Thanks for the words of wisdom and encouragement. I've been casting pistol bullets for several decades and at the 10 to 25 yards I use them they work fine. I shoot jacketed bullets for 50 yard work. I think my biggest problem is the lead itself. I use scrounged lead (linotype, plumbers lead, old bullets, race car ballast, wheelweights, lead from the recyclers that I trade my aluminum cans for) and probably no two batches I use are alike. For close range pistol work this has been no problem. When I started to cast for the 45-70's with the goal of an under one inch group I realized that my alloy would have to be more consistent. I built a fire and melted a big batch of what I thought would end up being hard enough and used ingots from that in my electric melting pot. The only heat control I have is the thermostat on the electric pot. I use a propane torch to preheat the mold a little to save time. Anything less than excellent visually was put back in the pot. I ended up with around a 100 good bullets with no wrinkles or other defects and good sharp edged bases. Upon weighing these, I found a variance of around 15 grains with no particular clusters of any one weight. I sorted these into weight groups and lubed and fired these with less than desired results. I cast up a few more lots from the original melt and experimented with different loads and shooting them sized and unsized with no great success. I still wasn't getting bullet weights that were consistent. A friend suggested that I use a load of 24 grains of 2400 with a tuft of dacron hollowfill to keep the powder over the primer and things started to improve. I ran across an ad for match grade bullets and ordered 500 500 grainers and 500 525 grainers. With the above load most groups were under 2 inches with the 525's averaging a little smaller. I had read much about the old timers loading bullets from the muzzle and later just breach seating them so I bored the back out of a 45-70 case and using that as guide seated the bullet firmly into the rifling and then put a charged case behind the bullet. When I do my part, the 500's shoot just under an inch with the 525's doing about 5/8th to 3/4. This is out of my scope sighted NEF. With my C Sharps with globe front and tang rear I get about 2 1/4" with the 500's and a little under 2" with the 525's. I'm sure the Sharps will do better but the old eyes don't let me point it any better than that. I'd put a scope on it but it would ruin the classic lines. Unfortunately I only have about 30 of these bullets left and the place I got them is out of business.
I do ramble on when I talk about vehicles and guns. :-)
Bill
