pdawg.shooter wrote:Why nor leave the entire bullet soft, size to .001 over bore (not groove dia) and paper patch. You can take pure lead to 2200 and BHN 14.5 to 15.0 to 3000fps with no leading and accuracy to rival jacketed.
My Marlin 1894S.41 mag has the microgroove barrel, necessitating hard cast.
With hard cast (WW + tin, heat treated) gas checked bullets oversized .001", I have zero leading and it is is very accurate.
The average BHN for a few batches of heat treated or just quenched that I have made for the last year has been about 19 BHN, after they have sat around for a couple months.
This is the bullet that I want to use for pig hunting here on the Central California coast.
I'm guessing (hoping?) that the noses are annealed back to about 12BHHN, but I will be bringing samples to a friend at our club that has a tester and also will try some out at the range as well with some thick kind of target media.
Never having shot a big wild boar, maybe I am going overboard or over kill.
Tycer's examples are impressive, but those are from a 45-70.
The meplat on my 265gr and 245g .412" bullet is about .265"or.270"
I did take Pepe Ray's advise; in a vise as tight as I could manage, the soft nose became depressed and the unsoftened, still hard cast bullet looked unscathed.
While at first I did a batch of several at a time with a torch , I now think it is better to do just a couple at a time, so the flame is always on them, thus making a more consistant outcome.
While I haven't noticed any bullets getting real shiny while heating, I do notice that they are a much darker gray on the nose, down to the water line ( 1/8"-1/4".) Yes, the water gets hot in my shallow small container.
Please note that I never have hunted for anything other than rabbit, quail or dove so this is all just gleened from what I have learned from my late dad, many articles, this and other levergun sites and books.
No real world experience yet, so take my results with a grain of salt, please.