firelapping with 38 HBWC

[TommyD]

Hi Veral,

All this discussion of firelapping has me wondering about firelapping my stainless ruger GP-100 357 mag. I bought your lap kit for a while back for my 45s and have lots left over.

I have boxes of both Hornady and Speer 38 Hollow Based Wadcutters. These are soft lead bullets which seem to be lubricated with some kind of dry lube.

If I load them backwards (so the hollow part faces forward) will they do the job with you lapping compound? I would guess that loading them normally, the hollow base would re-expand after passing a constriction and continue cutting.

Will the lube on these bullets interfere with the lapping process?

Or should I just "bite the bullet" and cast some pure lead solid bullets?

Tom

[Veral]

  Your swaged bullets will work fine with HB pointed forward.  You have the technicalities right in that regard.   The lube should be removed.  Lay them on a folded towel, in a cake pan, and warm in a kitchen oven till the lube melts and is soaked up by the towel.

  Pure lead will do a very precise and smooth job of lapping but casting some of wheel weight metal and air cooling will make the lapping go a lot faster, with optimum lap speed being with hardness of 12 or slightly higher, which means 2 weeks or more aging after the cast.

  If one were to purchase swaged soft lead bullets for lapping, best choice would be solid base wadcutters for the calibers available or any of the solid bullets, like RN or SWC.