Well I do not post much but was busy casting ZInc bullets for my 38/357 - 9mm - 300 BO - 30-06. Went through about 50 lbs of zinc. I have been casting and shooting Zinc bullets about 4 years now. They are working great. Mostly for target shooting.
Well I do not post much but was busy casting ZInc bullets for my 38/357 - 9mm - 300 BO - 30-06. Went through about 50 lbs of zinc. I have been casting and shooting Zinc bullets about 4 years now. They are working great. Mostly for target shooting.
I haven’t been able to make it to the bench much this summer. I just sporadically sit down here or there whenever I get a few extra minutes. I don’t even remember what I posted as the last thing I’ve done. Let me check. Ah yes, I annealed my 32 Winchester special range brass that I’ve been collecting. I got the Hornady brass sized and trimmed and it’s ready to load, and now I’m halfway through the WW brass. When I’m done with it I’ll move on to the RP. I’m leaving the FC and misc brass as just deprimed and clean, to save for later, I’ve got enough of the other headstamps.
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I loaded 19 more with the IMR 4831 , there's only about 1.5 lbs left but the change over to H4831 should be painless , 41.0-41.9 in .3 steps if I see "the pattern" I'll go on up next time from 41.8-42.7 in .3 steps .
With the bigger cases, a pound and a half of powder gets gobbled up pretty quickly
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I have been casting and shooting Zinc bullets for a little over 3 years now. They are 60% lighter (147gn lead = 90 gn Zinc) (180gn lead = 113gn Zinc).
It's tricky. It's the same as the deal with the Barnes X and GMX etc . You kind of have to start with the fastest powder that will give a full or near full case for a bullet weight in-between and sort out the bearing length .......as I understand what I've read about it. So in the case of the 180/113 in a 308/06' where it's one of the bore ride spritzers , you use something like 4350 start looking for a 165 as a maximum load and work from there . If you have something more like the 309291 or 299 that requires deeper seating you'll want to start with data for a 130-145 and the bottom 1 or 2 powders.
The zinc has lower friction than copper but doesn't move , as in engraving, as easily as lead or copper.
Using the light weight data can over pressure because of case space and initial movement and the dimension data might not reach pressure at all .
When in doubt with 30 cal and up fill it up to the bottom of the neck with 4831 and see what happens. It was designed and used for both the Orclon (sp) and later bottle necked 20 mm cannon .