Hey all!
I am fighting a battle that I am sure you have all fought forever: That of leading in the barrell.
I have been trying different things, hard cast, vs soft cast...tumble-lubed bullets vs pan-lubed bullets, liquid alox, vs. old NRA formula...but I just can't seem to get these things to fire clean....and it occured to me....
I don't REALLY know what good barrel leading or bad barrell leading is supposed to look like.
I can immediately see the leading at the end of the barrell on the first shot---11 or 12 shots later it's marginally worse. But because I don't really know what it's supposed to look like I need to ask you hardcore cast shooters out there...
How many shots can you/do you fire from a common auto pistol...say a Springfield or a 45 acp...before you need to break it down and run a brush through it?
I ask this because I was getting ready to make up a mess of my better (if still not great) cast bullets and load em up and see if I could get through 200 of 'em before I had to clean the bore.
I still need to work on my bullets...I bought a 500 lot of cast bullets from my local gun shop and those shot well...and leave much less leading than my own....
If I could get my own bullets working at least that well, I would be proud of 'em. I would call em usable.
A buddy of mine is taking a tactical pistol class and he needs 1000 rounds of 9mm...he wants me to make them for him, but unless I can get these things shooting clean that's not gonna happen.
I was wondering if anyone had any experience with more/less leading on bullets that had been through a lubrisizer as opposed to shot as-cast? Do I need to get a lubrisizer to reduce leading, or does that help at all?
Also, my current molds I have been experimenting with were Lee molds...one is the 124 grain tumble-lube round nose, and the other is the 125 grain one-lube-groove round nose... (two-cavity)
Initially I thought my leading was because I was running out of lube, so I went from tumble lube to pan-lube with the lube-grooved bullets...and while this helped it did not solve the problem.
I was hoping that using a two-groove mold would help also, but two things bother me about that: Firstly, my store-bought cast bullets are just one lube-groove and they do fine....and secondly, I can't seem to find a cheap, two-groove Lee aluminum mold,,,the only molds I see that produce bullets with two grooves are iron and cost about 60 bones from Midway.
Do you all think that using a mold with double grooves to hold a bit more lube will help, or am I on the wrong track here?
I did notice that my as-cast bullets were slightly larger in general than my store bought cast bullets...do OVERsized bullets cause more leading? (I thought it was worse if they were too small than too large...gas-cutting and all that).
I am loading with 4.2 grains of Unique and my alloy is straight wheel-weights with a bit of tin thrown in. Gives me a BHN of appx 10-11 (or 14 to 15 if I water-drop em)
My pan-lube is 1 part parrafin, 1 part vaseline, 2 TBSP STP oil treatment.
Any suggestions or ideas much appreciated.
Thanks!
Dave