Please help me out with this 44 leading issue

I have heard that too SMALL a powder charge will lead to leading.

1) 18 sounds pretty hard for anything but full-house loads.

2) consistent throats is good, but if they're consistently undersizing for the bore, that's consistently bad. You want the slug to enter the bore ~0.001 oversized, and this is more important as slugs get harder. Slug the bore.

Another post has the poster polishing some roughness out of the forcing cone of a Taurus revolver. Maybe you have a 629 with some roughness in that area that’s causing some of the leading?

https://www.thehighroad.org/index.p...-from-a-sows-ear-taurus.849987/#post-11102160

Stay safe!

The guys are right! 18 Brinell is to hard for the load you are using and the bullets are bevel based bullets on top of that.
Flat based bullets seal up better in the bore but bevel based will also work if the powder creates enough pressure to make the bullet's base expand to fit the bore.
What is happening is the expanding gasses are getting past the sides of the bullets because the load isn't creating enough pressure to seal the bullet base in the bore and the hot gasses are melting the sides of the bullet and the melted lead is sticking to the inside of the barrel.
That's the best recipe for leading I can think of.

You should be shooting 12 Brinell or less for the load you making. Look at Missouri Bullet's web site and you will see two different hardnesses for their lead bullets.
One for Cowboy Action shooting (12 Brinell). One for 18 Brinell for heavier loads like the Magnums use.
You should be using the 12 Brinell bullets for the Unique loads your using.

It doesn't matter if

What is the muzzle velocity? 1250 fps is usually the max with lead bullets without gas checks. Regardless of the bullet hardness.

Try a coating on Lee liquid alox. From Lee-

Liquid Alox application
Posted by on 23 October 2018 03:48 PM
Best results in applying liquid Alox are when the Alox is heated before applying, or thinned with mineral spirits to maximum of 1 part mineral spirits to 10 parts Alox. This makes it flow more easily, and results in a more even coat. One technique is to boil water and pour it into a coffee mug, and then drop the bottle of liquid Alox into the mug for about five minutes.

Place your freshly cast bullets into something about the size of a Cool Whip bowl and drop a few drops of liquid Alox on the bullets. Mix the bullets around until they are all coated. Lay the freshly coated bullets on some wax paper to dry. Liquid Alox will usually dry enough overnight to reload the next day, depending upon the humidity.

If you subscribe to the "more is better" line of thought, your coated bullets may never dry. Don't go for a "golden" color but rather just a light varnish. If you discover that your bullets are sticky the next day, you can get by with using a little less the next time. Keep reducing until the "stickiness" is gone by the next day. Tacky bullets can be dusted with powdered graphite.

Try a bullet with a Brinell of 12. It would make sense that a harder bullet (18 Brinell) would be less likely to lead a bore than a softer bullet (12 Brinell) but it doesn't seem to work that way.

There are a lot of different possible mysteries concerning cast lead bullets and leading. I have found the wrong bullet hardness the biggest contributor to leading.

18 BHN needs a lot of pressure to properly Obturate the bullet. If your leading is worse toward the muzzle your likely getting gas cutting. Either pump up the pressure or add Alox as 243winxb suggested (or both).

That load is a very light load. If you want powder puff loads use coated bullets. No leading and problem solved with leading.

Too hard. Been there, done that. Three different 44 mags leaded badly with some "hard" 429421 bullets I bought thinking harder is better. Went back to my wheelweight/lead bullets with the old alox/beeswax lube and the leading disappeared. Loads were from 17.5 to 21 grains of 2400.

Not knocking wheel weight bullets. I have shot thousands and wheel weight bullets are an economical choice and serious consideration. However you are at the mercy of the wheel weight manufacturers when it comes to lead hardness. Car tires don't care how hard a wheel weight is. My worst leading problems have come from wheel weight bullets.

Leading isn't the end of the world and I actually dealt with the leading of wheel weight bullets for a couple of years. They were economical and very accurate and removing the leading only added about 3-5 minutes to my normal gun cleaning time.

