Anyone Use .45cal or .50cal cast handgun bullets in there rifles?

[traditional man]

Can you use handgun cast bullets in your rifles.
Thought I would ask.

 

[nkbj]

It's tough to do with most just because the diameters usually don't add up and also because cartridge bullets are usually of the wrong geometry to give accuracy when muzzleloaded. But, there are exceptions.
Some folks have reported pretty fair accuracy with .40 calibers with pistol molds. I once tried Remington swaged 250 grain .45 bullets in a .45 "Kentucky" but never achieved much. Lyman once made a .45 hollow base pistol weight mold expressly for their rifles. I paper patch it for a percussion rifle as a plinking load.
Lee has a .50 caliber (440 grain?) flat point that has been paper patched successfully by Idaho Ron and used in longer ranged hunting.

 

[Little Wattsy]

Can you use handgun cast bullets in your rifles.
Thought I would ask.

I tried when I first got into MLing... It was a windmill joust.
After much trial and error and money spent and/or wasted I have proven that wit few exceptions the best way is to pour your own projectiles (easy and cheap to do) and that PRB's are good enough to as good as anything else you are likly to stuff down your barrel.
Lee mold = $19.00. 1 lb of pure lead about $1.00. On the second 100 you are making money!!

 

[nkbj]

However, if you have a rifle and molds that look promising by all means try it out and please report your results.

 

[cowpoke1955]

I casted a bunch of .45 200 grain SWC out of soft lead and shot them out of my .45 Pedersoli Blue Ridge/Frontier flintlock. After ten rounds, I managed to hit the target about four times at 50 yards. The rest were melted down for round ball. I just had to try :grin:

 

[Zonie]

There are several different problems with shooting cast handgun bullets in a muzzleloader.

As many mentioned, the size is the first problem.
Ideally, a bullets diameter should be about .002 smaller than the guns bore. That would result in a .448 diameter for a .45 caliber rifle.

The next problem is that all of the modern handgun bullets are cast out of hard lead.
This prevents them from swelling in size when they are fired and if the .002 undersize bullet doesn't swell it won't size itself to a size larger than the bore to engage the rifling.
It also doesn't stand a chance of sealing the rifling grooves unless it can swell enough to fill them.

Without engaging and sealing the rifling grooves the bullet will not develop the spin necessary to stabilize it in flight.
The leaking hot gas will also melt some of the lead as it blows past the bullet and this will lead the bore.

All in all, shooting modern handgun bullets in a muzzleloader is pretty much a lost cause.

 

[nkbj]

With emphasis on modern. Round ball became popular for rifled muzzleloaders because the hoops to make it work are easier to jump through. If you're gonna make some other form of projectile work you've got other hoops to jump through. Folks invented faster twists and longer bullets to shoot accurately further and ran into a whole new assortment of opportunities to exercise their problem solving skills. One of the things that slapped them right in the forehead was that to make long bullets shoot good you needed a close fitting bullet that expanded to the bore and grooves. That required that the inertia of the bullet resisted forward motion and produced bulging of it's sides to engage the rifling and seal the bore against gas cutting of the bullet. So, minimizing how much it had to bulge was good.
Also, if the bullet wasn't pretty long it wasn't necessarily going to have it's flat little bottom perpendicular to the bore after all that expanding had been going on. And, if it was light weight to start with the inertia factor was small, so you had to smack it with a huge slap of pressure to get it to expand into the rifling.

Now, think about a typical pistol bullet. It's pretty short. Even if you pour it from pure soft lead it's got none of the characteristics most favorable to success. With the right rifling geometry it can work. But, it's not easy. And I won't get into the stingy little bitty lube grooves on most modern pistol bullet molds and how more is better in longer barrels except to say that a maxi mold tells the tale.

 

[Tumblernotch]

Can you use handgun cast bullets in your rifles.
Thought I would ask.

A .41 Mag cast bullet works good in a .40 GM barrel. Swage it through a cut off piece of GM barrel (same twist). This engraves the rifling into the bullet so you have a mechanical fit. Does a number on a deer.

 

[nkbj]

Can you use handgun cast bullets in your rifles.
Thought I would ask.

A .41 Mag cast bullet works good in a .40 GM barrel. Swage it through a cut off piece of GM barrel (same twist). This engraves the rifling into the bullet so you have a mechanical fit. Does a number on a deer.

I could do that! Please say what load you are using, what mold, what barrel length. I have been using a Rayl .40 bore set up the same way to engrave the rifling but have a GM .40 that's 38" long.

 

[gmww]

I've done well with cast bullets in the 300g range from my 45/70. Also used the 405g with good result. I ran them through a rifled sizer that was from the original barrel blank.

 

[RedFeather]

I've heard of .36 148 grain mid-range wadcutters (.38 Special target rounds) used successfully. They are slightly hollow based.

 

[Tumblernotch]

A fellow gave me a handful of 172 gr. conicals at a shoot that were already swaged. At the time I was using 50 grs fffg with RB. He told me to bump up to 60 grs with these. I only shot at 50 yds sighting in (about the limit I can see a deer in my woods). I would say that with that weight of bullet that 60 to 70 grs would be a pretty good load. I did kill one deer at about 30 yds with one. Since I only had a few left, after hunting I would pull the load rather than shoot it out. Using a ball screw left a nice hollow point and it really opens a deer up.

A year or so ago I got a section of a GM barrel from a friend who owns a gunshop in PA and planned on swaging my own. No more than I shoot conicals I was just going to buy a box of Hornady's (that's what the fellow had given me), but they can't be found in any shops anymore. I'm thinking about just buying a mold from Lyman. If I remember right the same type of mold throws about a 215 gr. bullet. I'd have to check their site again to be sure. If that's the case, the powder load will have to be upped a bit. I just need to find some money I can spare to spring for another mold. Oh, my barrel length is 42 inches.

 

[traditional man]

Interesting reviews on using the HG cast bullets in the ML. Some folks have had good luck and others not so good of luck. I'm just gonna have ta give em a try. Thanks for all the input and reviews.