armored trucks in AZ. Carried it hiking, hunting, and it made something like 9 trips across country as our SD weapon. ( Don't tell nobody about that ... OK.)
But as satisfied with it that I was I had fits getting it to shoot cast or swagged lead bullets in any form other than the old standby Winchester 255gr and Remington 250gr lead bullets.
I tried every brand of commercial cast bullets and had the same results; extreme leading and very poor accuracy. I bought the hard cast bevel based bullets and found really quick they were the absolute worst offenders at that. .452" or .454" made no difference, horrible leading and accuracy.
I then tried my own cast bullets. The two I used the most was a mid 70s Lyman 454424 and an older Ideal 454190 mold. They cast large, around .456" to .457" and from wheel weights it weighed around 268grs and 255grs respectively. I was reading a lot of books and they all said size your bullets to the bore. So I sized them .452". Didn't work. Leaded like a fiend. No accuracy. I was perplexed to say the least. The 454190 mold was somewhat less of a problem because it carried a lot of lube, but it was no cure.
So out of desperation and a need to get the lead out of my barrel I bought a box of the old Hornady 250gr JHP. This bullet was sized .452" and was a dream come true.
I loaded it over 8.8grs of Hercules Unique for near 900 fps according to the then current ( mid 80s ) Hornady manual. This load shot beautifully. Very accurate, very consistent, very clean. But also very expensive.
So I kept trying different cast bullets. About 89 or 90 a local gun shop started selling cast handgun bullets made by a local resident. One of the bullets was the RCBS 255gr Keith bullet. They came cast fairly hard, but no where near as hard as the bevel based hard cast bullets. The first batches were sized to .452". I tried some. I still had leading, but it wasn't quite as bad as all the other bullets I'd tried. The next batch that came in were sized to .454". I loaded some up and bingo, a noticeable improvement. So I ordered a 1000 of them sized .454" and loaded them over 8.5grs and 9.0grs of Unique. They worked much better than all the others so I eventually bought a .454" sizing die for my RCBS Lube-A-Matic. I began sizing my own bullets to that diameter. My bullets showed even more improvement than the harder cast Keith bullets did.
Then I got married and there came a time where I didn't fire a shot from any of my guns for over 5 years. After that I shot a bit here and a bit there, shooting up my old reserves.
In 97 I picked up an Old Model Ruger BH in .45 Colt. It had a 7.5" barrel on it. Not my choice of barrel length, but it was the first one I'd seen for sale in the 20 years since my first one had been stolen.
This got me back into shooting with purpose. But this Ruger did not shoot well for me. It leaded like mad, and had more recoil than it should have.
About this time I began to read about chamber throats in the gun magazines. So I had a local smith do chamber casts on my Ruger's cylinder. Not only were they grossly undersized, several throats were oval in shape. Oh what a pain in butt.
I had that gunsmith order a reamer to correct the throat problems. Now, this was 97 or 98, long before I had the internet, and long before the chamber throat problem was commonly known.
The gunsmith reamed the throats out and the improvement was dramatic.
There was only two problems. He didn't have a proper reamer, and instead of doing them by hand he chucked the cylinder in the vise in his milling machine and did them that way. So the job wasn't smooth. Lots of tool marks.
I wondered about the S&W, did it have problems? Well, another 11 years passed before I got around to doing anything with the S&W. When I did I found out that the grove diameter is .451" to .4515" as best as I could measure the odd number of lands and groves, and the throats slugged out to 457". Yep .006" larger than the groves. No wonder this revolver would not shoot worth a hoot with cast or swagged lead bullets.
There was no seal around the base of the bullet. This allowed the burning powder gasses to flow around the bases and soften the lead. When this softened bullet hit the rifling it smeared off like a melted crayon.
Now what do I do? Well, I started buying the largest cast I could, and I quit buying bevel based bullets all together.
About 2000 I contacted Marshall Stanton at Beartooth bullets and discussed this with him. He offers a very nice 265gr Keith SWC and will size them between .452" and .457".
I asked him what problems I'd likely run into shooting his hard cast bullets through my S&W? His reply was, none. The bullet would swag down in the forcing cone and there would be no excessive pressures caused at all.
So I ordered 200 bullets from him. 100 sized .454" for my Ruger, and 100 sized 457" from the S&W.
It was sometime in 2002 after two forced relocations before I got to load these very nice bullets.
I loaded all of them in brand spanking new Winchester cases all length checked and sized with Winchester WLP primers.
