Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Muzzleloaders why pure cast boolits from a MZ not alloy

why does everyone say only shoot pure lead bullets from your muzzleloader? if your using a 240/300 gr 44 boolit with sabot out of your 50 cal, it has to be going faster than out of a 8" 44 mag revolver, which calls for harder than pure. so what am i missing here?

In a sabot, sure you can do it. Make it any hardness you want. The thing with using soft lead naked projectiles in a ML is because it has to be small enough in diameter to load easily and soft enough to swell upon discharge so as to fill the grooves and provide a gas seal. There are exceptions to that rule, I'm sure, but that's the gist of it.

Then again, a soft projectile swathed in a sabot, will expand that much better upon striking the target than a hard one will. So why not use a soft one? I wouldn't take it as dogma, but it is a pretty good guide.

Also, oft times the really hard bullet in a magnum handgun (or rifle) is a detriment also. More leading is caused by gas cutting past the bullet (and melting the lead like a blow torch because the hard bullet didn't expand to fill the rifling) than by a softer bullet that does expand to fill the bore- all else being equal. Hard bullets aren't necessarily an enabler for high velocity.

Most of the reason for non sabot rounds is you have to cut the rifling into the lead as it is pushed down. Pretty hard to do with a tight barrel and hard bullet.

The only pure lead i shoot are full bore conicals. Usually they are slip fit for ease of loading. I shoot them around 1300-1350fps. I shoot sabot loads much faster and i seldom use soft lead bullets in sabots. Im sure it could be done if you really wanted.