.54 conical bullets?

[bigbore442001]

Who makes the best .54 conical bullets? I do some centerfire bullet casting but that involves lead alloys. Thus I do not have pure lead for casting muzzleloading projectiles. Thanks

 

[bart_anastasi]

The best lead I ever got for making bullets was when I went into a stained glass shop just doing some shoping.

People there use a lead chanelling to make windows and lamps and in the process mess up a lot of that material.

They call it mangelled lead in the shop I go to. It is as pure as can be because it is going to be looked at closely by buyers of stained glass items.

To them once the chanelling is dented or messed with it becomes a waste product to be chucked out. got it all free adn the fella was happey to see me cart some of it off.

The other part is that it is so clean and managable you can feed it into you pot in 1 foot strips and since it is so clean i dont wory about slag messing up my pot or dipper.

 

[gmww]

I can still get pure lead at the scrap metal yard. You might consider that.

 

[nw_hunter]

I don't know about the best, but my 54 TC Hawken likes the Great Plains .425gr HB-HP's

 

[Mad Professor]

I don't know about the best, but my 54 TC Hawken likes the Great Plains .425gr HB-HP's

Those work good in my TC too.

In my 50 cal TC I've had good luck with 385 gr buffalo bullets, have not tried the 425 gr version in my 54 yet.

 

[mudd turtle]

When I get lead -most times it is plumbers lead. Now I have a question for you folks -by fluxing with bees wax I get a lot of the crud out of the lead. Just how pure can I get this lead. Mudd turtle.

 

[gmww]

That's the lead I use and it's pretty dang pure. Bees wax is also my choice. Lot of the scrap lead I get are old lead plumbing pipes.

 

[E Poffinbarger]

Bigbore442001:

IMHO, since you have experience in casting other bullets, you probably make the best.

As for the best .54 bullet mold, I really like the nicely pointed Lyman 425gr, hollow base minie.

Osage

 

[paulvallandigham]

Old plumber's lead was pure. But at least by the 1950s, when I watched plumbers sealing connections in waste pipes, they began using 30/70 mix lead. That is tin, and antimony mixed with lead. If you have access to pre-WWII lead plumbing pipe, it is likely to be pure. The later stuff is more likely an alloy, and while, like wheelweights, you can use it for casting balls, they will be very hard, and a bit larger, and lighter in weight than the same size ball cast of pure lead. Enjoy.

 

[BrownBear]

My hunting pard is getting very good results with the Lyman #548657 in his GPH. It's pretty close to the Hornady bullet without the HB or HP and a lot cheaper in the long run. He's still experimenting with lubes, but we're both impressed so far. From what I've seen, the mold is well designed for easy and consistent fills on pours. Lyman is proud of its increased bearing surface over conventional minnies, and so far I have to agree with them.

 

[paulvallandigham]

I would think that using that plain based bullet on top of a OP wad would make an excellent load for serious game. Because the driving band( up front) is wider than the grease grooves and the base band, a good lube, like Moose snot, Wonderlube, or even SPG lube should be used. I would also consider lubing the barrel before loading the powder and bullet, to make sure that the barrel is well protected from rust, and that the bullet is sliding over a lubed surface the entire length of the barrel. If the shooter is concerned about his lube fouling his powder, then wait and lube the barrel after the bullet is seated.

 

[BrownBear]

Yup, all the above is on the money. He's settled on the value of felt wads and has certainly found good results with commercial lubes. His experiments right now are with home-built lubes. So far none have matched up. I rendered a bunch of deer fat last fall and shared with him, and regardless of blends with beeswax, he's not getting accuracy as good as with Wonderlube, for example.

I meant to add to my previous post that based on experience I'm a little suspicious of lead bullets with sharper noses for use on game. For any implied gain in trajectory I've found that you trade off terminal performance on game, compared to using bullets with larger meplats (flat noses). Bullets with large meplats simply seem to hit harder and kill better than the pointy variety.

 

[paulvallandigham]

Well, Actually, that wide driving band will act like the meplat on a wad cutter, and cut a very large diameter hole through the flesh, leaving plenty of room for blood to flow out. I learned that when my father first shot wadcutters out of his .357 Magnum revolver at paper targets, and then fired some reloads with a semi-wadcutter bullet. The holes made by the SWC were actually sharper edged than those from the WCs. You could easily tell the difference as to which bullet was fired. The meplat on the SWC is actually pretty small, even on the Keith designed bullet. Its that wide square driving band shoulder that does the cutting.

 

[BrownBear]

Yup. Seen the same myself on paper. But in my long experience making game kills using 357 bullets and many more calibers, it doesn't hold up on game. WC's tend to veer and even tumble and not penetrate well after entry on game, while usually SWC's run straight and penetrate well. Among SWC's the larger the meplat the quicker the kills while not diminishing penetration that I have been able to spot in several dozen kills.

Speculating about comparisons between the Lyman 548657 and Lee REAL's on game larger than deer based on pistol bullets on game or paper is pretty thin soup, however. The original question was about performance on large game and I distracted things a bit with my reference to the 548657. My prejudice for it goes back to the thin soup of conjecture from pistol experience, because I haven't shot game with either it or the REAL. But I can testify to the greater ease of casting and apparently much better accuracy potential in tests so far, which was my original point.

