Esteemed jlc's comments push me to explain about "my gunsmith" (he's NOT mine). I feel I must defend myself, even though jlc's allegation was gentle and good-natured. He did not accuse me of lying and he did use the word "may". Great maturity was on display. jlc said:
First of all, I would never tell a lie, just to make a point or escape personal accountability for my opinions/actions/whatever. However, I did simplify the chain of communication a bit and maybe made an assumption that a gunsmith (whom I've never met) originally said what I said he said.Read all of Bill-Right's posts, Kirk. It seems that there may be no "gunsmith". Modoc ED questioned Bill_Rights earlier...
For those that care about the details, here's what happened. I bought a NIB Rossi M92 .454Casull/.45LC 20" barrel off GunBroker (it has not been delivered yet as of this posting date), from one of the many NIB gun dealers there. As I have mentioned, I am new to lever rifles, and I was corresponding with the seller to ask about optics, iron sights, ammo options, payment & shipping details, etc. This dealer said he had one of these rifles I was buying and reloads for it, at least the .45LC. We were also going back and forth also on iron sights versus optics, and the problem was, I wanted iron sights, but the rifle came from (?) Rossi (?) the importer (?) the distributor (?) with a scope rail already installed that covered up where the dove-tail notch would be to receive the rear iron sights. The seller couldn't tell if there ever was a dove-tail cut, and he would have to remove the scope rail to see. I asked the seller to put the rear factory iron sights back on and ship the scope rail loose. Hearing that, he said he would take the rifle to the gunsmith he always uses, for two reasons: a) to properly remove the rail and re-install the factory rear sight, including avoiding scuffing the blueing and/or touching it up if he did and b) give me an opinion/quote on cutting a rear-sight dove-tail if one wasn't there under the factory scope rail. Turns out, there was a factory-cut dover-tail under the scope rail, so the gunsmith didn't have to mill one. So that person, whoever he/she is, IS THE GUNSMITH I quoted. He'as in another state. Never met him; never expect to.
Meanwhile, amongst many other topics, the seller was trying to prompt me to get into reloading and was giving me a run-down on cartridge components and wrote:
So, here's where the simplification/assumption came in. For the purposes of this thread, I assumed that the GB seller had talked the (unknown, to me) gunsmith, and I attributed the seller's opinion about the 1000 fps limit for lead bullets to the gunsmith. Maybe the seller never talked with his gunsmith about this. Maybe the seller got this information from his local reloading buddies. I don't know. What matters is, there is a substantial group of reloaders out there who are working under the belief that you can't push lead bullets much beyond 1000 fps. That's pretty certain, and I did not make this up and it was/is not my opinion, I got it from someone else.Bullets ... for cast bullets I use Missouri bullets. Lead will be good up to about 1000 fps or so. If you want to go faster you'll need to look at a plated or jacketed bullet. Those can be had from a variety of places ... but you MUST drive them faster to make them work well. That will probably mean you'll need to use a different powder than you do in your cast loads.
Having explained all that, I still think this GunBroker seller/dealer did a great job serving me, and I will give him excellent feedback on GunBroker, after I receive the rifle and inspect it. I can forgive the seller for giving me this one wrong fact, about lead bullets limited to ~1000 fps. It didn't scare me off of lead bullets. I bought 200 rounds of Cowboy Action-loaded bare lead .45LC from Georgia Arms, to go along with the new rifle. Decent price @ $0.60 per round, new brass, incl. $19 shipping from Georgia to Virginia. The catalog quotes these as somewhere around 850 fps out of a pistol, so I figure I'll still be inder 1000 fps out of a 20" rifle. That's probably a safe move for me, since I have no information from Georgia Arms that they use advanced lead alloys (wheel weights!) that are good above 1000 fps for their component bullets. No crime has been committed. All is right with the world.
FYI, I will NOT reveal the identity of my GB seller. He is not on this forum, at least not with any "handle" I recognize, and I use a different "handle" on GB for myself. I will send this seller a link to this thread, so he can educate himself (and maybe his guilty-as-sin gunsmith!) about > 1000 fps lead boolitts!
Started out a gunsmith, turned out to be a gb seller 
