On 1/25/2012 7:54 AM, Gunner Asch wrote:

Ayup. A bit of tin really helps filling the moulds and giving good
sharp driving bands. But only a bit. No more than 2-3%

Btw..do you heat treat your bullets? Cast and dump from the mould right
into a 5 gallon bucket of water. Size within 48 hours and they will
increase Brinell nicely.

http://www.lasc.us/heattreat.htm

With pistol bullets, I rarely find much need to heat treat, unless being
fired from something like a Thompson Contender..which frankly is nothing
more than a short barreled rifle with most calibers besides "handgun"
flavors.

But with rifles...there is where heat treating comes into another world.
And for those with Marlin Microgroove barrels...heat treating allows one
to shoot cast bullets far above the 1600 fps "standard" for the
MicroGroove rifling and lead bullets.

Ive chrono'd 30-30 lead rounds at the same speeds as jacketed rounds
with no leading noted whatsoever. And the 44 Mag and 45-70 can be pushed
very fast in the Marlins when the bullets are heat treated.

Gunner



I don't cast for rifles and yes, I DO water-drop. I get about 18 BHN
and use Alox. Without water-droping, you get about 11 BHN from WWs.
I've removed the carbide rings on my Lee Factory Crimp Dies, they were
reducing my diameters by 1-2 thousandths. Since I did that, I get NO
leading. The FCDs are great for jacketed but not good for lead. I
don't like to seat and crimp at the same die so the FCDs work great for
just crimping.