If you read my previous posts and last night's post on my 38 Special reloading page, you'll see that I've come to acquire a digital scale and a box of 75 H&G #107A wadcutters. I think you'll find it an interesting story, and tonight I decided to reload 25 rounds with these bullets. The following will cover what I've discovered and some problems I ran into.
A PERFECT 5 GRAINS IN THE CASE. First of all, I calculated that the average weight of the 240g wadcutters is closer to 235.24g. Not a lot of difference, but I thought I should put it in the record for you guys who are into details. Tom Dugas set the starting load at 5.0g of Unique with a Max load of 6.0g. I loaded at 5. I weighed all but a few cases and found that they differed in weight by a couple of grains, so I zeroed in the scale with every case I charged.
UNIQUE POWDERAt first I had a bit of a problem getting the bullets to fit easily into the case mouth. In fact, I crushed my first case and destroyed a bullet trying to seat the first bullet (sorry Tom). The bullet got stuck in the die and I had to take it apart to get it out. I checked the case diameters and they don't appear to be any bigger than a commercial bullet. I'm guessing it has to do with the waxy lubricant. I ended up maximizing the flare on all the cases, and even then, I had to be extra careful to get the bullet to seat correctly. That may be normal for this type of cast bullet, but this is new to me, so I don't know. I have a feeling Ronnie will be commenting on this one. Once the bullets were all seated, I gave them all a firm crimp into the small upper groove. So they're all set for Saturday's shoot.
EXACTLY 5.O GRAINS EXCLUDING THE PANIf they shoot well, I'll up the load on the next 25 to 5.5g. The only problem with this is if I find that I love these bullets (which I think I will), there's no longer any place to buy them and the molds are no longer available. If I can locate some load data on the H&G #107B's I pulled from the cartridges that Roger gave me, I'll load those as well. Since there are one groove smaller than the 107A's, I'm guessing I'll need a bit more powder because there will be more room in the case with the shorter bullet which will create less pressure. I won't guess at it though. That's it for now, and if all goes well, I'll be here typing out the results of Saturday's shoot that evening. Until then.
Hi bob,welcome to the world of cast bullet loading,it's not any harder than loading jacketed bullets but requires a little different technique. Cast bullets come in a variety of different hardness like the softest swaged pure lead bullets from Hornady and Speer among others to the harder alloy mixes like the commercial bullets your bought or home bullets casters make themselves and what alloy mix they use.
ReplyDeleteCast bullets are gaged on the BHN scale/Brinell hardness scale,pure lead the softest is 5 BHN while your commercial or home cast bullets can be anywhere for 11 to the high 20+ BHN. Copper on the other hand is around 300 BHN and is not affect the same by the amount of flare and pressure required to seat it into place. When you seat a cast bullet you will need to flare the case mouth a bit more so the bullet get seated deeper for the most part first with less stress on the bullet before the case mouth starts to close around it and shave lead off the side of the bullet as opposed to the jacketed bullet which is harder and tougher.
The amount of flare you will need is something you will have to play with to find what works best with the bullets you have,also it's probably not much of a problems but the Lee dies only have one style seater plug that fits the contour of the bullet nose,it usually works best with round nose a the SWC bullets you have. I don't any any Lee dies that I can load standard wadcutters with since all my old pistol dies are from RCBS and Lyman and they provide a flat faced seater plug to load WC's with. Hopefully adding a bit more flare with take care of that with your lee dies.
As far as your 107B bullets they should weigh something like 50 grs. lighter than the 107A bullet,you can use the same load data for the B version it will just shoot a bit faster since your pushing a less heavier bullet,I'm sue once you find some load data for the B version you will find that your powder charge is going to be slightly higher. I'm going to do some checking around on that for you from a few of my older casting buddies and see what I can come up with,but i would try a few with the 5 and 5.5 grs of Unique without hesitation.
Thanks for the info Ronnie. The hardness info is amazing. I thought they were softer, but I didn't realize how much. Ya, I mangled the first bullet. I maxed out the flair with the Lee die and it still wasn't quite enough. I had to be very careful. I'll need to shop for another. These bullets were obviously much softer than the commercial lead I was loading. It's always fun to try something new. Looking forward to shooting them Saturday. I'll let you know how I make out.
ReplyDelete