Cast Bullet Association Blog Rss Feedhttp://castbulletassoc.org/blog/Rss2_.aspxRss 2.0 for the user blogs.en-usFri, 25 Sep 2026 12:15:55 GMTCast Bullet Associationchefreiss@gmail.com(Cast Bullet Association)info@morganids.com (Richard Morgan)360The Peabody And The Bearhttp://castbulletassoc.org/blog/article/2019/3/163/the-peabody-and-the-bear By John Floyd Excerpt from Fouling Shot 131 Jan-Feb 1998.Nearly fifty years ago when I was a cattle rancher here in southern British Columbia, I was the chap that introduced an old single-shot .45-7....


By John Floyd

Excerpt from Fouling Shot 131 Jan-Feb 1998.

Nearly fifty years ago when I was a cattle rancher here in southern British Columbia, I was the chap that introduced an old single-shot .45-7() Peabody rifle to a large black bear. I had found one of my cows that had been killed by a bear and I was out to even the score. Hardly anything makes a rancher angrier than finding a predator eating one of his cows!

I had acquired the old Peabody from a shooting buddy and he knew as little as I did about the rifle. It had "Peabody's Pat." and "Providence Tool Co." stamped on the receiver, was in fairly good shape for an old gun, with clean, deep rifling in the barrel, a tipping breech block action and a big external hammer. There were no caliber markings on it, but my buddy had been shooting .45-70 factory ammunition in the rifle, so we felt sure that was what it was chambered for. It was years later before I discovered that the old Peabody was rather rare and was originally made in a metric caliber for the French during the Franco-Prussian war. It was also sold to Connecticut for the state militia, which later returned it to the factory to be rebarrelled to .45-75, with the then new seven-groove Henry rifling.

While I did not know all this at the time, I had heard that it was not a good idea to use jacketed bullets and smokeless powder in these old rifles. Too expensive also! So, I got a Lyman mould for the 400 grain 457124 bullet and started with lead and black powder. No sizing of the bullets for me; just lube them with water-pump grease and seat them with enough black powder in the case to fill it to the base of the bullet. The resulting groups were hardly of match quality, but plenty good enough for hunting large animals.

Now, a cattle rancher has things to do besides sitting up by a dead cow, so I could only check out the area in the evenings at dusk. One evening I was a bit late and it was nearly dark under the trees where the carcass lay. I was carrying the Peabody with a round in the chamber and three shells between the fingers of my left hand. When I was about sixty yards from the carcass I saw what looked like a big black stump, but it growled at me! At first I couldn't tell which end the growl came from, but when the black bulk moved broadside to me, I let the front sight of the Peabody down into the forward half and squeezed the trigger.

Although I was momentarily blinded by the muzzle flash, I heard the solid thunk of a good hit. While slipping another round into the chamber I heard the bear run off into the trees. I knew that was the sign of a heart-shot animal. When all was quiet I went forward and found a very large, dead bear piled up against a tree. In daylight the next morning, I surveyed the remains. The 400 grain bullet had clipped the heart and passed on through

the animal. In daylight, that "black" bear was a dark chocolate brown.

In time I found that the Peabody would shoot excellently with pure lead bullets sized to .452" Over the years it has done fine work for me, even out to five and six hundred yards in the Military Black Powder Matches. It is little wonder that the old rifle has an honored place in my gun cabinet.





]]>Thu, 28 Mar 2019 03:14:24 GMThttp://castbulletassoc.org/blog/article/2019/3/163/the-peabody-and-the-bearWhy do we shoot cast lead bullets?http://castbulletassoc.org/blog/article/2019/3/162/why-do-we-shoot-cast-lead-bullets? Recently I got to thinking about why I started casting and shooting lead alloy bullets. For the life of me I couldn’t remember, possibly a factor of advancing years, then the penny dropped; I bough....
Recently I got to thinking about why I started casting and shooting lead alloy bullets. For the life of me I couldn’t remember, possibly a factor of advancing years, then the penny dropped; I bought a muzzleloading rifle and began casting round balls. There had always been small amounts of lead around the family home whether it was in the form of sheet lead from roof flashings or lead head roofing nails so the source of material for balls was not an issue. In addition my brothers and I had cast sinkers for fishing well prior to the idea of taking up shooting.

