Lee makes a mold for a 405-grain hollow-base round-nose bullet. It’s got wide, deep lube grooves. It’s a bit picky about casting; you have to have the temperature right, and the amount of drop from the melter to the mold right. But when you get it right, it makes a quite nice bullet. I haven’t tried it much with black powder(those I have gave so-so results), but with Accurate 5744 it works very well. As in consistent groups like this at 100 yards
And, compared to, say, a full-power load with a 500-grain bullet, recoil isn’t bad. I really want to try this one at longer range next time I get a chance.
On the 500-grain, I’ve been using those with a wad between powder and bullet whether using black or 5744 or Blackhorn 209, but I wanted to see how it’d do without the wad. Not bad at all
With .030 wad
Yeah, that's three in one big hole. Vertical spread like that is me, just about every time, which makes this a real impressive group. I need to shoot both of these again just to make sure.
One other load tried is the Lyman 330-grain* hollowpoint. That's one I haven't tried with black at all, just A5744. Prior to this I used a wad under the bullet and paper-patched(patched because "Why not?"), figuring the wad would protect the bullet base. This time tried it sized .459, no patch, and no wad
Considering my previous about 'vertical spread is usually my fault', I'll definitely have to try this again.
The other try was the Lee 405-grain round-nose flat-point bullet, much like the original. These were cast of mongrel alloy over the base load of 26.0 of A5744
I've shot these before, sized .452 and a two-wrap paper patch, and had the same or a little better results. I need to mess around with this one a bit more, see if I can get a bit better groups.
*It comes out right at 340 from my mold
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