I have an old Rapine mold that throws a 500 gr. round nose bore rider in .458 caliber. Is it possible to cast a soft nose of pure lead and a base of hard cast? If I could push this out of a bolt action .45-70 at about 1500 FPS, I believe it would put a big hog in park real quick.
Suppose I cast a bunch of bullets, any configuration and/or caliber, that come out at around 200 to 225 grains, pure lead. I could fire up the pot with hard cast, melt the precast lead bullet in the ladle, dump that in the mold and immediately fill the remaining void with hard cast. Seems like the hard cast would bond to the pure lead by virtue of the latent heat in the first casting.

I'm open to comments, suggestions and/or remarks.
Punch

quote:

Originally posted by Puncher:
I have an old Rapine mold that throws a 500 gr. round nose bore rider in .458 caliber. Is it possible to cast a soft nose of pure lead and a base of hard cast? If I could push this out of a bolt action .45-70 at about 1500 FPS, I believe it would put a big hog in park real quick.
Suppose I cast a bunch of bullets, any configuration and/or caliber, that come out at around 200 to 225 grains, pure lead. I could fire up the pot with hard cast, melt the precast lead bullet in the ladle, dump that in the mold and immediately fill the remaining void with hard cast. Seems like the hard cast would bond to the pure lead by virtue of the latent heat in the first casting.

I'm open to comments, suggestions and/or remarks.
Punch

I have seen cast bullets made with the technique of putting pure lead shot in the mold, then pouring the hard cast on top of it. If a large pellet of pure lead is used, I suspect preheating the pure lead to just below melting would be advantageous. A three pellet or four pellet preload should give an easy opening nose to the hard cast base. I no longer have that contact, don't know how they function.

Ross Seyfried wrote an article discussing the use of a mini-dipper to pour soft noses. Make a mini-dipper out of a pistol case, make a handle for the dipper out of a twisted piece of wire. Now you need two pots, one for the soft alloy and another for the hard alloy. Pour the nose using the mini-dipper from the soft pot. Then pour the hard base. The bullets Ross made this way did not look perfect but they were functional and this system doesn not require any special equipment other than the mini-dipper.

I make such bullets. Buddy killed some game with them this season and they were impressive.

Two pots and the dipper is the way to go. I made some up 20 years ago melting .490 RBs in a casting ladle and it was incredibly slow.

Even with two pots, it's slow. You need everything as hot as you dare. I cast with my hard alloy until I am getting frosty bullets. and have my dipper floating in the lead pot. I dip the edge of the mould into the lead while I use the dipper and fill from the other pot as fast as I can.

Even at that, I get 50% rejects. I don't keep them if the seam is visible other than a color change. Nose should be shiny and the body frosty.

A 9mm case makes a dipper for about 125 grains lead. .45 ACP might work for you and you can easily shorten if needed. My handles are simple twisted wire, but a decent handle would help a lot.

Puncher. I think you're on a productive path. I'll relate my experience on this, even though we're not quite travelling in a parallel direction. I had mountain molds make me a soft nose mold in .358. The soft nose is about 100 grs. I do it out of approx BHN 8-9 then the base in approx. Lyman # 2 or a little harder. I've tested these through 4 anti freeze containers and caught the boolit in sawdust. I'm very impressed with the expansion (Approx .500") and retained weight is approx. 200 grs. out of a total of 234 grs. The impact velocity was approx. 1800'/s.
I know we're not looking for the same thing, but we're in the same ballpark. Two things that I've come to learn are 1. it's important to seat the nose portion well. Dan @ mountain molds states this and I absolutely agree. You may not have to do this, as you may be pouring one alloy directly on top of the other, but I make sure the nose portion is seated properly by pressing it into place with a 1/4" dowel. then pour the base alloy on top. The other, is what Leftoverdj stated, is to warm the nose portion, and the mold (which you may not have to do) and then pour the base portion onto it. I've found that the 2 alloys are bound together very well and will not pull apart with a pair of pliers. Ther is only a slight variation in colour, but definitely nothing like a separation line. Good luck with your experiments. Let us know, how it turns out. Ron.D