Reduced/Practice Loads for DGRs

[GuttormG]

About 3 feet

 

[Chuck Kazen]

So the bucket is a three feet or so below the pot? The practice is you pour the lead from the pot into the mould then move the mould over the water, open it and let the bullet fall into the water? How far above the water do you have the mould when you open it? I'm not being a problem- merely getting the details straight so that I can start doing it without trial and error. thank you- I hadn't considered rapid cooling of the bullets.

I hold the hot mold a few inches above the water to minimize the splash. Obviously I don't want water splashing up on the mold either. This method has worked well for me for ever. My understanding is that with plain lead you get a temporary external hardening that may be lost during sizing. But with chilled shot 2-3% antimony or magnum shot 4-6% antimony the hardness lasts especially if arsenic is also included in the lead alloy. I've never payed with adding tin or gone through heat treating and annealing processes in my wife's oven. She'd kill me for bringing lead into her baking world. I stumbled onto the chilled / magnum shot thing by accident years ago when I was out of plain range lead and wanted to put together some hot loads for my .41 magnum, so I just used my shotgun lead supply. I couldn't believe how well the lead shot worked.

 

[IvW]

Personally I would practice with full power loads otherwise you would be defeating the object....cheap bullets but full power loads....

 

[Chuck Kazen]

Personally I would practice with full power loads otherwise you would be defeating the object....cheap bullets but full power loads....

You're correct if you are heading off to hunt DG. The beauty of hard cast lead bullets, at least in the 458's is that the total cartridge cost is about 50 cents each whether I'm loading with 70 grains of IMR 3031 for 2100 ft/sec or 84 grains of IMR 4064 for 2300 ft/sec. Having a 458 Lott gives you a lot of flexibility. You can load it down to Win Mag velocity or even go down to 400 grain bullets and mimic the various 416's. I believe with practice you can get used to high levels of recoil. My typical outing to the range consists of 45 rounds at around 1500 ft/sec and 5 at 2300. I don't get to range often enough to ever get used to the heavy recoil but I have no plans to get to Africa.