Hello boys,
It was a fine weekend, the weather breezy and low 80's, and I ate too much. I wanted to report on some .38 calibre SWC's i had cast with a new Lee 150 grain mould, and this was the first time i had a chance to shoot them.
I usually cast the tumble lube design so that i can skip the sizing process, but i was curious how these bullets would load without sizing. I had only cast about 50 because it was hot (wrong time of the year to cast) and i was about to drop sweat into the lead pot. I had a few with small wrinkles, and rather than cull them, i kept them and lubed everything with Alox.
I weighed them, and they were all very close to 146 grains, with very little difference plus or minus, and this included the 'culls'. They all loaded easily into the cases, and the finished rounds fed into my handguns just fine.
They all shot very accurately (3 grains of 231), breaking small baloons at about 40 yards. The bores were dirty, but not leaded.
What this boils down to for me is, I don't have to cast perfect looking bullets to get a quality bullet, and i don't have to size anything so far. The bullets with slight imperfections shot just as well as some commercially cast bullets that i shot at the same time.
There's nothing wrong with wanting and getting perfectly cast bullets, and most of the time i do, but i'm not that particular if what i cast shoots just as well. I've rambled on enough.
T. Mortis
