I was working with my new caliper. check the dia. of the458 405grs, they ended dropping 454 in dia. tested about 20 of them all at 454. been using the mmp orange out of my knigh. I am planning on get 2 sizers and sizing them to 451 to shoot as an conical out of the apex. going to paper patch with cig. wrapping paper.

thinking about buying crushed rib and shooting them unsize. just have handful, not really enough to give a good round of testing.

my goal with this bullets is find a sabot that will work with the knight. going a cheaper on this one. holding off on sizers for a while.

In ya'lls great mind, (what's left of them [8D]), with the dia being 454 on avg. is crushed ribs the wright choice to go?

The crushed rib might work for you. All you can do is try. I shoot the same bullet, unsized, with the orange Knight Sabot out of my Wolverine. I shoot 85 grains of powder and they seem to work real well.

Why is your bullet dropping at .454 from a .458 mold?? What alloy are you using?? .454 sounds small to me. I am sure your measurement is right. You must be pouring pure lead?? Tom.

the ingots used on this is ww and a small amount of mix of fishing sinkers and a little bit of stick on WW. but I know they it is not a 50/50,

I will do another round of measurements and check.

douhh, I figured out what happen. I measured before I weighed them, I have 5 of them that are under the weight I want coming out to that .454 this is how i
those 5 stuck in my head.

it brokes down to

dropped at 402gr .456
dropped at 404gr .457
dropped at 406gr .4575

avg 404gr .4568 rounded to .457

still going to try the crushed ribs and see if they do any better. with same weight.

When I cast out of my 405 grain .458 LEE mold, my pure lead bullets come out at 426 grains. After I size them to .451 they weighed 420 grain on the head. I think you have a lot more alloy in your mix them you might know...

if there is, and not something I did. the make of the WW I used. one batch I add a little solder, maybe not even an inch of thin electrical solder to a small sauce pan of ww lead. that could not be enough to throw it off that much could it?

I was weighting out some 205gr 430 semiwadcutters for an care package for someone, they dropped out at 208gr 210gr and 212gr, with the bulk being 212gr. for some reason my scale does not like odd numbers. and none of what I weighted was below what the mold was made for.


thanks cayugad, you just reminded me to starting keeping an eye out for deals on sizers.

Find yourself some sheet lead or lead pipe, the purer the better - wheelweights are TOO hard. Trade those to someone looking for such alloy to use for hard cast bullets.

may end up doing that, can't find any where around that will sale me any.[:@]

We have been down this alloy lane before. Everyone has there own way of doing it. I have been casting for 30 years. I have tried it all. I now shoot straight WW out of all my rifles. I probably cast for a dozen different rifles. Plus a few MZ's.

IMO you are overthinking this alloy thing. You really have two options. Go out and buy pure lead-which IMO is a waste of money. Or just smelt your wheel weight and cast. Slight variances in bullet weight will never be noticed.

If you are really concerned there is one thing you can do-that I do. I do my smelting in batches. I will do 400-500 pounds at one time. I have a large SS pot that will hold close to 100#. I take my time(normally an entire afternoon) and remix the ingots until I fell I have gained a consistent mix.

I am not knocking the purist guys. I have just never noticed the difference. The only difference I have noticed where alloys make a big difference is in high performance cartridges where I am shootng over 2,000 fps. And that is not hapening in an MZ. Tom.