Home Forums Reloading Bullet Casting shiny vs dull

Here are a few 45-70 340 grn I just cast this morning. The shinies look cool but the dull bullets seem to have more definition. Is there any real difference between them and if so, which is preferred?

The mold was hotter on the dull looking bullet, thus the better fill out and definition. Casting good, consistent bullets is all about proper mold temperature and the control that temperature in a narrow range. It can be done with your alloy at 650 F or 750 F by adjusting your casting cadence. Best to cast at the lowest temperature needed. As far as a difference between shiny or dull bullets, when they both have identical, sharp fill out, not too much. Lube can adhere better to the dull bullets due to surface roughness. Load the dull ones and use a cotton cloth to buff the nose. It'll be nice and shiny.

Yep, what he said! (I would drop those shiny less filled out ones back in the pot.)

If it was my shop boolit 1 2 3 are going back to the pot for another try. BABore knows cast and is a great mold maker! He gave good advice Hi BABore have not seen you on the webb.Hope things are going well. Clint

what ever they look like I prefer them to be filled out completely, usually the dull ones suit my needs, plus they hold more lube.

Besides the dull one do not reflect the light for the deer to see and move out of the way!!!!Clint

thanks for the tips

If the alloy and/or the mold gets too hot and the bullets come out too frosted, you could have brittle bullets.

I'm fascinated. Please explain in detail.

yea, this I gotta hear.

oh wait, I think he was trying to be funny.

I hope he was trying to be funny...you never know!

to be on the safe side send me a couple thousand to test.

Actually, what he stated is correct. If you water drop WW's or even 50/50 WW-Pb, when heavily frosted and barely set, the grain structure is extremely coarse resulting in a very brittle bullet. Most of you guys know 357Max and Dutch4122 from the CB forum. 357Max casted some of the described bullets for his 7mm. At the range he snapped off the nose of the bullet when chambering the loaded round. A few additional bullets were snapped with pliers for confirmation.

better make it three thousand.

And a pair of pliers too.

Had a few 9mm boolit break in two in the lube grove from dropping to hot. Clint

It seems you hunt the same deer I do. I quit using shinny bullets a few years back.

if you get the alloy correct and if your using wheel weights as your main source of lead,youll want to add about 5%-6% tin to 95% -94% wheel weights by weight youll avoid that brittle issue even casting so hot they look frosted and dropped strait into a 5 gallon bucket of water, strait wheel weights without tin tend to be brittle, the resulting bullet may be fairly hard but if you take and whack one with a 3 lb hammer that has the tin added to the alloy, on the concrete floor it rivets out and doesn,t shatter, most guys just don,t add enough tin.
try to cast at abut 750 degrees, or just a bit below the temp they look totally frosted on the surface.
Ive killed dozens of hogs with my 44 mag using those 300 grain, bullets and almost all exit, but the few I find are riveted out a bit on the nose
http://www.midsouthshooterssupply.c...=lyman+300+grain&GO.x=22&GO.y=13

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

http://www.lasc.us/CastBulletAlloy.htm#tin

That's a fine bullet you're using 340mag. I use the RCBS version.

Lots of interesting comments on this thread, and some that go contrary to my experience.

If casting bullets from straight wheel weights, then you'll want to get the mold hot enough to drop frosty bullets. If the bullets are shiny, the mold isn't hot enough, and you will not get a complete fillout of the mold.

Heavily frosted bullets are no more brittle than shiny ones, once they have cooled. Yes, if you drop a barely solidified bullet from a mold onto a hard surface, the bullet will bend or even break in two. It's not brittle, it's just not solid!

As to water quenching, that is an entirely different subject, and yes it can be used to make a harder bullet, but it will be a brittle bullet at higher velocities. Some guns require the harder bullet to attain accuracy, but I haven't found this to always be the case. Also the brittle issue is related to impact velocity, a water quenched ww bullet at 1100-1200 fps is not going to be a brittle bullet.


460 gr .476" bullets launched at 1100 fps from a 480. Bullet on left through 38" of wet newsprint, bullet on right 2+" of bone and 10+" inches of wet newsprint. Bullets cast from ww dropped into a 5 gal bucket of water.

Wheel weights that are air cooled with a bhn of ~13 tend to be very predictable on game and don't suffer from brittleness with impact velocities up to 1800 fps. A properly fit bullet with a good lube isn't going to cause leading issues either.

