Greetings and Salutations my fellow dabblers in molten metal,
I'm having a problem with my boolits and I thought I'd throw this out and see what suggestions I get. I'm casting 452 RFPs for shooting steel targets with my 45LC (cowboy action shooting). The ideal result of a hit would be for the boolit to flatten out with minimal fragmentation and drop rather than ricochet. I've been hit more than once with pieces of lead while waiting to shoot.
I was using straight WW, got some flattening but more shattering than ideal, so I added 20% lead to soften the result. That helped some but I wanted better. I upped the lead to 33% and added 2% tin (to help with mold fillout) but now I think I have it too soft, I'm finding the bullet base very near the target but am losing 2/3 of my bullet weight to fragmentation. Suggestions?

Thanks,
Ian

Shooting pure lead round balls at steel plates at a shoot this spring, we found many bullets flattened out to silver dollar size. Try dead soft, and see what happens.

12FLVSS,
At what spped are your bullets going and what distance. Too much spped can also cause problems with alloys where pure lead just flattens. I shoot .310 cast bullets thru brake rotors for fun. Mark

BPCRS (rifle) is often shot with 20/1 or 30/1 lead/tin, and those bullets flatten pretty well, but there are still richocets.

I used to shoot indoors at a bowling pin match. I went to shooting pure lead wad cutters in my 44mag helped with the ricochet factor but sure did a number on the bowling pins.
Try casting pure lead this should stop your fragmenting problem but will likely lead your gun. After your shoot is over fire a few jacked bullets to clean out the rifling. Works in my 44mag. If you can use gas checks they may also help with the lead problem.

Swede44mag

swede will the gas checks bounce back and hit ya? seems like they might add to the material coming back at a shooter....

THE 2ND AMENDMENT PROTECTS US ALL.............

The best way is to shoot lead boolits real slow, or if too lazy or no desire to load a few for chasers, then just slug the barrel a couple of times with a new lubed boolits. Shooting copper boolits might, but not always, roll in the lead into the groove corners, making it even more difficult to clean the gun. ... felix

Depending on the distance gas checks are light, but there is always the unpredictable chance when shooting that something may ricochet.

Swede44mag

I gota flyer from Midway today. I see they have some bullets advertised as 100% pure hard alloy.

Whut the hell is that?

Sounds like a contradiction in terms!

Orygun, velocities are 7-800fps, and distances are under 25 yards in most instances. The rules in Cowboy Aaction prevent using any kind of jacketed or gas checked bullet, so that option is out.

Thanks for all the replies,
Ian