Coming from a family of non shooters (yes, go work that out) I was incredibly lucky to grow up a few houses away from a gentleman who took me under his wing and fostered my interest. Jack shot blackpowder rifles a lot in his earlier years and had a fantastic library of shooting material that he was only too happy for me to borrow and read. I lot of the material was from the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s when bullet casting was still very popular so along with the running of ball for the front stuffer the seed was planted for casting projectiles for centrefire rifles as they came along. Now firmly ensconced into cast lead alloy bullet casting I am often intrigued about the motivations behind like minded folk entering into the fray also. Indeed we are very small part of the shooting population and when explaining the pursuit to non shooter/casters I compare our sport to beer. Stay with me people; I’m heading somewhere with this one.

As a beverage beer is consumed by a large part of the population (but not me, long story…). The vast majority of the beer drinking population purchase commercially available products most of which come from large organisations with smaller boutique operations on the peripheral. Think of this as the bulk of shooters who only ever buy factor ammo. I very small percentage of the populous brew their own beer using commercially available kits and products. This is the reloading crowd. Then you get the hard core brewers who make their own mash and really get down to grass roots level to make beer from scratch; that’s us. The cranks. Probably an overly simplistic analogy but I’m sure you get the gist. In essence we are a small part of a small part of the shooting community and I believe increasingly so when you consider the popularity of AR type platforms the vast majority of which will only every shoot factor ammo.

I enjoy the challenge of producing a projectile myself whilst tailoring it to a specific firearm to produce the best accuracy possible. With some rifles I have shot this goal has been very easily achieved eg: my .30-30 bolt gun. Other firearms have required a significant amount of persistence (bloody mindedness?) like the .380 Rook single shot I briefly owned or my 6.5X52 Carcano. All follies and foibles aside I have yet to be beaten by a rifle and have managed to get them all to shoot well with lead alloy of some sort. Oh how many times I have left the range completely satisfied after producing groups that made shooters of modern rifles shooting jacketed bullet sit and take notice.

In addition to the challenge there is also an aspect of self sufficiency. For my reloading all I buy these days are primers and powder. I make my own bullets, gas checks and lube and as the vast majority of my handloads run on reduced charges of powder a pound goes a long way. As we saw with the rimfire ammo shortages of a few years back the ability to make your own ammunition be it for hunting, target or plinking is not to be overlooked.

Cost cannot be overlooked either. Depending on the cartridge, load and source of bullet metal it is not difficult to produce centrefire cast bullet ammo for less than the price of rimfire fodder. Take the middle of the road .38 Special with a wadcutter bullet and nominal 2.8gr of Bullseye and you have a cartridge that costs very little to shoot. Even .30cal cartridges can be loaded to duplicate the deer cartridge of days gone by such as the .32-40 and still run the same cost as the .22RF. As much as I enjoy shooting rimfires I sure like shooting my centrefires at least as much or more.

So what about you? Tell us on the forum why you belong to this elite group of galena chucking cranks.

]]>Thu, 21 Mar 2019 11:58:13 GMThttp://castbulletassoc.org/blog/article/2019/3/162/why-do-we-shoot-cast-lead-bullets?Etching and Leadinghttp://castbulletassoc.org/blog/article/2019/3/161/etching-and-leading Excerpt from Fouling Shot 129, Ken MollohanIn previous issues of The Cast Bullet I've discussed my thoughts on bullet lubes and explained why I believe they improve performance by keeping powder....


Excerpt from Fouling Shot 129, Ken Mollohan

In previous issues of The Cast Bullet I've discussed my thoughts on bullet lubes and explained why I believe they improve performance by keeping powder fouling soft and by wetting the bore to prevent molten lead from soldering to the steel. Regardless of the cause of leading, it is generally agreed that it is the kiss of death for accurate shooting.

Many things can cause the accuracy of castbullets to fall off. Small losses, of half an inch or so, in grouping abilitycan be caused by anything from a stock warping, to variations in age hardeningof the bullet causing differences in base upset and obturation; but in verypowerful cast bullet loads, loss of accuracy is usually more the base of the bullet and the walls of the throat and bore and the cereal acts like a plug, preventing gas from blowing past the bullet. The COW plug minimizes leading and delivers a better bullet at the same time. In addition to sealing off hot gases, the COW performs a second function, sweeping the bore clean of any powder fouling and traces of lead. In a good load, using a sufficient amount of COW, the bore remains bright, clean, and shiny, shot after shot, resulting in more consistent accuracy.

