Cast vs swaged lead conventional Wisdom WRONG??

[Master Blaster]

The other day I was forced to shoot some Factory ammunition
from my new New Vaquero. The ammo was winchester Cowboy 45 LC with a 250 lfp bullet according to winchester's site the load does 750 fps from a 5.5" barrel. The bullet was soft swaged lead, so I expected some leading, 50 rounds fired and no leading at all, HMMM. I never get results like that with my hardcast bullet loads even with 21 Brinell lead. I have tried loading to 750 fps in .357 mag and .44 mag, and I still get visible leading after 50 rounds.

The Winchester bullet is sized to .455, so its getting a real good gas seal in a .451 diameter barrel. My hardcast bullets are sized to .452. Today I will try cast bullets loaded in the same WIn cases with 5.5 gr of W231 to get 750 fps but I bet I will get leading.

So now I am thinking that cast bullets are not the way to go, swaged lead is better if it is sized to .002-.004 over groove diameter?

Have any of you here done any relaoding tests with soft swaged bullets in a larger sizing diameter??? What are your results???? What am I missing????


Thanks

 

[caz223]

Provided your gun is in good shape, and the chamber throat and forcing cone are fairly close in diameter, you get pretty good results from what ever you shoot.
I had my gun worked on because of the known old ruger problem of throats too small, forcing cone too big, and the leading is much reduced.
The first time I shot I spent an hour getting the lead out of the forcing cone.

Each gun is a case onto itself.

 

[HSMITH]

Did you pull one of the Win cowboy bullets down and look at it? If so you would have also seen that it has NO lube grooves and has only a VERY thin dry lube coating, almost no lube at all.

For the velocities you are looking for your cast bullets are WAAAAYYY too hard. That is why you are seeing the leading. Bullets 20 B or so need over 30K PSI to seal well, and are really only suited to 'magnum' pressures.

Commercial cast bullets on average are quite hard. A couple reasons for this but primarily it is so they are 'pretty' even after shipping and being knocked around. Soft bullets get dinged up easily and show the damage from shipping. The other main reason for overly hard bullets is most reloaders think they need hard bullets. Hard lube is also a contributing problem to leading at lower velocities with commercial bullets, it needs a lot more pressure to flow and lube well than soft lubes would, but soft lubes are sticky and don't hold up to shipping nearly as well as hard lubes.

Pure lead up to straight wheelweights are all the hardness you need for cowboy type loads, Brinnell 5 to about 11. Even 11 is a little on the hard side but should work well with a good lube.

 

[Steve Smith]

If your .45 is a .45 colt (assuming?) bump them up to 950 and try again. If you are using a Ruger or TC then go up to 1100 and try that too. You will likely see no leading.

I use straight wheel weights and that is hard enough work well yet not lead on .452" loads of up to 1350 fps as long as good lube is used. Lee lube or as John Linebaugh used to tell me, wax toilet rings are best.

 

[Master Blaster]

Well I went out at lunch and tried my reloads, 5.5 gr win 231 250 RNFP hardcast bullet, no leading FPS about 750 decent bang pleasant recoil.

8.0 grains of Unique same bullet 850-900 fps, much more bang and recoil, and a bit of leading but not too bad.

I dont think I will be loading these to 1100-1300 fps in the New new model Vaquero, its the smaller frame not the blackhawk frame of the old new vaquero. and at that velocity it would be decidedly unpleasant to shoot., not to mention pieces of cylinder possibly injuring me and bystanders

I think I will try downloading the Unique load to 6-7.0grains and retest.

Thanks for your replies