Lee R.E.A.L bullet

[Thunder14]

will a lee r e a l bullet shoot well in a 48 twist
Would like to buy a mold on the site but not sure if it would work for this 48 twist

 

[Grenadier1758]

The best answer will come if we know the diameter to the bottom of the grooves and the depth of the grooves. What size / grains REAL bullet are you considering? What make of rifle are you using?

Lee REAL bullets use the top band to engrave the lands to the depth of the grooves. To prevent gas blow by and cutting of the bullet, it must fill the grooves. You can't count on the bullet lube to seal the bore.

Lee REAL ( Rifling Engraved At Loading ) work best in ries with shallow grooves. The 1 in 48 twist is compatible with REAL bullets.

 

[Thunder14]

Its going to be used in my T/C Hawkin 50 cal. Shallow grove 320 bullet weight if i remember correctly

 

[Grenadier1758]

You should expect good performance with the REAL bullet in your rifle. You will need to develop an accurate load.

 

[tenngun]

Was it not designed for a 1/48 twist?

 

[Grenadier1758]

It was designed for shallow grooves. It works well in a 1 in 48" twist gun. You still have to find the powder charge and bullet lubricant to get it to perform for best accuracy on a target be it hunting or paper. Too much lead for paper though. In a fifty caliber rifle its too much lead for deer. Its better for pig, elk, moose, bison or bear.

 

[Rat]

The REAL is a short bullet, which leads me to believe it was designed to work in slow twists, which it does in my replica 1863 Remington contract rifles, and my Pedersoli 1861. These rifles all twist at or around 1:60 or 1:66, something like that.

However, any bullet that works well in a slow twist is certainly going to be stable/more stable in a faster twist, but not visa-versa. Hard to "over stabilize" a bullet, but accuracy really goes away if it is under stabilized. A bullet can strip, or over-ride the grooves, if the twist is too insanely fast for the bullet and powder charge, but I don't think a 1:48 is in any danger of that.

My best results with the .58 caliber 440 grain REAL, (which comes out of my mold at 456 grains) is with a wad under the bullet (some say theirs don't like a wad) and a minimum of lube on the bullet. Just lightly lubing the bottom two grooves works for me. SPG works well for me. They also seem to shoot well, again, for me, with either the top groove, or bottom, filled with bee's wax and no other lube.

For target shooting, more lube would probably be required. For hunting, starting with a clean barrel, I can get three shots out of the gun for sure, before wiping. I think that's plenty.

 

[Thunder14]

Thank you very much for all the input,its so nice to be able to communicate with such a great group of people and great advice I’m only into flintlocks for a few years now and i have learned so much from everyone on this site and everyone has been so patient with some of my questions.

 

[Dan Masson]

If you buy that mould, it will likely shoot well. If it doesn't, it'll likely shoot out of something else you have. It is a good mould to have, and easy to sell if you don't like it.
Big advantage, it is fast and easy to reload in a hunting situation.
And easy to pull in a "forgetful" situation.

 

[Rat]

Truth. They do pull easy.

 

[Jamie from Alberta]

I found the 250gr shot better from my TC New Englander .50 cal than the 320’s.
My brother plans on using the 250gr REAL in his TC Scout 50 cal this fall. It’s a different twist all together. 1:38
They also worked well seated on OxYoke lubed wad.

 

[Ironoxide]

I found the 250gr shot better from my TC New Englander .50 cal than the 320’s.
My brother plans on using the 250gr REAL in his TC Scout 50 cal this fall. It’s a different twist all together. 1:38
They also worked well seated on OxYoke lubed wad.

The short REALs also are much more accurate than the long ones in my fast twist hawken (1:24 Pedersoli). My .58 with 1:48 twist also likes REALs with an overpowder wad.

 

[Dphar1950]

will a lee r e a l bullet shoot well in a 48 twist
Would like to buy a mold on the site but not sure if it would work for this 48 twist

I assume you have one of the guns rifled for the maxi-ball that requires a very tight patch to shoot a RB. Note that the Real, the maxi, the minie and all other "naked" ML bullets has a tendency to slide away from the powder. I suspect this is why the proof load for the rifle musket was a minie spaced 2" off the powder. AND note that the Maxi and the Mine (which used a very slow twist since it was built like a "rifled" shotgun slug) sometimes do not track straight through critters. I.E. they veer off course sometimes wildly. This has been known since the Crimean War. Don't know about the "real" bullet or the Maxi-Hunter that TC also sold due to "issues" with the Maxi. But the Maxi is not a good hunting bullet. Too many reported failures over the years.