Adding tin is an option to aid in fillout and to add some maleability. However it's an expensive way to go at ~#17/lb. 1-2% tin added to wheelweights will give you most of the advantages gained via tin without nearly doubling the cost of your bullets.

http://www.rotometals.com/Tin-Ingot-s/27.htm

while I agree that adding 5% tin adds to the cost lets look at the cost vs benefits a bit before dismissing the option.
at the current listed $17 a pound its expensive, but keep in mind your using a 4%-5% mix , lets say you load your lyman 20 lb melter

http://www.midwayusa.com/product/162692/lyman-mag-20-electric-furnace-110-volt

http://www.midsouthshooterssupply.c...=lyman+300+grain&GO.x=22&GO.y=13

with 19 lbs of wheel weights and 1- lb of pure tin, to get your mix ratio, and your casting 300 grain 44 cal bullets, you cast till the pots 1/2 empty, youll make about 230 bullets at a rough cost of $8, or about $4.00 dollars per hundred before lube and gas checks are added, lets say $7-$9 per hundred ready to shoot, and if you did the job correctly these are very accurate hard gas check bullets that perform very well on game, I shot enough that casting bullets is well worth the savings as long as they perform as well or better than commercial designs and in my experience the lyman 300 grain cast with the correct alloy and gas checks that cost about 25%-50% of what commercial designs cost even with the tin added is well worth the effort



VS paying about $40 PLUS per hundred for similar commercial bullets

http://www.midwayusa.com/product/95...0-grain-lead-flat-nose-gas-check-box-of-50

http://www.midwayusa.com/product/19...-300-grain-lead-wide-flat-nose-gas-check

or about $25-$50 per hundred in jacketed designs

http://www.midwayusa.com/product/51...-300-grain-jacketed-soft-point-box-of-50


http://www.midwayusa.com/product/28...00-grain-jacketed-hollow-point-box-of-50

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


btw Ive used a bunch of these for white tail deer in my 45/70 with excellent results loaded over 45 grains of RL7, groups are tight,never yet recovered one they zip thru deer , even elk, as my partner several years used the same load in his 45/70 for elk, velocity was near 1780 fps measured on my chrongraph

Guys I've made them both ways, that is WW straight, air cooled & WW plus tin, air cooled. I do fine we use less heat with the tin & the bullets are very pretty. There's nothing wrong with this approach.

However straight WWs cast frosty hot also make a great bullet. Most my sixguns like both alloys with either LBT Blue or LARs Carnuba Red lube especially if said bullets are sized plenty large.

Either way the bullets aren't brittle in my tests. But then 92-6-2 alloy air cooled, testing 'bout 15 BHN will stay together like a piece of gun dropped on the side walk also.

When I do use tin though I use less than my friend above finding 2% enough for me.

I add 1% tin to COWW and cast hot and water drop for bullets needing checks. Several of my molds like lead temp to be 850 degrees.

I go more on how a bullet shoots than how it looks. I use wheel weights and water quench for my 45-70 405 grain, and they are quite hard, and deform little when hitting a rock fines pile even at the nose bleeding speed of 1300 ft/sec. Bet they work good on deer, too.

many guys don,t seem to realize that a 44-45 caliber hard cast bullet even even at hand gun velocities and even if its expansion on impact is rather minimal still imparts a good deal of damage as it zips thru game.
my 44 and 445 revolvers throw a 300 grain hard cast bullet at between 1200-1600fps yet punch clear thru most of the hogs and deer Ive shot and exit , the average reaction is either nearly instantly dropping or a fairly short death run.
keep in mind that while a much higher velocity cartridge like a 270 win or 300 mag may produce faster stops and more internal tissue damage the pragmatic result , death shortly after bullet impact is very similar.
Ive had about the same results using a major caliber revolver as Ive had using my 30/06 , most game tends to run a short distance, after bullet impact, some drop on the spot, but the result is all but certain, a good hit results in game on the ground within yards of bullet impact

Thanks for sharing the things you find.

I have a very light plinker load for my 404 Jeffery of a 350gn GC bullet (50/50 ww/Pb) at 1400fps over 21.5 gn Red Dot and took it into the hills on a goat hunt with a friend who had my 7x57 with 160gn cast bullet at 2415fps. We got onto a mob of goats up close (inside 50yds) and got 21 out of perhaps 35-40 animals before they scattered to parts unknown. I had excellent results with the low velocity 404 loads and as noted above a big bullet makes a big hole. Shiny or dull, it makes no practical difference to the animal.

Von Gruff.