Do cast bullets "rebound" after sizing.

JonB

Halcyon member
I have no idea what's going on, but a some point in the past 13 months... these noses grew. Of course, now I have 700 of these loads on hand that I need to pull. I tried seating about 50 of them deeper, over half sheared lead and PC when seated deeper.
I recently discovered a second batch of ammo, where the Bullets grew over time, to the point where there are chambering issues. First was some 45acp with 452374 that were PC'd. The next batch is some 41 Mag 196gr WC ammo that I seated to 'touch' the throats.
 

Dimner

Named Man
Oh yes! Ever look at a 200 year old piece of window glass? Ever wonder why the old churches had stain glass windows with lead strips in between? In a hundred years old painted glass will sag enough to ruin the art work.
But that's because glass is a liquid. (so we were taught when a kid) it's really an amorphous solid. which i guess is like an in-between state. Lead is a solid though.
 

Ian

Notorious member
Many of us have experienced this and is sure is frustrating.

One of the many, many advantages of powder coating bullets is that the technique allows for much smaller sizing than a cast bullet typically wants and also allows the bullets to tolerate significant jump to the lands. I hold nearly j-bullet tolerances with my PC'd bullets in rifles and this not only makes the ammunition much more reliable over time but helps it tolerate the chamber filth and grime that comes along with suppressor back pressure.
 

Ian

Notorious member
But that's because glass is a liquid. (so we were taught when a kid) it's really an amorphous solid. which i guess is like an in-between state. Lead is a solid though.

Nope. I was taught the same exact thing, that glass is an amorphous solid, but that simply isn't true. Glass is an elastic solid and is dimensionally stable indefinitely. Wavy window panes were wavy because of the way they were made for centuries before the modern molten metal pool foundation method and were wavy from the get-go. Leaded glass art windows were invented because of durable colors and the fact that very large glass panes were beyond the technology of the times.

Bullets don't sag or flow, but like other metal alloys that have precipitation-hardening characteristics they often expand over time due to internal dendrite crystal growth......exactly the way water expands when frozen,
 

Rockydoc

Well-Known Member
Many of us have experienced this and is sure is frustrating.

One of the many, many advantages of powder coating bullets is that the technique allows for much smaller sizing than a cast bullet typically wants and also allows the bullets to tolerate significant jump to the lands. I hold nearly j-bullet tolerances with my PC'd bullets in rifles and this not only makes the ammunition much more reliable over time but helps it tolerate the chamber filth and grime that comes along with suppressor back pressure.
Ian, you have so much knowledge from experience regarding high velocity powder coated cast bullets that I would like to see you write a piece for TIPS AND TRICKS AND TECHNIQUES on that subject,

How about that MODERATORS?
 

Dimner

Named Man
Many of us have experienced this and is sure is frustrating.

One of the many, many advantages of powder coating bullets is that the technique allows for much smaller sizing than a cast bullet typically wants and also allows the bullets to tolerate significant jump to the lands. I hold nearly j-bullet tolerances with my PC'd bullets in rifles and this not only makes the ammunition much more reliable over time but helps it tolerate the chamber filth and grime that comes along with suppressor back pressure.
The problem I have been having with PC this summer is powder coated noses in chambers with almost no throats. Makes it so I have to seat so deep it looks comical.
 

fiver

Well-Known Member
well we do deal in .001's

if i'm looking for that extra little bit of accuracy i will mess with my alloy and quenching.
i don't care about the BHN, but i am looking for another 1/2 to full thousandth on a nose or throat filling portion of a bullet.
it might be a half less not more, then you run into needing a nose size setup, or going to more lead and less stuff in it.
i even once ended up with a lead alloy with 1% tin and 1% antimony in it but was still able to hold close to 1900 fps in my rem 700 in 8 mauser.

i was just the other day thinking about trying a 1% antimony and @1% zinc alloy.
i don't have a lot of the 1% antimony alloy left though.
 

Brad

Benevolent Overlord and site owner
Staff member
Ian, you have so much knowledge from experience regarding high velocity powder coated cast bullets that I would like to see you write a piece for TIPS AND TRICKS AND TECHNIQUES on that subject,

How about that MODERATORS?
He is very welcome to do so. I question if he wants to take the time? He probably has 1,478,294 projects waiting.
 

Bret4207

At the casting bench in the sky. RIP Bret.
Ian, you have so much knowledge from experience regarding high velocity powder coated cast bullets that I would like to see you write a piece for TIPS AND TRICKS AND TECHNIQUES on that subject,

How about that MODERATORS?
Just do a search for Ian as the poster and "PC". He's got a zillion posts, probably most of what you want is there. I doubt he has the time to write the book on it! ;)

ETA-Brad beat me to it. I really should learn to read to the end of a thread.
 
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Brad

Benevolent Overlord and site owner
Staff member
There are 2 different issues here.

One being that yes, a harder bullet does give a larger sized diameter than a softer one.
The other being that some alloys do “grow” a bit even after sizing.

Either issue can cause some troubles.
 

Dimner

Named Man
Think jacketed, not cast.
Would you mind expanding on this a little bit? I have been treating all my PC bullets like jacketed in respect to bullet diameter. However, for the nose size, I'm not sure how I would apply the same thinking.

I have to seat my bullets down to the very last thousandths of an inch on the very end of the last driving band of the bullet. This is past the crimp groove.

Maybe I should just write this up in a different thread. I was trying to solve this problem and use it as an example for the 'Fit is King' thread, but I guess I have over estimated my ability to tackle this problem child of a rifle.
 

