Bullet Cast Weight and accuracy

[RicinYakima]

Ricin, I don't own a Ransom rest and sandbag my handgun. What have you discovered by being able to remove errors from handgun grip and your loads?

First, the place that I can use it is only 25 yards. Second, you discover mechanical issues like one chamber in the cylinder is not aligned with the rest and shoots out of group. Next it takes at least 12 shots to settle the gun into the rest.

If there are no mechanical problems, the 12 shot groups are round. I can approach that with sandbags for six shots, but reloading and regriping will almost always move point of impact some. I think most of my outliers from sandbags is not the same trigger press. I have short fat fingers and arthritis in my hands. I seem to have fewer if the gun is only held in my hands and the hands forcibly down and forward on the sandbags.

HTH, Ric

 

[burbank.jung]

When I read about your weight variation I was going to offer my experience. Now with your comment above I will. When I was making schuetzen bullets and was striving for as perfect a bullet as I could cast I was weight sorting. I learned that if I tapped my mould shut, with my casting mallet, by gently tapping the gently closed mould on jaw of the handle where it enters the mould block, my weight variations dropped from .3 or.4 grain spread over 100 bullets, to nearly zero. Since I hold my mould by the handles in my left hand, I tap the sprue cutter, drop my bullet(s), gently close the blocks by closing the handles with the blocks sliding on my wooden casting bench. I then tap the jaw on the right side of the blocks taking care not to strike the blocks them selves. This way I know the mould is completely closed and the alignment pins are fully seated. Then I close the sprue plate and fill the mould again. This has become a habit and I can do it without much effort. I also keep a Q-Tip with a "trace" of synthetic two stroke oil on it a touch the alignment pins and their mating holes a couple of times each casting session.

Of course it should go without saying, that allowing splashes or flecks of alloy to get on your mould faces, will prevent full closure and all weight bets are off.

My worse mold is this 40-170 TC Lee mold. Even after I smoke it the thing has atleast 1 or more bullets that stick. I'm upset enough to take an emery cloth to the edge and maybe buy mold spray just for this mold. What is your recommendation to stop sticking bullets.?

 

[Ian]

Soak it down with a liberal coat of FA mould release spray, goober the sprue plate and alignment pins up real good with beeswax, and smoke the jeezus out of it with several Ohio Blue Tip kitchen matches. All while figuring your load out to max pressure of (1422xbhn)-10% and fluxing your pot with Marvellux.

 

[Brad]

Soak it down with a liberal coat of FA mould release spray, goober the sprue plate and alignment pins up real good with beeswax, and smoke the jeezus out of it with several Ohio Blue Tip kitchen matches. All while figuring your load out to max pressure of (1422xbhn)-10% and fluxing your pot with Marvellux.

Someone needs another cup of coffee!

 

[waco]

Soak it down with a liberal coat of FA mould release spray, goober the sprue plate and alignment pins up real good with beeswax, and smoke the jeezus out of it with several Ohio Blue Tip kitchen matches. All while figuring your load out to max pressure of (1422xbhn)-10% and fluxing your pot with Marvellux.

How bout you tell us how you really feel?....

 

[Joshua]

Spicy!

 

[462]

Atta' boy, Ian!

 

[burbank.jung]

 

[Winelover]

Someone needs another cup of coffee!

As well as, some purple ink.

 

[Bret4207]

Just in case you didn't catch it, Ian was being facetious.

You need to look up "Leementing". Maybe someone can link to an article on it here or probably on The Site Which Shall Not Be Named". It's basically the finish work that needs to be done to many Lee moulds, the deburring, polishing and cleaning up of the mould so they work nice. Lee moulds are inexpensive for a reason, and this is where Lee cuts costs. Sticky cavities can be de-stickied without a lot of fuss, and normally without resorting to power tools!