From Ingot to Target: a Cast Bullet Guide for Handgunners
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From Ingot to Target: A Cast Bullet Guide for Handgunners Glen E. Fryxell and Robert L. Applegate Foreword by John Taffin 1 From Ingot to Target: A Cast Bullet Guide for Handgunners A joint effort by Glen E. Fryxell and Robert L. Applegate Foreword by John Taffin About the Authors . Pg 5 Acknowledgements . Pg 7 A Few Words about Safety . Pg 9 Chapters 1. Introduction: A Brief History of Bullet Casting . Pg 11 2. Bullet Casting 101 . Pg 19 3. Alloy Selection and Metallurgy . Pg 27 4. Fluxing the Melt . Pg 37 5. Cast Bullet Lubrication . Pg 41 6. Throat and Groove Dimensions . Pg 56 7. Leading . Pg 58 8. Idle Musings of a Greybeard Caster . Pg 66 9. Moulds and Mould Design . Pg 73 10. Gas-checked vs. Plain-based Bullets . Pg 87 11. The Wadcutter . Pg 97 12. The Keith SWC . Pg 106 13. Casting Hollow Point Bullets . Pg 118 14. Making Cast HP moulds . Pg 131 15. Hunting with Cast Bullets . Pg 136 16. A Few of our favorites . Pg 148 Appendix A: How old is your mould? . Pg 173 Above: Left to right MP Molds Clone of the RCBS 45 caliber 270 Gr. SAA SAECO #382 35 caliber 150 Gr. PB SWC SAECO #068 45 caliber 200 Gr. SAECO #264 6.5mm 140 Gr. SP GC On the cover: Two RCBS 44 Caliber 300 Gr. Flat Point Mould Halves. One Mould was converted to Cramer style HP by Erik Ohlen with gas check shank removed from one cavity, casting one HP GC and one HP PB. Second mould casting both cavities flat point, one plain base, one gas check. Two moulds, four cavities, four different styles of hunting bullets. This book is copy right protected (copyright © 2011). All rights are reserved by the authors. No part may be copied, reproduced or transmitted in any fashion without written permission of the authors. Cover and index page photography by Rick Kelter Published exclusively at www.lasc.us 2 Foreword: by John Taffin In many ways it seemed like only yesterday I began casting bullets. In fact it has been nearly one-half century since I started pouring that first batch of molten alloy into a single cavity mould, or mold if you prefer. It was in my mother's kitchen, at my mother's stove, next to my mother's refrigerator. It wasn't long before the whole top half of the side of her refrigerator was covered with speckles of lead. Now my mother was the most fastidious of housekeepers, however she never complained. Looking back I can only assume she thought it better to have me making a mess in her kitchen rather than running around doing something of which she didn't improve. At the time I was working for a large wholesale warehouse catering to plumbing and building contractors. This gave me access to both 100# bars of lead and one pound bars of tin. There was also a reciprocal agreement with a few other businesses allowing employees from one place to purchase from the other at wholesale prices. From the now long gone Buckeye Cycle I was able to order two Lyman single cavity molds, #454190 for the .45 Colt and #358311 for the .38 Special; a Lyman #310 “Nutcracker” Reloading tools with the dies for both .45 Colt and .357 Magnum, and I was ready to cast bullets. Those two molds are gone as it wasn’t long before I graduated to multiple cavity moulds; however, I still use that #310 tool to pop primers from cartridges cases fired with black powder. Living as we do in the Instant Information Age, it is sometimes difficult to believe how little information was available or how difficult it was to find in the middle of the 20th century. I had read Elmer Keith’s “Sixgun Cartridges and Loads” which gave me the very basics. Much of the rest I learned over the next four decades by trial and error and casting and shooting thousands upon thousands of cast bullets in hundreds of sixguns. Casting bullets opened all kinds of doors for me. Most importantly, casting allowed the shooting of vast amounts that would never have been had I found it necessary to buy my bullets from other sources. The only way to become even reasonably adequate with a sixgun is by shooting a lot, and only casting my own bullets allowed this. All of my shooting experiences, the vast majority of which has been with home cast bullets eventually led to my position as Field Editor with “American Handgunner” and Senior Field Editor with “Guns” magazines. Along the way, I not only managed to acquire a pretty good knowledge of cast bullets but also a working collection of approximately 250 bullet moulds from virtually every manufacturer. With this background in mind I now turn to the