Bullet hardness for 475 Linebaugh

[John R.]

Would a Lyman #2 alloy be hard enough for 475 Linebaugh? Bullets will be 375 grs. @ around 1250 fps. The gun is a Freedom Arms with 43/4" bbl. Most commercial bullets are 22 BHN. We wanted to try some around 15 or 16 BHN. THANKS

[BABore]

Plenty hard if that's what shoots accurately.

I'm shooting a 400 gr, 9 Bhn, PB bullet out of my 480 SRH at 1,250 fps with excellent accuracy all the way out to 200 yards. I'm talking a ragged hole at 25 yards and 3-4 inch groups at 100 yards with open sights. It will shoot the same bullet at 21 Bhn with equal results. You will need to taylor your alloy, alloy hardness and lube to your gun, just like powder and primer. One size does not fit all.

[Veral]

  I agree with Babore partly, in that the softer alloy is fine for the speeds you are interested in, but disagree totally about tuning loads to specific lubes.  (If that is what he means.) 
  You state that most commercial bullets are 22 BHN.  -  The truth is they are advertised as such, but I haven't seen any yet that were that hard, nor would they work well if they were, because they are almost all sized to nominal diameter, which if undersize for the gun they are used in, would fail due to blow by striping lube off, if they were actually at 22 bhn.  -  I'm going to make a rather cold statement about commercial cast bullets.  Because MOST of the people who buy them are unlearned about cast bullet technology, they buy the lowest price available, this forces all commercial casters to compete.  The result is, they are selling lead they buy at wholesale, at retail prices, which pretty much fixes their profit margin so low that they can't apply a high quality lube, nor do they care because they know their customers won't know the difference.

  Here are my basic recommendations for cast bullets. !. Make sure your bullets are large enough to fit the gun of interest.
2. They MUST be hard enough for the pressure they are driven at, and lubrication used.  Harder than mandatory is no problem if bullets are large enough to start with.
3.  Use the best lube available, which is LBT bullet lube.  Nothing I know of will come close to its performance.  With this lube, very soft alloys can be shot at far higher velocities than with any other lube, before leading becomes a problem.  Sizing diameter will be less critical so far as leading, with softer alloys if hardness is low enough to insure obturation at the pressures of interest.  Velocity range will be very broad with any alloy, in that very lite to very heavy loads can be used without leading or dramatic accuracy loss.  However, best accuracy will always be with properly fitted bullets.

  To put this all in a thumbnail statement.  -- I don't buy the gun rag story of extensive experimentation with every powder primer, bullet etc available, to get accuracy.  That is only for those reloaders who choose to be ignorant.  When lead bullets are properly fitted and lubed, and as a general rule, made as hard as is cheaply possible, (don't spend a fortune on alloy) any load you choose to shoot  will produce excellent accuracy if the pressures are safe.   
 

[Lloyd Smale]

heres my take on the big guns. Most of the bullets i cast for the 475 and 500 are cast out of an alloy of 5050 ww/lyno. I do it becasue it just seems to perform about the best in penetration testing. Its hard enough not to deform and still has a little more weight then straight lynotype. It tests about 18bhn. I figure that even though buffalo are about the biggest thing i will hunt with them I want to work up my loads figureing there big game guns and to me that means stout bullets. With lynotype getting harder and harder to find ive been experimenting a bit with #2 bullets which are right in the ball park of what your shooting for and they seem to be fine but i wouldnt go any softer. Im not a big fan of water dropping bullets. Ive just seen to many of them fail in penetration testing. Something ive never seen a bullet even cast out of straight lineotype do at handgun velocitys. Like veral said theres a  balance that needs to be achieved with velocity and alloy. I witnessed a buddy kill a 600lb red stag with his 50 alaskan using a 450 grain bullet i cast out of #2. He was shooting it at about 2000fps. Now a guy would think that bullet would zip right through a relitively small animal like that but the nose rivited and the bullet was found under the skin on the far side. Now the animal was dead so i hesitate in calling it bullet failure but its not what i want for cast bullet perfomance. If we would have dropped the velocity to 1600 fps things would have probably gone differently. We also could have increased the hardness of the bullet using 5050 or lineotype and probably kept the velocity at 2000 fps. Once a bullet deforms even a little penetration will suffer drasticaly. My rule of thumb for big handguns is if my load is 1100fps or less i use #2 and if its 1400 fps or less i use 5050. I dont load a handgun any faster then that so 5050 will sufice for any of my handgun chores. When it comes to the big 475s and .512s i just usually standardize on 5050 becasuse like i said i dont want to be resighting a gun or working up new loads when a big game hunting situation arrises or liike in the case before the bullets are used in a bigger gun like a 50 alaskan or my 475 linebaugh custom marlin. Plus for the most part stepping up from #2 to 5050 usually gives me a tad more accuracy.

[paul105]

Lloyd,

Have you written up your 475 Marlin someplace else on GB?  Would really like more info on it.

TIA,

Paul

[Lloyd Smale]

Paul it was custom made by a gunsmith that is retired and did it for a favor for me and doesnt want to do more. Its on a 94 44mag action with a 17 inch barrel. Its only drawback is bullets much either have a short nose like a FA gun or be seated about the crimp grove. I would guess that that is the reason marlin doesnt make one. That and you have to watch your pressure as the marlin action proably isnt strong enough for a steady diet of factory loads that are over 45000 psi loads. I run it between 35-40 with no problems.

[paul105]

Lloyd,

Thanks - sounds like a neat little package.  I was wondering about the pressure limits -- not bad actually.  I have a FA .475, so I know about the OAL constraints -- it can be annoying, but hasn't been a big problem for me. 

Paul

[Lloyd Smale]

ive allready killed a buffalo with it. Cant say much about bullet performance as it was a head shot on a meat cow. I know one thing though, its proably the most accurate lever gun in the safe! It basically shoots one hole groups at 50 yards with about any load. My eyes dont do well at longer distances with an apeture sights though so i havent even bothered with 100 yard groups.  Kind of had this built for up close and personal hunting like hogs and bear.

[paul105]

Lloyd,

Sounds like it's perfect for what you had it built for.  Unfortunately, I know about eyesight going south as we get older.

Paul