[kevinm]

Hi-

 Over the last few weeks I cast over 3000 bullets with a lyman 358429 mould. This weekend I tried every combination of load I could think of including various lubes but cannot get these bullets to shoot. I cast a few with pure linotype and they shoot like they should so it got me to thinking that there must be something wrong with the alloy which is WW metal.
  The bullets look fine and weights are quite consistant but just won't group the way they should. Could it be that I have "contaminated" alloy? What effect does zince have on bullet metal? The guy at the garage says they also use aluminum WW [never heard of that before]. How do you tell a "bad" WW from a good one?
  Thanks for any advice.

God bless
Kevin
Wishing he had a .38 cal machine gun to burn up those bullets now...

 

[Contender]

Kevin,

There is getting to be some real bad contamination in WW's in some areas. Some WW's will appear as in my case with a look of very poor fillout to them when they are in WW form. A grainy, wavy looking external surface. Shiny verses a dull color have been inconclusive in my experience to try to identify contamination.

Zinc and Aluminum in your mix are usually evidenced by poor fillout during casting. To the point of driving you crazy.

Zinc increases the surface tension of the alloy which will show by the appearance of slumping waves on the surface of the bullets with crevices.

Aluminum in the mix tends to appear as little spots of metal on the outside of the bullet surface with the appearance of the other surrounding alloy migrating away from the spot as the alloy solidifies.

It sounds like you may be OK in this respect with your alloy.

If you are not heat treating your wheelweight bullets, the hardness contrast of them compared to Lino is considerable.

If you are using top end loads with both, this may be your answer. Softer alloys when pushed hard will tend to strip and/or behave differently in the bore as compared to a harder alloy.

Depending on what you are shooting, you may try a different sizing diameter also with the softer alloy or throttle the load down a bit to see what happens.

There could be a number of answers here. Comparing WW to Lino is actually an apples to oranges situation.

Perhaps if you state a few more particulars of your situation for us to get a better handle on what you are doing.

Regards



<!--EDIT|Contender|Mar. 10 2002,17:04-->

 

[kevinm]

Contender-

 I've tried heavier loads and lighter loads with bullets that were air cooled and ones that were quenched in cold water and with some that had linotype added to harden then up. No combination has produced anything better than three inches at twenty yards and many that were far worse.
 I tried them sized [.358] and unsized [.359] with liquid alox and with SPG lube.
 From what you state it really does not appear that they are contaminated with zinc or alluminum since they cast beautifully without any problems getting the mould to fill out. They are very shiny until the mould gets hot and they start taking on the frosted look but that is normal.
 I even have a two 686's to try them in. Since posting I tried some of the bullets that have always worked which are a keith style, although the driving band is thinker with a smaller lube grove, that were cast on a magma machine and the same loads with these bullets shoot very tight groups, much smaller than my bullets even when using linotype.
 Has anyone here tried the 358329 and had good luck? At this point I'm starting to think that the Lyman version of this bullet just isn't what it should be.

God bless
Kevin

 

[mcassill]

Just how uniform is the weight?  +/- 1 grain is good.  The other possibility is that your guns just don't like that bullet design.
Good shooting
Mark

 

[kevinm]

Mark-

The weights are mostly within +/-1 grain but to make sure I weighed the bullets I used for testing. I think your right that it simply a case of the bullet not being a good match for the guns.

God bless
Kevin

 

[IDShooter]

Here's a thought - Did you measure the bullets after you sized them? I've read that a softer alloy will come out of the sizer die at a smaller diameter than a hard alloy due to the spring-back of the harder alloy. If this is the case, perhaps the softer bullets are sized too small to give optimum performance in your gun.            IDShooter

 

[kevinm]

ID Shooter-

Sorry I didn't get back to you sooner. Yes I measured them and since posting last time tried even more loads with no luck. I may send some of these bullets to someone who knows more than myself to see if he can figure it out.

Thanks

God bless
Kevin