volume you hold in your hands. Glen Fryxell is a chemist by trade and a bullet caster by choice. He knows more about casting bullets than anyone else I know. Rob Applegate is both an excellent gunsmith as well as a maker of custom bullet moulds. Put the two of them together, and virtually every aspect of cast bullets is covered in what comes the closest to ever being called “The Complete Book of Cast Bullets.” Only their modesty prevents them from using this title and instead of going with “From Ingot to Target: A Cast Bullet Guide for Handgunners.” I found two things of major importance as I read this book. 1) The things 3 I've learned about cast bullets and casting bullets are true. 2) There was still much I needed to learn. Both what I know and what I needed to know are found in this book. Any well-informed sixgunner, even if they never intend to cast their own bullets, will find information here that simply make shooting more enjoyable. Which is better, plain-based or gas checked bullets? Why do soft bullets shoot well while hard bullets lead the barrel, and vice versa? How does bullet lube work? What is this mysterious thing called flux? How important are cylinder throat and barrel dimensions? Do cast hollow point bullets really work? Can one hunt with cast bullets, and if so which ones work the best? As important to me as the how-to information is the historical background. Over the years many men have contributed to our knowledge of bullets in general and cast bullets in particular. In these pages you will find such cast bullet pioneers as Elmer Keith, Phil Sharpe, Jim Harvey, Ray Thompson, Veral Smith, and my dear friend, J.D. Jones. Understanding their contributions simply makes shooting sixguns all that more enjoyable. If you have never cast a bullet but are planning to start, read this book first. Keep it at hand, and refer to it often. If you are an experienced bullet caster, stop; do not cast another bullet until you have read this book. You might be surprised at how much you have to learn. Rob and Glen have done an admirable job of gathering and presenting valuable information on what many think is a somewhat mystical or magical art. The doors are open, the lights are on, and the magic and mystery have been dispelled. This volume is a most valuable addition to both my loading room and my library. I expect all other dedicated sixgunners to also find this to be true. John Taffin Boise, Idaho 4 About the authors: Glen Fryxell has been fascinated with guns and hunting his entire life, and started hunting early, primarily with a bow and arrow during his teen years, and more recently with handguns. He obtained his B.Sc. in chemistry from the University of Texas at Austin in 1982, and his Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of North Carolina in 1986. Professionally, his interests have centered around environmental chemistry, nanostructured materials, molecular self-assembly and biomimetic processes. On the personal side, he is a hunter, shooter, reloader, and guitar player (of marginal ability). He has been casting bullets and reloading since the 1980s, and has hunted primarily with handguns over the last 20 years, taking dozens of head of big game and thousands of varmints, over much of the western US. His fascination with the use and performance of cast bullets in the hunting fields, in conjunction with his technical background in materials science and chemistry, led him to study the fascinating field of metallurgy in his spare time in an effort to more deeply understand bullet performance in the hunting fields. Rob Applegate was born with an innate passion to explore anything mechanical. If it moved, or had moving parts, he could not resist the temptation to dismantle all of the various parts in their entirety and find the causes of all the various movements and the forces behind the movements. In short, he was fixated on levers, grooves and pressures. The keen interest he had in mechanics manifested itself with firearms. As a little boy, he sat in stillness and watched with awe as his father patiently dismantled his sporting weapons and carefully cleaned and oiled each part before reassembling the rifle, revolver or shotgun upon which he was plying his gifted skills. This interest continued throughout all of his young life and beyond high school. His post high school education was centered around learning as much as possible about mechanics and eventually led to further education as to all of the various methods used to make the parts necessary to assemble machines of all types.