Shoot jsp, problem solved.

Wat too hard of an alloy for your loads.

You never said if you were using 44sp or 44mag cases.

18bhn alloy need to be in the + 26,000psi range to obturate. 7.5gr of unique in a 44spl case puts you in the 20,000+psi range. Starting loads for the 44mag are 9.8gr of unique (20,000+psi also).

These articles may be of assistance:

http://www.lasc.us/FryxellCBAlloyObturation.htms

http://www.lasc.us/FryxellLubeCastBullets.htm

LRDGCO said:

These articles may be of assistance:

http://www.lasc.us/FryxellCBAlloyObturation.htms

http://www.lasc.us/FryxellLubeCastBullets.htm

Click to expand...

I was going to post the links if no one else had.
Fryxell has a lot of good info. Read, sleep on it, and read it again. And don't be afraid to ask more questions with things you don't understand.
For the 44 spl, you will probably be better served with a flat base bullet that is sized to fit your gun and uses softer alloy. If you wander over to castboolits.gunloads.com, you can likely find someone who will cast a small batch for testing. You can also try powdercoated bullets, They can be cast even softer and usually leave little lead in the bore. There is a plethora of info on PC bullets at the cast boolits site.

In the original post the cylinder throats were said to be .429". In my opinion that is too small for lead bullet shooting, especially with a hard alloy. If it were my gun I would ream the throats out to .431" and size my bullets to .431". I have 3, 44 Magnum revolvers and all throats are .431" (one S&W 629, one Ruger SBH, one Dan Wesson 44H).

FWIW; "drop through", "push through", "snug" and "loose" are just WAGs, not measurements. I like facts, real life measurements in one thousandths of an inch. Pin/plug gauges are not overly expensive and throats can be slugged and measured just like barrels, and measured with micrometers...

Simple test- load 10.0 grs Unique in 44 mag with 240 gr lswc. If no leading, problem solved. Only if you believe the alloy is to hard for target loads.

Most commercial cast revolver bullets have a beveled base and are much too hard for good results in revolvers. Magnum type loads will sometimes get these bullets to work well but not always. These bullets with bevel bases allow hot gas to blast past them causing lead to virtually "solder" onto the forcing cone (especially) and the rest of the bore as well. And with the alloy being so hard the bases will not slug out to seal the bore. I've even had much better luck with the softer swaged bullets. My home cast bullets were always very accurate and never caused significant leading regardless of the number of rounds fired. The only way I know to solve the leading problem is to use gas check bullet styles.

I've found, incidentally, that these hard bullets work great in auto pistols and rifles.

skeeterfogger said:

Shoot jsp, problem solved.

Click to expand...

Sorry but I don't think that is helpful. Some shooters want to shoot lead bullets for cost. It can easily be done and done well. Changing to jacketed bullets is not the fix for the OPs problem.

I would guess too hard. I had SNS cast bullets that put so much lead down my cylinder and barrel it wasn't funny. They were loaded at light 38 specials with a hardness of 15-16. When I took those same bullets and loaded them up to low 357 magnum loads the leading was noticeably better. When my dad made some full blown Accurate #9 357 magnum loads with the same bullets, absolutely no leading at all.

I now shoot 12 hardness in 357 magnums and 38 specials and have no problems with leading. Here is a interesting test I did with those bullets. With the 38 specials I had lead peels inside the cylinder.

IMNSHO, the best answer is paragraph one of post #17...

I shot a lot of Oregon trail bevel base and had the same problem, my cure was to insert a gas check into the case and seat the bullet on top of it. It was an extra step but took much less time than removing leading.

if your Cylinder's are .429 and your barrel is .429 your going to get leading you need to have your cylinder's opened up there is a guy over on http://castboolits.gunloads.com/forumdisplay.php?8-Cast-Boolits that can fix you up

“Fit is king”