i have hard cast lead bullets size .432. can i use them in my redhawk slugged to 4295 and black slugged to 4305 ? and if not can they be resized down to .431 or lower?,thankyou mister c

As long as the chamber throats are the same or larger than your bore diameters, your bullets should work fine in both revolvers without having to resize the bullets.

We are assuming the diameters you give are those for your barrel groove diameter. As Marshall Kane notes, you hope your cylinder throats are at least that size, and prefer them to be a bit larger. If your cylinder throats are smaller than groove diameter, they will size your bullets down below groove diameter and you will have problems with accuracy and leading.

Will cartridges with these bullets seat in your cylinder? If not, you will have to size the bullets down until the cartridges containing them will seat in your cylinder. Most of my revolver cylinders seem to have no problems with big bullets, but one .357 Mag only allows .359" bullets. Not a revolver but I used to have a .43 Spanish revolver that had a .446 groove diameter, but I could not chamber cartridges with bullets larger than .439".

When crimping, be careful not to make one that causes a bulge in the case just behind the crimp, or they may not chamber.

I like cast bullets to be larger than groove diameter by at least .001". I regularly use bullets that are .432 in my S&W 29-2.

CDD

If they will chamber in your cylinder I wouldn't worry about sizing. I would not crimp if you have enough neck tension. Wouldn't crimp without a crimp groove. If your die applies a roll crimp, you want as little as possible. The roll crimp will cause a bulge in the case mouth if excessive.

armyrat1970
I beg to differ. If he is using a revolver with cast bullet, he should consider using a crimp and not just rely on neck tension. If he has a proper crimp groove on the bullet, then a heavy crimp will not bulge the case mouths.

...black slugged to 4305...
I've not seen the term "black slugged" before... What's that?

:confused:

armyrat1970
I beg to differ. If he is using a revolver with cast bullet, he should consider using a crimp and not just rely on neck tension. If he has a proper crimp groove on the bullet, then a heavy crimp will not bulge the case mouths.
This is correct, especially in .44 mag. If there's not a proper crimp groove, then crimp immediately forward of the cylindrical part of the bullet shank, where the taper of the nose begins.

:)

As armyrat above prefers, I like to crimp as little as possible because it's hard on case mouths, and quite possible to get wrong (bulged). If you are loading .44 magnums to anything close to factory specifications you will have bullets pulling forward in the other positions around the cylinder if you do not crimp too. If you are loading down .44 magnums, or loadiing .44 specials, you might get away with not crimping much at all.

Really light .44 pistols are reported to need a heavier crimp.

CDD

armyrat1970
I beg to differ. If he is using a revolver with cast bullet, he should consider using a crimp and not just rely on neck tension. If he has a proper crimp groove on the bullet, then a heavy crimp will not bulge the case mouths.

I agree you should crimp for revolvers to avoid the bullet from jumping forward out of the case from recoil. For mild loads sometimes a very light crimp is all that is really needed if you have good neck tension. If you have really good neck tension you may need no crimp at all. A roll crimp, like one that is applied by Lee dies, which is all that I use, can cause bulging if you get excessive with the amount of crimp. If that happens it could cause the case to not fit the cylinder and may also cause the bullet to rock in the case mouth because it tightens the mouth and expands the lower part of the case neck below the crimp. Causing bullet runout and poor accuracy. I am looking to get the Lee Factory Crimp Die to eliminate the problems with the roll crimp. I am running into this problem with cast for the 8x57 with unfired milsurp primed cases. Of course it's a different animal than for revolvers though.
For instance. I settled on a seating depth and OAL for my 175grRN cast and sized dropped from my Lee Mold testing the bullet depth in an uncharged case and chambering into my dot1943 until I had no more land marks on the bullet after smoking. Seated the bullet a little deeper to make sure it was not hitting the lands. The problem was it fell right in the middle of the lube grooves. I seated a little deeper and applied what I thought was a light crimp. Although the bullet could not be pulled from the case or pushed deeper into the case by hand it was a little loose. With no crimp the bullet was a little loose and could be moved in and out of the case neck a little. Part of the problem was neck tension and part of the problem was with the roll crimp because I was not crimping into a crimp groove but a bearing surface.
As I stated the 8x57 is a different animal but I believe crimping and neck tension go hand in hand. I tried some of my unsized bullets. Although I had to seat a little deeper to get them off the lands because of the larger diameter, I didn't need to apply any crimp because the neck tension held the bullet firmly in place. Now again. A different animal.

IME, revolver cases should be trimmed at least once to ensure all cases are the same length.

The seater die should be set so that desired amount of roll crimp takes place when the press handle is at the bottom of the stroke. Set that way, the amount of crimp does not vary since the press handle is at the end of its travel.

The crimp should roll into the crimp groove without marring the bullet or bulging.

Just my dos centavos. YMMV:)

i have hard cast lead bullets size .432. can i use them in my redhawk slugged to 4295 and black slugged to 4305 ? and if not can they be resized down to .431 or lower?,thankyou mister c

To simply address the physical aspects of sizing, you should be able the .432's down to .429 or so if you need to. A thousandth or two is easy, three should be OK as well.
If you resize too much, the driving bands start to smear.
Good Luck with your project and Happy Shootin'!

-Tom

As to the crimping issue, I believe some powders preform better with a heavy crimp applied. I use WC820, Bluedot, and 2400 in my 44s and usually apply a heavy crimp. I agree with Mr. Herman about sizing, but I also read somewhere (it is in the RCBS Cast Bullet Manual, pg. 41) that sizing cast bullets can be detremental to accuracy. Does "black" pertain to a Blackhawk?