The .457" bullets and 50 of the .454" bullets were loaded over 9.0grs of Alliant Unique. The other 50 were loaded over 18.5grs of Alliant 2400.
Eventually I got to the range with the S&W and these new over sized bullet loads. I knew I would have no trouble pressure wise from the conversation with Marshall Stanton, but what about accuracy? What about leading? I didn't know what to expect about that.
Well, I fired several other types of ammo just to get my feel of the S&W again. I don't shoot it much any more. Just before I shot the Beartooth bullets I ran a box of jacketed through it to make sure there was no lead. When I fired the .457" bullets I felt nothing different. I checked the cases thoroughly for excess pressure signs, but found none. But, I was amazed when I pulled the target back in from 25 yards and found a very nice small group. Probably the best group I'd ever gotten from this revolver with any cast bullet. I fired a number of groups with it that day and they were all the same ... small. I had a big grin on my face when I got home. The biggest smile came when I pulled the cylinder out and started cleaning it. NO LEAD, none. Not one speck anywhere in the throats or the bore.
I babied that second box of those rounds for a couple years. Now I'm out and the S&W sits loaded with Win STHP as our SD gun. But as soon as I can find a .457" sizer for my L-A-M I can cast up some of my own. As it is, .4555" bullets shoot almost as well as the .457" bullets.
I learned that Lyman and a lot of sources are all wet when they tell us to size the bullets to the bore. Bullets should be sized to the chamber throats. Hopefully they're close in size, but even if they are not, I'm convinced sizing to the throats is the only way to accurately shoot cast from a revolver. The only caveat is that the throats are larger than the bore. If they are smaller, that's an easy fix that's covered very well in others posts.
Elmer Keith blew the loading gate off one Colt SAA when a bad balloon head case ruptured. He was using a 300gr .45-70 bullet sized to .454" over 30 grs of black powder.
The other one blew on him with a case full of King's Semi-Smokeless powder and a 260gr soft government bullet. He went on to say the cases were old and well used with loose primer pockets. Two rounds went off at once.
Neither of these blown up Colts were because of shooting a larger bullet diameter.
I thought my experiences with over sized bullets might be interesting enough to share.
Joe
I own an early 80s S&W 25-5 in .45 Colt with a 4" barrel. When I bought it I was totally thrilled with it. It was to me the best balanced, nicest handling double action revolver I'd owned and used to date. And the double Dutch chocolate icing on the cake was it came in .45 Colt, my favorite caliber.
I carried that revolver on duty when I drove armored trucks in AZ. Carried it hiking, hunting, and it made something like 9 trips across country as our SD weapon. ( Don't tell nobody about that ... OK.)
But as satisfied with it that I was I had fits getting it to shoot cast or swagged lead bullets in any form other than the old standby Winchester 255gr and Remington 250gr lead bullets.
I tried every brand of commercial cast bullets and had the same results; extreme leading and very poor accuracy. I bought the hard cast bevel based bullets and found really quick they were the absolute worst offenders at that. .452" or .454" made no difference, horrible leading and accuracy.
I then tried my own cast bullets. The two I used the most was a mid 70s Lyman 454424 and an older Ideal 454190 mold. They cast large, around .456" to .457" and from wheel weights it weighed around 268grs and 255grs respectively. I was reading a lot of books and they all said size your bullets to the bore. So I sized them .452". Didn't work. Leaded like a fiend. No accuracy. I was perplexed to say the least. The 454190 mold was somewhat less of a problem because it carried a lot of lube, but it was no cure.
So out of desperation and a need to get the lead out of my barrel I bought a box of the old Hornady 250gr JHP. This bullet was sized .452" and was a dream come true.
I loaded it over 8.8grs of Hercules Unique for near 900 fps according to the then current ( mid 80s ) Hornady manual. This load shot beautifully. Very accurate, very consistent, very clean. But also very expensive.
So I kept trying different cast bullets. About 89 or 90 a local gun shop started selling cast handgun bullets made by a local resident. One of the bullets was the RCBS 255gr Keith bullet. They came cast fairly hard, but no where near as hard as the bevel based hard cast bullets. The first batches were sized to .452". I tried some. I still had leading, but it wasn't quite as bad as all the other bullets I'd tried. The next batch that came in were sized to .454". I loaded some up and bingo, a noticeable improvement. So I ordered a 1000 of them sized .454" and loaded them over 8.5grs and 9.0grs of Unique. They worked much better than all the others so I eventually bought a .454" sizing die for my RCBS Lube-A-Matic. I began sizing my own bullets to that diameter. My bullets showed even more improvement than the harder cast Keith bullets did.