I know someone will protest that leading iscaused by the alloy rubbing off the bullet onto the steel, not by etching fromhot powder gases. I used to think so too, but one day I realized that some airrifles can shoot thousands of unlubricated lead pellets at velocities over 1000 fps without accumulating lead fouling. Why doesn't lead rub offin their bores?



I decided to find out just what it takes to make a lead alloy stick to clean steel I tried rubbing lead and steel together by hand, smashing them together with a hammer, compressing them in an hydraulic press, spinning them against each other in a hand drill, and shooting lead bullets at a steel backstop. I tried high and low percentages of tin. I could only produce a slight smear of alloy on the steel, and I could wipe that off with my thumb.

Nothing I conjured up produced any buildup on the steel unless I managed to melt the lead alloy in the process. I finally loaded .22 caliber air rifle pellets in .222 cases and shot them at velocities ranging from 800 fps to 1000 fps. In all but the lightest loads, the pellets leaded the bore like you simply wouldn't believe. The base of the recovered pellets looked like they had been sandblasted but I didn't see any evidence of melting. An air gun uses relatively cold air to push the lead pellet down the bore, but a firearm uses hot gas with a flame that can be above the melting point of steel. I tied this together with the fact that I couldn't get lead to stick to steel without melting it and concluded that the difference between the air rifle and my .222 loads was etching of microscopic molten droplets of lead from the pellets by the hot powder gas.

Another generally accepted and seemingly reasonable theory claims that smooth barrels work best with cast bullets because rough bores abrade a cast bullet like a file leaving lead in the bore. Some lead may indeed be abraded off a bullet fired in a rough bore, but, if so, the bore irregularities should be constant from shot to shot resulting in uniform bullet deformation from shot to shot, and accuracy should not be greatly affected.

Even if some alloy is rubbed off the bullet, what makes it stick to the bore? My tests indicate that it must melt to adhere. I believe that rough spots in the bore deform the bullet, engraving small grooves on its surface. Once past the roughness, these grooves allow gas to escape past the bullet, etching it and causing much more leading than you would get in a smoother barrel Incidentally, I think this may be why fouling from jacketed bullets is so hard on ordinary cast bullets. I believe that very hard, irregular jacketed fouling causes lead fouling just like a rough bore. In my experience even the roughest bores are capable of reasonable accuracy if the loads, and therefore the gas temperatures, are kept mild enough Cream Of Wheat filler loads are not very sensitive to jacketed fouling, probably because the gas can't get through the grooves that the copper fouling leaves on the bullets

There are some well known tricks to get decent accuracy with high power cast bullet loads. Seating the bullet into the barrel throat not only gives better alignment with the bore, but also minimizes the flow of gas around the bullet Using a slow burning powder is also advantageous; slower powders burn cooler and less heat means less etching. Paper patching bullets to protect them against gases also works. Even a single copper cup at the base provides a substantial improvement over the velocity potential of plain based cast bullets.

Notice how many of the things that improve shooting with high power cast bullet loads can be explained from the perspective of lead etching by the hot powder gases. Virtually everything that helps maintain accuracy at high velocities, prevents or minimizes etching. This forces me to conclude that etching and the resultant bore leading are at least among, if not the primary causes of catastrophic accuracy loss in high power cast bullets. Whether you believe the gas just softens the surface of the bullet, or the blow-by etches it, is immaterial. In truth, it may be impossible to separate the two theories, because etching cannot occur unless the surface of the bullet is heated sufficiently to result in serious softening of the alloy. The point to remember is that accurate high velocity cast bullet loads are made possible by either paper patching or COW filler.

While smokeless powders permitted improved power with jacketed bullets, their much hotter flame caused cast bullets to go into a low performance slump for generations. We now stand ready to pull cast bullets out of that slump with loads yielding little or nothing to their jacketed descendants in terms of power or accuracy. The many confirmed successes with high power cast bullets prove that good accuracy is possible though not yet as readily obtained as with jacketed bullets. I confidently expect cast bullets to resume their traditional role of providing inexpensive shooting of the finest accuracy but at power levels as high as modern ammunition can deliver. I do not think cast bullets are likely to displace jacketed bullets, but only because cast bullets are the products of individual effort and not well suited to commercial production.