You cannot crimp with a standard roll crimp die onto a bearing surface, unless it is a dead-soft swaged bullet. If you do, it will cause a bulge. A heavy crimp into a crimp groove will not bulge the case.
As for case mouths, I have reloaded my .44 magnum over 10 times, with some full power loads and some lighter loads. All have been properly belled and heavily crimped. I have yet to lose a case. I don't worry about over working the case mouth. I am more likely to lose the case in the grass.

Couple of odds and ends:

The roll crimp is needed to stop bullets in revolver chambers from backing out. The lighter the load or the lighter the bullet or the heavier the gun, the less heavy the crimp has to be for that purpose (though it still may need to be heay to help slower powders like 296/H110 get burning well). For example, firing the .45 ACP in an N frame Smith, a standard self-loader taper crimp works fine. I've had over 50 target loads though .45 ACP cases using the taper crimp. Ive never played with annealing revolver case mouths, but see no reason in principle that it couldn't be done.

A friend of mine owns one of the titanium .45 LC short barreled revolvers. He says it just can't be used with any bullet heavier than 200 grains or it backs out, new commercial 250 grain .45 LC ammo included.

It was pointed out in another thread that if you heat and quench your bullets, then size them within a day so the sizing happens well before they have time to finish hardening (usually a couple of weeks or so), there is no surface hardness penalty from the sizing.

Most revolver accuracy jobs begin with reaming the cylinders to maximum dimension. Cylindersmith.com has a service for doing this, but they offer two chamber throat sizes for .44, 0.4305" and 0.4325". The former seems llikely to be for tight barrels and jacketed bullets. The latter would work for looser bores and larger cast bullet such as Mr. C describes.

I am assuming, by the way, that "black" was a typo for "back", meaning Mr. C's barrel slugged 0.4295" at the muzzle and 0.4305" at the back. That taper should be be very good for cast bullet shooting, but the bigger chamber and bullets he has will also be required to avoid cast bullet fouling and to get best accuracy. I would send the cylinder out to have that done (about $40 including P&H and 1 week turn around, IIRC). It should be a very satisfactory gun set up like that.

. . . Ive never played with annealing revolver case mouths, but see no reason in principle that it couldn't be done. I am assuming, by the way, that "black" was a typo for "back", meaning Mr. C's barrel slugged 0.4295" at the muzzle and 0.4305" at the back. . .
I've never annealed handgun case mouths either. The fact that I can average over a dozen reloads out of my handgun cases doesn't make it worthwhile for me to do so. Add to that, the more popular once-fired handgun cases are often left laying on the ground at my local range for anyone to salvage. Perhaps Mr. C should clarify "black" as I took it that he has both a redhawk and blackhawk. It would require Mr. C to partially slug from both ends of the barrel to obtain two different measurements for front to back whereas most of us (?) just drive a slug all the way through.

You could be correct. We'll just have to hope he posts again to solve the mystery? You describe the best way to slug. With rifle barrels I slug all the way through from both ends, as well as taking a measurement from each end. In slugging all the way through I have been impressed by how easy it is for a constriction to go unnoticed slugging in one direction, but becoming plainly apparent when slugging from the other.

Nick, you are far more thorough than me. I will have to remember to do it your way. Seems if I drive a slug all the way through, the slug will take the dimensions of the smallest diameter whereever that should occur.

Marshal,

You're right about the slug diameter, of course. The thing that interested me was feeling the constrictions. Bill Calfee has written some about this and how he figures out which end of a barrel blank should be the breech and whether or not he has enough good blank for the barrel length he needs? He does it by the feel of the slug pushing through the bore.

Where I ran into the difference in the feel with slugging direction was in replacing and firelapping Garand barrels to reduce fouling and also to make them suitable for cast bullets. Being able to feel the constrictions is the only way to check the progress of the lapping. The contour of a standard contour Garand barrel is thinner between the muzzle and the lower band step at about the halfway mark, than it is between the breech and lower band. It seems a lot of war production and lower cost barrels either were not adequately stress relieved before contouring or else the cutters taking the cut from the top side of the breech end of the barrel were run too fast or under too much pressure. Either way, the result is a constriction in the bore's first half which, as you know, is the kiss of death for cast bullets.

Because that constriction begins at the breech, if you run a slug in from that end, it starts out the diameter of the constriction and all you find with it thereafter is that same diameter or larger. For some reason it turns out to be easy to feel a constriction when you run into it from a wider part of the bore—the added resistance is quite apparent—but feeling it enter an opening gradually that does not narrow back down is much more difficult. In slugging these barrels before installing them I found I just could not tell a constriction was there in slugging from the breech end, but that it stuck out like a sore thumb slugging the other way.

Fortunately, once a Garand barrel is in place, you have access to the necessary end for slugging to check firelapping progress. In those barrels I have yet to run into any purpose for breech-forward slugging. But the experience of trying it did alert me to the possibility you can miss an irregularity if you only slug one way.

sorry for the confusing info. I have a redhawk and a super blackhawk both in 44 mag. the red hawk barrell slugs at .4295 and the cylinders slug at .4327-4327-4316-4315-432-432. and the blackhawk barell slugs at.430425. the blackhawk cylinder slugs at.4326-4326-4327-.4317-43274327

also i made up some dummy rouns and they chamber with ease on bothe the super blackhawk and the redhawk. jacketed bullets .430 will pass through thecylinder,cast .432 will not pass all the way through the cylinder. they will stop short when they hit the groove in the end of the cylinder..........thankyou

At a glance I would suggest you will probably want to send the cylinders for uniform reaming to get the narrower chambers out to .4325". The Redhawk bore diameter may shoot .431 bullets quite nicely, but I would try both .431 and .432 in it. The Blackhawk's wider bore will probably like .432" better.