 

[paulvallandigham]

While I have not used the Semi-wadcutters to shoot game, I have read dozens of accounts of its effectiveness, and have seen pictures of both entrance and exit wounds on coyote, and deer. I believe that any conical with a wide pronounced driving band will cut a caliber size hole through flesh, whether the nose of the bullet is flat or rounded. Even a .22 LR solid puts a good sized hole through a squirrel with that round nose, simply because the driving band is wider than the ogive. ( Groove diameter vs. land diameter). The only problem with .22s and many other pistol calibers is that they don't all have the highest velocity achievable, and with round nosed, they tend to spin and slip through flesh and muscle, rather than drill through and cut. Even the .45 hardball tends to do this, while a semi-wadcutter bullet makes a pronounced hole in flesh.

BTW, I have been using 160 grain Hornady Truncated FMJ bullets in my .357s for some time. Originally made for the pistol silhouette shooters, so that all the energy would be transferred to those 42 lb. ram targets out at 200 meters, the bullet makes a very good, deep penetrating conical for hunting and social purposes, where over penetration is not a concern.They will penetrate a car door or windshielf, and other lite barriers.

 

[rabjr]

Yep, 165 grain Beartooth FN bullets in .357 I can tell ya, knocks deer off their feet out of a Browning 92 lever gun. Meplat = dead animals real quick.

 

[bucktales]

I've had great results from both Buffalo and Hornady in the .54 conical dept. They both make their point.
I posted this picture a while back showing both brands recovered from deer. Both were 425 gr. and hit deer at under 50 yds. Both were shoulder shots.

 

[BrownBear]

That's the kind of performance I'd expect with soft lead conicals, Bucktales. Good expansion along with extra penetration due to the extra weight of a conical compared to an RB. The "thin soup" I referred to in trying to compare cartridge handguns with ML's comes from the difference in alloys. In handguns very hard alloys are the norm, and bullets recovered from game look pretty much NIB, except for the rifling grooves and maybe a little erosion around the nose. They penetrate like the dickens so recovery is pretty rare. The large meplat comes in, I think, because they are not expanding and a flat surface disrupts more flesh than a round or pointed one.

Back to my early (and brief!) experiements with using wadcutters rather than semiwadcutters- I think their tendency to wander and veer off course inside the animal was due to their short length relative to diameter. SWC's stay on course better most likely because they're a lot longer on average relative to bore size. That's another pot of thin soup however, because I'm drawing those conclusions from lots of written accounts of "solids" fired from rifles for elephants. The African hunters want long solid bullets for their higher SD, finding them to bore straighter inside an animal. Makes sense, but thin soup. I may have shot dozens of animals with handguns, but the African PH's shot hundreds of them, and in some cases thousands.

 

[Runner]

If you want to see what the nose design actually does and does not change, get your pellet rifle out! Flat noses knock squirrels a foot sideways off the limb, but if there is any wind or they are a little farther out there, the chances of hitting them isn't good because the design isn't for that kind of shooting. In phone books, they punch a sharp hole and the force cone spreads quick to stop them. The harder you shoot them, the bigger the force cone, but the penetration does not increase much.
Pointy bullets at first guess would seem to penetrate better. They beat the wadcutters but not by a lot. The straight sides produce a force cone almost as big as the wadcutter does, only a little deeper in the book. The force cone does not mirror the shape. There may be some additional ripping past where the bullet stops over what the wadcutter produces. It is still pretty much flat like a wadcutter produces. They fly ok at the middle distances, but still have the wind steerage problems of the wadcutters to a degree.
The true round nose that is about 2x caliber in length or a little longer produces a force cone that that is not as well defined and it is shaped like the nose with a center that is much deeper than the outer edges. It flies long distances better than either of the others does in the same conditions. They do not have the pronounced impact on game as the other two unless you add a hollow point. They penetrate better than either of the others by a large margin. Naturally, the force cone is much smaller than the others also.
I did not have any hollowpoints when I did the testing, so I can't say definately what effect they will have.
Throw away what you think you know from your modern guns. It does not apply to the slow soft lead bullets used in traditional guns. The air rifle info is close in the rifles and almost perfect in the pistols.
If you want to see for yourself, get some thick phone books and do the tests yourself. Count the pages penetrated, the number of pages torn past where the bullet stopped, and measure the force cone that is easy to see and measure. If you can get the old type books with the tissue thin pages, it is even easier to measure and record the results.
I use a target minnie for one reason in my slug gun. It shoots that bullet better than anything else I have shot thru it. I don't need long range capacity, so the nose design doesn't bother me very much. If you are strictly looking for range and penetration, then a good roundnose just about 2x times bore or a little longer is the bullet you want. Cecil at Precision is the best commercial source of long range hunting conicals that I know of.
At normal traditional hunting ranges, the added penetration means that you can shoot a lighter powder load to produce a pleasant to shoot combo and still be sure the bullet should exit most of the time.

 

[Rat Trapper]

I have had real good luck with the Hornady 390 gr HP great plains bullets in 54 cal. These bullets have worked so well I have not tried anything else. They do load a little harder, but they shoot so good, I'll put up with it.