Home Forums Reloading Bullet Casting basic casting questions.

Hello! I am VERY new to casting, and am looking at molds for the following calibers, and was wondering if someone could suggest a particular mould/load, as follows. Bear in mind that I am "gunning" for South Carolina deer in the 150-175lb range, and possibly some off-season piggies in about the same weightclass/range:

6.5mm - I have a neat littel Arisaka 20" carbine in 6.5x50. I intend to use this gun as a 100-125 yd low-recoil rifle.
30-06 - To be used in one of several rifles, including a 20" carbine and a peep-sighted 24" rifle.
458 Win-Mag - I know, I know, but I bought it for a pittance...and it's cool! I was thinking about a load or 2 using pointed bullets in the 45-70/450 Marlin range.

Your thoughts/education are much appreciated.

well I can help with the 458 win loads, NEI sells this mould, cast from wheel weights and size at .459 lube and load over 34 grains of IMR 4198 and a 215 federal primer for a low recoil accurate load that will kill deer

http://www.neihandtools.com/catalog/index.html



but!! Id point out that your better off useing a differant bullet and higher velocity



like this over 50 grains of RL7 for a hard hitting load, BOTH loads are low velocity accuracy loads ment for plinking game and targets inside of 120 yards or so with a 458 win, you can certainly load for higher velocities but they make the rifle pleasant to shoot deer with, ID suggest the second load is better, the first basically comes clost to being a 44 mag load, the4 second will knock the crap out of small deer

6.5mm's tend to be a nightmare for cast, for two reasons. First they typically have very fast twist barrels, which cause leading at much lower velocities than typical for a rifle, and the bores are often a few to several thousandths over mold dimensions, which also leads to leading.

Honestly I'd concentrate on the -06 and 458 when starting out. The 6.5's are kinda graduate level guns.

For the -06 are great plinker bullet is lee's little 110 gr flatpoint. 12-15 grs of unique will poop it out at 1400-1700 fps, you'll have no recoil, and 50 yd groups should be around 1". The other mold I'd consider is RCBS 180gr flatpoint.

For some reason I never got around to shooting cast out of my 458 lotts. If I were to go down that path, I'd look for a 350-400gr gas checked flatpoint. RL-7 works great with the lighter bullets, and keep them in the 2000 fps ballpark for decent acccuracy and "reasonable" recoil. Or you could paper patch a 250 gr 45 cal pistol bullet, load about 15 grs of Unique for ~1100 fps and be grinning ear to ear with nice big holes in the paper and almost no recoil.

Go with a broad flat point, they kill much better. When it comes to making meat with cast bullets at moderate speeds it's not the diameter of the bullet doing the work, it's the meplat.

70% meplat of whatever caliber you are shooting is a fine size for killing game.

the meplat in cast is where it's at.