Then I got married and there came a time where I didn't fire a shot from any of my guns for over 5 years. After that I shot a bit here and a bit there, shooting up my old reserves.
In 97 I picked up an Old Model Ruger BH in .45 Colt. It had a 7.5" barrel on it. Not my choice of barrel length, but it was the first one I'd seen for sale in the 20 years since my first one had been stolen.
This got me back into shooting with purpose. But this Ruger did not shoot well for me. It leaded like mad, and had more recoil than it should have.
About this time I began to read about chamber throats in the gun magazines. So I had a local smith do chamber casts on my Ruger's cylinder. Not only were they grossly undersized, several throats were oval in shape. Oh what a pain in butt.
I had that gunsmith order a reamer to correct the throat problems. Now, this was 97 or 98, long before I had the internet, and long before the chamber throat problem was commonly known.
The gunsmith reamed the throats out and the improvement was dramatic.
There was only two problems. He didn't have a proper reamer, and instead of doing them by hand he chucked the cylinder in the vise in his milling machine and did them that way. So the job wasn't smooth. Lots of tool marks.
I wondered about the S&W, did it have problems? Well, another 11 years passed before I got around to doing anything with the S&W. When I did I found out that the grove diameter is .451" to .4515" as best as I could measure the odd number of lands and groves, and the throats slugged out to 457". Yep .006" larger than the groves. No wonder this revolver would not shoot worth a hoot with cast or swagged lead bullets.
There was no seal around the base of the bullet. This allowed the burning powder gasses to flow around the bases and soften the lead. When this softened bullet hit the rifling it smeared off like a melted crayon.
Now what do I do? Well, I started buying the largest cast I could, and I quit buying bevel based bullets all together.
About 2000 I contacted Marshall Stanton at Beartooth bullets and discussed this with him. He offers a very nice 265gr Keith SWC and will size them between .452" and .457".
I asked him what problems I'd likely run into shooting his hard cast bullets through my S&W? His reply was, none. The bullet would swag down in the forcing cone and there would be no excessive pressures caused at all.
So I ordered 200 bullets from him. 100 sized .454" for my Ruger, and 100 sized 457" from the S&W.
It was sometime in 2002 after two forced relocations before I got to load these very nice bullets.
I loaded all of them in brand spanking new Winchester cases all length checked and sized with Winchester WLP primers.
The .457" bullets and 50 of the .454" bullets were loaded over 9.0grs of Alliant Unique. The other 50 were loaded over 18.5grs of Alliant 2400.
Eventually I got to the range with the S&W and these new over sized bullet loads. I knew I would have no trouble pressure wise from the conversation with Marshall Stanton, but what about accuracy? What about leading? I didn't know what to expect about that.
Well, I fired several other types of ammo just to get my feel of the S&W again. I don't shoot it much any more. Just before I shot the Beartooth bullets I ran a box of jacketed through it to make sure there was no lead. When I fired the .457" bullets I felt nothing different. I checked the cases thoroughly for excess pressure signs, but found none. But, I was amazed when I pulled the target back in from 25 yards and found a very nice small group. Probably the best group I'd ever gotten from this revolver with any cast bullet. I fired a number of groups with it that day and they were all the same ... small. I had a big grin on my face when I got home. The biggest smile came when I pulled the cylinder out and started cleaning it. NO LEAD, none. Not one speck anywhere in the throats or the bore.
I babied that second box of those rounds for a couple years. Now I'm out and the S&W sits loaded with Win STHP as our SD gun. But as soon as I can find a .457" sizer for my L-A-M I can cast up some of my own. As it is, .4555" bullets shoot almost as well as the .457" bullets.
I learned that Lyman and a lot of sources are all wet when they tell us to size the bullets to the bore. Bullets should be sized to the chamber throats. Hopefully they're close in size, but even if they are not, I'm convinced sizing to the throats is the only way to accurately shoot cast from a revolver. The only caveat is that the throats are larger than the bore. If they are smaller, that's an easy fix that's covered very well in others posts.
Elmer Keith blew the loading gate off one Colt SAA when a bad balloon head case ruptured. He was using a 300gr .45-70 bullet sized to .454" over 30 grs of black powder.
The other one blew on him with a case full of King's Semi-Smokeless powder and a 260gr soft government bullet. He went on to say the cases were old and well used with loose primer pockets. Two rounds went off at once.
Neither of these blown up Colts were because of shooting a larger bullet diameter.
I thought my experiences with over sized bullets might be interesting enough to share.
Joe