Another day at the range
 

I went out today to shoot my Hot Rod Hawken again.
Last week I tried a new bullet that kicked azz. I got a RCBS 11mm mould. It pours a 409 grain bullet that is .446" with lead that is about 6 BHN hardness. I paper Patch them to fit my .451 Green Mountain Hawken.




I shot three shots no cleaning. They did good so I tried another but it went a little wide. My first 100 yard group last week was this one.




I adjusted my sights a bit and shot another 100 yard group that was even better.



I wanted to try some more that were a bit harder. So last week I poured up two new batches of harder lead. One batch was about 8.5 BHN and the second batch was 9.5 BHN hard. Today I only got to try the 8.5 hardness. I shot a group using 80 gr of Pyrodex P and no over powder wad. It was ok somewhere in the 3" range at 100 yards. I decided to try an over powder wad, so I adjusted my sights from last weeks group. I shot two shots and wow that was good. SO I cleaned the gun and this time I was shooting for group. I cleaned between each shot. In this picture The tape is covering the first two shots. This three shot group is .858" If I were to peel off the tape the group for all 5 shots would be still under 1" group.



I also had a Limb Saver recoil pad installed. I had a gun smith do this one because I wanted the stock cut and a part of the brass left in place.





This gives me a better length but also WOW it helps on the recoil. The next time I go out I plan to try the 9.5 BHN hardness bullets but I think I found the golden ticket. Ron

Ron that is some dandy shooting. I'm just the opposite of you though. I prefer a shorter stock. You must have some long arms??

That's great shooting with iron sights. On the hardness thing. Is that considered hard or soft? Wouldn't you want a soft lead for a muzzleloader?

HA

I do have long arms. I have to buy shirts that are way too big so I have the arms the right length. Ron

I am guessing, that is the fast twist rifle barrel. That is some great shooting.

I too have to buy shirts that are way too big also. But not so much form my arms. I normally have to roll up the sleeves if you know what i mean.

the length of the shirt is what always kills me, i love a long torso and XL after one wash turns into a medium belly showin off shirt :D

Awesome shooting though! Gosh, I love it when i see stuff like this, traditional, open sight, simple conical. Inline accuracy!

Most of the time we strive for pure lead so we can get them down the barrel without a hammer. In the case of this mould I could use wheel weights and they would still work. The 1000 yard ML shooters are using 20- 1 or 30-1 lead that is harder than some of what I am using. 45-70 shooters typically shoot even harder yet. In the grand scheme of things the lead I am using most guys would call pure. Since I have a hardness tester I can adjust the lead hardness to tweak load performance.
Ron

This barrel has a 1-30 twist. I am surprised that the 1-30 can stabilize this bullet. They are flying true out to 150. I plan to try them out to 200 yards my next outing. Ron

Just curious as i know nothing about lead hardness and such. I use the pure lead i get from recovered powerbelts, very very soft that you can easily sink a fingernail into. How can you figure out the ratio of soft lead to mix with harder lead?

I use 30-1 in my 45-70. 30 pounds lead I roll tin(95%) 5%antimony . With 20-1 use 20 pounds lead. In my muzzy I use pure lead though. I personally wouldn't go harder than 30-1 The hardness would be about 8 on the brinell scale. You can buy 30-1 lead ingots at midway, that's where I got mine.

Rotometals is a lot cheaper than Midway. Ron

http://www.rotometals.com/default.asp

Thanks. Midway is expensive and shipping was ridiculous

I have bought about 200 pounds of soft lead through Rotometals. I got it when it was much cheaper than it is now. This is the purest lead I have ever seen. When you first melt it down to make ingots you will get the blue, green, gold oxides build up on top. If you mix in about 1000 grains of hard lead shot per 10 pounds of pure it will homogenize the melt. I am told a little tin will do it too. If you don't add the shot or tin you can literally skim this ultra pure lead to nothing. The first time I did it I thought man I got to get this junk out of this lead. I screwed up and skimmed it off and lost a lot of lead, but I did go back and reclaim it later.
I started to add the lead shot and bingo no more loss of this lead due to the oxides. The hardness increase is not even measurable at the rate I gave. It will literally only homogenize the melt. It will also flow better. Ron

Nice work Ron. Man after my own heart. Love them Hawkens rifle.