i"ve just got my 300gr lee mold. it"s throwing
about .433"
i"m just going out now to check all my measurements again, but i the "front end" of my cylinder is around .430"
up to now, in lead bullets i"ve been buying lead bullets which are supposed to be 429", but are at least a thou larger.
is it safe to fire an over size bullet? do i need to size?(accuracy aside for now)
i"ve loaded a few rounds, and they do chamber, but they"re a little tight.(slight bulging of the case.
so far i"ve just used 9mm bullets for lead, hope to chase some ww"s this weekend.
do i need a sizer?
good shooting

So long as they chamber, shoot em. I'm suprised that mold is dropping so large, as I recall mine dropped .430" when cast w/ ww's.

It is a very good bullet, I've yeat to hear of anyone that didn't get good accuracy with it.

thanks, i"ll try to get some ww"s as well.

Modern thinking of shooting cast bullets in revolvers is to size the bullet to the cylinder throat, or .0005 larger (Good luck trying to find a sizer that will hold that tolerance).

My Smith throats measure a tad over .433. Unfortunately, the chambers won't accommodate a bullet much over .4315. My solution was to size a GC bullet of heavy weight to .431. No leading at top speed of 1225 with a 320 grain SWCGC.

quote:

Originally posted by Paul H:
So long as they chamber, shoot em. I'm suprised that mold is dropping so large, as I recall mine dropped .430" when cast w/ ww's.

It is a very good bullet, I've yeat to hear of anyone that didn't get good accuracy with it.

There's an exception, Paul. The Lee C430-310-RF will not shoot worth a whoop in Marlin and NEF .44 Mags with their 1-38" twist barrels. I'm told that it does work well in the .444s with their far higher velocities.

Might be some other slow twist barrels I don't know about, but those I'm sure of.

Lee specs their moulds as nominal to +.003. Using lino would make .44 bullets about .0015 fatter than WW. Casting temp makes a difference, too. Hotter alloy shrinks a bit more on cooling.

My bad, I was thinking in terms of revolvers and had forgotton the rifles. In revolvers, and a 10" contender I tried, the bullets shoot very accurately, as good as any other cast bullet design.

It's a pity the rifle manufacturers went with the slow twist, because the 44 mag rifle and especially 444 can really put the heavier cast bullets to good use.

If you drive the Lee 310 gr hard in the new Marlin, they do shoot, and very well at that. I have two Marlines one is new and the other is getting rebarreled to 1:16 to shoot the heaver bullets.