Sometimes work is fun! Playing with the new bullet (OT)

[adirondakjack]

Aside from getting the New Master Caster machine and custom "automatic" hollow-based bullet mold working (that was a lot of fun too, putting the lie to all those who said hollow based bullets could not be machine cast), I've been having to attend to that awful chore of testing loads in both Cowboy .45 Special and .45 ACP, shooting my Rugers and my SA GI series Champion 1911 almost daily. The tough duty ya have to pull when working for yourself.....

Been absolutely having a ball with the 125 gr HB .45 bullet in C45S, brewing up "off the reservation" loads for the ultralight .45 round for CAS. I've gotten some good loads, notibly a 2.8 grain Bullseye load at 535 fps with the bullet loaded upside down that gives the .45 shooter absolute parity with his .38 shooting pards, and even a gallery load using Trail Boss that shot well at only 440 fps... Folks, running the little Barnstormer II "low and Slow" with a Forty Five is not yer testosterone cocktail, but it is grin-inducing nonetheless.


Spice it up with 7 grains of Bullseye or 11.5 of Power Pistol and ya got a 1200 fps bullet that expands violently out of the Vaquero, while retaining modest recoil.




Today I dragged out the GI series 1911 and ran some loads through it. It's a hoot to watch these stubby 125 grainers cycle flawlessly through a stock pistol (factory recoil spring), the stubby bullet feeding as effortlessly as ball. A "minimum" load using the stock spring (6.5 gr 700X) runs about 1000 fps, and a real honey (7.0 grains 700X at 1.025 OAL) runs somewhere in the 1100 fps neighborhood using a 4" pistol. Recoil is JUST enough to operate the slide, and they cut punch-perfect holes in a fairly nice group.



Kinda hard to believe they feed in the 1911, but they do....

I tell ya, the things I suffer in the name of work

[kimwcook]

Oh, man, adirondakjack, I feel so sorry for you having to do that all by yourself. Let me offer my assistance to you in ringing those bullets out. Send me a thousand and I'll send you a range report when I'm through running them down the tube(s).

Looks like a cool bullet.

[Griff]

I'll even help by doin' some load development in the standard .45Colt case and rifles... like the 20"EMF and 24-¼" Uberti toggle links. 250 per rifle should do it... I don't wanna over-stress myself. I'll even give you some long range (200 yard), hi altitude (10,000 feet), tests results from an upcoming trip to CO!

[Ben_Rumson]

SWEET

[Lobo]

Jack,

What alloy are you using?

[adirondakjack]

For a HB bullet mostly designed to run slow, softer was better. I tried to keep it as soft as possible for the CAS loads, yet still get good registration from the Master Caster (ya can't stick the mold right up to the spout and get "positive head pressure" like ya can a hand cast mold. Experimenting with WW and straight lead, I ended up with 3WW to 1 soft lead as the softest that would run well. By my lights that's about an 8 BH.

Lube is either common smokeless lube from Magma (a little better than some crayon, fine for modest smokeless loads), or 50/50 alox/beeswax NRA "all purpose" lube for the BP folks or those pushing the velocity.

[Dave James]

That bullet is the spitt'en image of the one grand dad and his buddy who was a Postal inspector carried in thier S&W's. Mr. Jimmy had his in a leather flap holster strapped to the colllum of the "T" and grand dad carried his in a shoulder holster, loaded backwards they kiled a ton of jacks and a few yotes

[2ndovc]

That looks like a really fun bullet!! I have some .455 bullets that look like that for my Webley and
S&W Hand Ejector.

I don't know a heck of a lot about casting, yet. Can we ge a picture of the mold.
Just curious about how it all looks.


jb

[adirondakjack]

That looks like a really fun bullet!! I have some .455 bullets that look like that for my Webley and
S&W Hand Ejector.

I don't know a heck of a lot about casting, yet. Can we ge a picture of the mold.
Just curious about how it all looks.


jb

This one is a bit unusual. Most hollow-based bullets are cast with a single cavity mold, by hand. I did the prototypes for this bullet that way, with molds I drew up and had made. But I wanted to make em on some scale I could sell a few hundred here and there, so I worked with one of the best in the business to come up with a brand new method of casting HB bullets, using a Master Caster machine.

Here's what we came up with:




It's an "automatic" two cavity mold that ejects the bullets without having to remove the base pins before opening the mold.

Here it is all put together:



And at my son's suggestion, we did a little video of how the machine-casting of hollow-based bullets works.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdy4oSBE8iA

Folks in the bullet and mold industry said it couldn't be done.

FWIW a friend sent me a few 268 gr .455 Webley bullets, also hollow-based, to try in my Cowboy .45 Special rolling block. If I ever get em doped out and they run well, I may have an automatic mold made for that bullet as well.

[Griff]

Jack,

It sure looks like that mold could be modified to make it useable for a hand caster, and possibly even a variable weight mold... Ingenious!!!