Ian

Notorious member
Would you mind expanding on this a little bit? I have been treating all my PC bullets like jacketed in respect to bullet diameter. However, for the nose size, I'm not sure how I would apply the same thinking.

Make your cast bullets shaped like jacketed bullets. You don't have any trouble chambering jacketed bullets in ANY rifle when they are seated to the cartridge overall length recommended by the manufacturer's load data, do you?
 

Ian

Notorious member
Ian, you have so much knowledge from experience regarding high velocity powder coated cast bullets that I would like to see you write a piece for TIPS AND TRICKS AND TECHNIQUES on that subject,

How about that MODERATORS?

I'm tired.

Another technical article that I feel needs to be written, peer-reviewed and edited----and illustrated----would be titled Cast Bullet Fit: The Statics and Dynamics of a rifle system. I have an outline and partial rough draft, but not the mental energy to complete it. Maybe someday.

In the meantime I have left you with "my quest for speed and accuracy with powder coated cast bullets", "Swedish Mauser!", and "It shouldn't work, but it does", among others. The info is there, how to apply it successfully to your particular guns is up to you.

Ask CB Rick why he hasn't written and published a champion's guide to handgun silhouette shooting, or ask JW Filips why he hasn't written a book on the history or the making of early American flint lock rifles.
 
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462

California's Central Coast Amid The Insanity
I'm tired.

Another technical article that I feel needs to be written, peer-reviewed and edited----and illustrated----would be titled Cast Bullet Fit: The Statics and Dynamics of a rifle system. I have an outline and partial rough draft, but not the mental energy to complete it. Maybe someday.

In the meantime I have left you with "my quest for speed and accuracy with powder coated cast bullets", "Swedish Mauser!", and "It shouldn't work, but it does", among others. The info is there, how to apply it successfully to your particular guns is up to you.

Ask CB Rick why he hasn't written and published a champion's guide to handgun silhouette shooting, or ask JW Filips why he hasn't written a book on the history or the making of early American flint lock rifles.
Regarding only our gun and reloading hobbies, it makes the research, time, effort and energy required of Hatcher, Sharpe, Mann, Whalen, Keith, Waters, de Hass, Barnes, etc., and the publishers of the many handloading manuals shine in a much brighter light.

I thank Ian and Fiver for what they contribute, though Fiver's stuff often requires more deciphering ability than I possess.
 

fiver

Well-Known Member
you'll have that..... LOL

the point is to get the point across,,, but.
i really want to give you the answer, but,,, the point really is for you to have it click in your head in your own way and work through the solutions so that you have learned the lesson and not just read the chalkboard portion.

that an i can only tell you what i know, sometimes i plain out haven't run into the problem your seeing, or i did and worked out a solution then forgot why i did what i did.
 

Ian

Notorious member
It's funny. I can translate Fiverese but as I'm reading for the second or third time the gears are spinning and replaying mental images of the times I worked through a similar problem. If you haven't done that yourself, it might not make so much sense, but if you really think about it, your OWN mind can start to fill in the blanks until that magical a-HAA! moment happens. I see responses often that indicate the person doesn't yet understand enough of the pieces to put it together yet, which is why I write long diatribes which basically take three sentences of Fiverese and reverse-engineers it into several, lengthy, descriptive paragraphs.

I learned a lot from you, bud.
 

RBHarter

West Central AR
I've told people for years ......
This is what the manual says step 1-X .
This is what it's supposed to look like when your done and how I get there .
Now you have to figure out what makes sense and works for you .

It's kind of like an old guy used to say "that's a license to learn not just to drive" .

Pot temperature has little to do with mould temp it's more about contact , heat release/retention, and surface values .
Mould temp is regulated by pour tempo .
You have to visualize pouring heat and establish a steady cadence and consistent reset even if you use a clock .

Try the stuff you read about . If that doesn't read different stuff about the same stuff and try that .

Reading all of the details and expanded explanations is great but it's not nearly as complicated as all that when you apply it all hands on .
There's so much involved , but it's mostly self aligning when you do it .

Just a few examples of the way we communicate what we do to make clear what has become as simple and natural to us as putting on a pair of pants.
Have you put pants on a kid just learning how to crawl lately ?
Never mind the 2nd grader that asks why it's a pair of pants when there's only one pant . (I dare you to explain codpiece to a 6 yr old).
 

Bret4207

At the casting bench in the sky. RIP Bret.
Sometimes figuring out what a person is trying to get across, be it question or advice, is difficult. I admit, Fiver, Ian and others have left me scratching my bald old head more than a few times. It sort of clicks after a while, usually, but there is always some wondering going on. Getting those wheels turning is only half the problem, it's getting them headed down the right road that is the issue many times. Having to think in nano-seconds over a fraction of an inch make it even tougher. But, hey! That's what makes this interesting. Like I said the other day, if there was one simple answer, like Bhn, we'd all be shooting 30+Bhn and we'd have no problems! It's not like we can't make 'em, they just aren't the whole answer!
 
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Rally

NC Minnesota
I guess I have been lucky. I haven’t run into many problems, but I’m not looking to gain that extra 1/4” on a target. I tend to look for functioning ammo/ bullets that are consistent and fill my needs in the bush. My worst nightmare ended when I studied the lube threads and found Bens formula. I just added some more Beeswax to get the consistency I wanted. Ian got me started on a load for the Ranchdog bullet and Reloader 7. I’ve assembled lifetime supplies of both, life is good!