Now it's your turn. What kind of objections tomy ideas can you think of? What did I overlook? What did I misconstrue? Whathave you seen that I haven't seen? Believe it or not, I really hope someone canshoot me down in flames because that will give me a chance to work out othertheories, besides, I love armchair ballistics almost as much as actualshooting. So come on, all you brother armchair ballisticians, have at it!











]]>Wed, 13 Mar 2019 01:29:56 GMThttp://castbulletassoc.org/blog/article/2019/3/161/etching-and-leadingHollow point cast bullets.http://castbulletassoc.org/blog/article/2019/3/160/hollow-point-cast-bullets. Hollow point cast bullets are very much in vogue right now. I would wager that never in recent times have so many affordable moulds producing HP projectiles been so available. We have the likes o....


Hollow point cast bullets are very much in vogue right now. I would wager that never in recent times have so many affordable moulds producing HP projectiles been so available. We have the likes of NOE, MP and Accurate to thank for this but less so from the mainstream manufacturers. Lee list no HP moulds at this time and the same goes for RCBS though Lyman is still making a limited number of pistol moulds and one rifle bullet with HP facility.

Historically Ideal used to offer a large variety of HP bullet moulds arguably the most famous of which is the Gould Express 457122 330gr still offered to this day by Lyman. Available to download from the CBA web site are old Ideal catalogues and the 1929 version shows a great many HP options from .22 through .45 calibre. Sadly they have gone the way of the Dodo bird and much of that is attributable to introduction and availability of jacketed hollow point bullets from commercial sources.

So why cast HPs? Original HP lead alloy bullets were for hunting purposes with the intent of greater knock down power and bullet expansion. Velocities at the time were topping out in the region of 1600fps with most around 12-1400fps so it is easy to see how the hunters of the time would have benefited from binary lead/tin HP alloy bullets (30-1, 20-1, 16-1). Take for example the classic .44-40 bullet, 42498, 210gr FN departing the woods hunter at 1300fps. Nothing to sneeze at but now replace that with the obsolete 42499 with a deep HP the terminal effect on light skinned medium game it is significantly better.





Two designs of nose pins for casting HPs exist. The traditional method utilising a single cavity mould with a pin manually inserted into the base of the mould prior to pouring then upon solidification of the alloy removed before the mould is opened and bullet ejected. The other design lends itself wonderfully to multiple cavity moulds where pins are fixtures in one half of the mould and swing out upon opening allowing the bullets to clear the cavity and fall free of the forming pin. MP moulds favour this method – see the 452-374 below.


MP 452-374 with two lengths of HP pins and FN variation.

Erik Ohlen converted Lyman 225462



For those that have an existing traditional mould they would like converted to HP Erik Ohlen of www.hollowpointmold.com will take your mould and add either a traditional Ideal style pin or Cramer style bar for multiple cavities. Erik converted a Lyman 225462 for me creating a devastating small game pest control bullet for my .223 Remington.

Alloys for HPs can be critical depending on the impact velocity, internal size of the HP and required performance. Binary alloy of lead/tin is fantastic as the molecular cohesion of Pb and Sn is superb; essentially the two metals cling together so well they deform without shedding material. Once we begin to add antimony to the mix the alloy will become increasingly brittle in direct correlation to the percentage of Sb added. In the case of my small game pest control bullets fragmentation is not an issue as rapid dumping on energy is desirable so clip on wheel weight metal can be used allowing for respectable velocities (2300fps) and convincing terminal results. On heavier/larger animals where penetration and expansion is required it may be prudent to ‘water’ down such metal with pure lead to reduce the percentage of antimony, use a binary alloy or keep the impact speeds down.



Air cooled clip on wheel weight alloy 31133 and 225462 bullets recovered from wet telephone books. 1900 and 2300fps respectively.

A European hare showing tissue damage from an ACWW 31133.



One major factor in producing quality HP bullets is running HOT. Hot mould, hot alloy and most importantly, a hot HP pin. When ‘running ball’ with my Ohlen converted 225462 I am sure to keep the pin resting on the casting furnace or in the alloy between pours. This ensures the very small diameter pin is keep at alloy temp consistent to avoid HP defects.

Cast lead alloy hollow point bullets. Not a new idea but still as useful and relevant today as they were over 100 years ago. Give them a go.

Jeff



]]>Wed, 13 Mar 2019 01:27:22 GMThttp://castbulletassoc.org/blog/article/2019/3/160/hollow-point-cast-bullets.