45 softball

[schatzperson]

I am new to 45 bullseye; Given today's price of ammo I am thinking of casting and reloading 45 softball ammo.
Can anyone recommend a specific good quality mold design ( rcbs , redding or saeco perhaps) .

Thanks all !

[Isabel1130]

I am new to 45 bullseye; Given today's price of ammo I am thinking of casting and reloading 45 softball ammo.
Can anyone recommend a specific good quality mold design ( rcbs , redding or saeco perhaps) .

Thanks all !

I believe that any good quality mold will work but you might want to experiment some with shooting different weight bullets and what shoots well in your gun before you invest in a specific mold. It is difficult to make cast bullets shoot uniformly well at the 50 yard line. It can be done but most people who are shooting lead at the 50 yard line are using swagged bullets. If you really want a softball load for sustaine fire I recommend going no bigger than 185 grain. There are an almost infinite vareity of powder/bullet combinations that will shoot well at the short line.
I can offer you some suggestions of what to try if you want to get the least recoil and still have good accuracy. PM me if you would like some load combos. I have already run the gauntlet and settled on what I am going to use both outdoors and in. It took about a year and a half to finally make a decision I could stick with. As I developed as a shooter I learned new things that changed my opinion Isabel

[Guest]

Casting and sizing bullets is a large undertaking. There are real health and safety issues with casting lead bullets. There are lots of manufactures of cast bullets - $60-100 / 1000 bullets is about what you'll pay.

Corbin sells the tools to swage bullets but from what I've gathered that's even more difficult in some ways to make good bullets.

Star made some very good swaged bullets but sadly they've closed the business.

There's several outfits making swaged bullets but I haven't tried them.

I see some bullseye shooters shoot Zero swaged:

http://www.rozedist.com/mm5/merchant.mv ... =ZSB-45ACP

A 185g cast or swaged would be worth trying.

I shoot a 200g SWC from LaserCast - it's similar to the H&G 68 with a bevel base.

I pay the extra $$ for Laser Cast because I get almost no barrel leading compared to the other brands I've shot.

I'm somewhat new to bullseye shooting but have shot many 10s of thousands of lead bullets in 45, 38spl and 9mm. I developed what worked best for me in terms of bullets and powder charges.

[Rover]

Hornady, Speer, and Remington all make good swaged pistol bullets. Buy them in batches of 100 for testing then buy the large packages.

[schatzperson]

Thank you all for your replies.
I understand the hazards and sheer annoyance of bullet casting but I live on a tiny island, Malta, so even though most shooting material is available, prices of heavy stuff like bullets are high because of transportation costs.

So far the little 45 experience I've had was with H&N and some other nondescript italian cast bullets.
I know somebody who has a swaging equipment but the hassle of making or obtaining lead wire seems to be challenging.

For the moment I think I will continue with buying readymade bullets, but hope to make my own someday.

[oldcaster]

SCHATZPERSON If you want to load .45acp bullets I highly recommend that you lean toward a 200 grain bullet that resembles the 068 or 069 Saeco bullet. They are the most inherently accurate that the bullseye shooters in my group can come up with after constant effort to find a better choice. As previously mentioned, the excellent swaged bullets from Star are no longer available. If you have to buy, I would buy Magnus or Zero and I would go with 200 grain even for the short line. It takes a certain amount of recoil to opperate the slide no matter what the bullet weight is. A lighter bullet has to go faster to get the recoil and I feel that a lighter bullet going fast enough to operate the slide feels sharper in recoil than a heavier one that feels more like a push. If you have a scope on your slide you will have to stay as heavy as your 50 yard load just to operate your slide but if you have a frame mount it is possible to get reletively light for 25 yards. I get away with 3.4 grains of clays with a 200 grain bullet in an older wadcutter Les Baer with a frame mount for the short line but be aware that sometimes when you get fairly slow it might also be innaccurate. If you want to cast, get a Saeco 68 (bevel base) or 069 (flat base) first choice, a Lyman .452630 second choice and a Lee that resembles these bullets. I recently shot some Lee 6 cavity no less, that were a special order that resembles the Saeco 069 and I will have to admit that they shot excellent but I worry about the longevity of the aluminum moulds and a special order isn't cheap anyway. Malta-- Thats where Paul the apostle got shipwrecked.