 

[Grenadier1758]

The REAL, T/C Maxi Ball and a couple of other methods such as a paper patched bullet rely on the top band of the bullet to engrave on the rifling and this engraving will provide the friction to hold the bullet in place. This is where the measuring of the bore and the bullet are so important. Loading a bullet that requires engraving of the one band to hold it in place as well as shallow rifling makes several rifles with larger than the nominal for a REAL or Maxi Ball put the hunter at risk of the ball sliding away from the powder. The Minie' ball is intended to be loaded and fired quickly so the lubrication on the bullet for the first shot will hold it in place as the ball is designed to be undersized for the bore. The Minie' was designed a bullet for the battlefield. It is effective for hunting, but one has to be aware of a tendency to move off the powder when carried for hunting.

I do agree with Dphar1950 that in all these cases of loading a bare ball or bullet that the may be a tendency for the ball or bullet to move away from the powder. So do check your load when arriving at a hunting stand.

 

[Loyalist Dave]

I found that TC Maxi-Hunter bullets, not Maxi-Ball bullets, shot very well in both a 1:48 Hawken from TC, and a New Englander, as well as a .50 caliber Pedersoli Frontier, also 1:48.

As Mike writes, the depth of the rifling is important. A faster twist but with shallow rifling, could pose problems for the REAL bullet. The TC caplock, White Mountain Carbine does come in a fast twist version. On the other hand the Pedersoli .54 Jaeger, although 1:24 twist, appears to have pretty good rifling, as patched round ball shoots well from it and is recommended by the manufacturer.

LD

 

[PineyCreek]

A good way to check to see if your cast REAL bullet fits the grooves of your barrel is to take a 6" piece of brass rod 1/2" in dia. for my .54 cal. and place it down the barrel. Start the bullet with the short starter then rock the barrel forward several times to knock out the bullet. Check the bullet to see how deep the rifling has cut.

 

[Dphar1950]

A good way to check to see if your cast REAL bullet fits the grooves of your barrel is to take a 6" piece of brass rod 1/2" in dia. for my .54 cal. and place it down the barrel. Start the bullet with the short starter then rock the barrel forward several times to knock out the bullet. Check the bullet to see how deep the rifling has cut.

It does not have to fill the grooves and was never intended to if you measure it. Initial acceleration will expand it to fill the grooves. If a sufficient powder charge is used. These things, along with the various "maxi" bullets etc are intended for people who can't figure out patches and round balls. I might also add that these all have a reputation for not staying on the powder. Just as the original Minie bullet designs were found to do in military service. The reason there was never a Minie ball carbine for the cavalry. Thus its not advisable to carry the rifle muzzle down at any significant angle. If bumped or jarred with the muzzle down the bullet may move off the powder.

 

[Dphar1950]

will a lee r e a l bullet shoot well in a 48 twist
Would like to buy a mold on the site but not sure if it would work for this 48 twist

Probably repeating myself, again. But like one of my chief pilots told me when I was teaching people to fly Cessnas, "they only hear half of what you say".
In reality you have to ask yourself this... "If these things are so great why were they not in wide spread use in the 19th c?" The technology was well known. Every elongated bullet used in MLs has significant drawbacks. They either need extra equipment to properly start them or they have issues in slow twists with penetration or staying on track to the vitals. They often do not kill kill any better than the RB and generally are actually deficient. Penetration? Hoe much do you need? Many buffalo have been killed with the PRB in various calibers. Read Parkman's "Oregon Trail". Yes, years ago I once built a underhammer ML that shot a Lyman 457125 (520 gr cast soft). It shot pretty well in fact with no starter. But the barrel had been cut with cartridge rifle rifling and twist and had a .455-.456" BORE diameter so the bullets loaded easily. Properly loaded it would shoot to 1000 yards plus about as well as the BPCR folks we shot against. But today it would be deficient in accuracy. But would eat a steel nipple to the point of massive gas escape in about 15 shots with 70 gr of blackpowder. It was not really suitable for hunting. Then we have the elongated bullet people DID use to some extent. The cloth patched "Picket". It also has "issues" that are expensive to overcome. I have a barrel set up for them too. Yeah, its a PITA and at 100 a decent RB gun will out shoot the picket. AND it needs about double the powder to shoot well... So we get nipple erosion as all "conicals" cause.

 

[Teewest]

I just shot the 250 Grain Lee REAL bullet out of a 50 Cal. T/C Hawken 1:48 twist and they are great, also the 380 grain. out of a 54 Cal. T/C Hawken1:48 twist . I really like these bullets both rifles shot great and at 50 yards they were less than a 1.5 inch group. I did not swab the barrels at all between shots. Shot 10 shots through both rifles. The cleaning up was fast and easy.

 

[Maven]

How accurately Maxi-Balls and REAL's shoot depends more on how well they fit your barrel; i.e., how well the front band is truly engraved by the rifling, than powder charge. Once the bullet fit is established, you can fine tune the amount and granulation of the powder. Btw, a card stock disk under the REAL or Maxi-Ball seems to help accuracy.