Ivan,
My youth was many decade ago. We spoke little about pistol use in the so called 'combat' setting. One reason we shot 38s (& later 357, 44 and 45s) in addition to 22LR in pistols was because we cast our own bullets from old wheel weights (at local gas station), powder and primers were cheap. It required a fair amount of work, so it kept us focused when we had free time. PS. My vocabulary increased by reading technical Journals on Handloading, metallurgy, pressures, etc.. So much so I scored well on college entrance exams!
You can cast bullets fairly easy for the old pre WWI sporting rifles, but one used up more powder and got fewer reloads in rifle cases. We also rarely shot rapid fire, as to do so fails to teach disciplined gun handling. It looks cool on TV but not on paper.
Have fun. Be safe. Keep your powder dry!
Hello Navalwarrior,
That must have been a lot time ago before the GCA 1968 limited who could purchase a gun. I didn't own a rifle until age 18 or so and didn't own a handgun until I graduated college..... But I did learn how to shoot a rifle in New York City!
With bullet casting, I also used wheel weights because they were cheap / free. They didn't work all that well in my .357 Magnum because they tended to lead up the barrel pretty badly. By the time I reduced velocity down to where they did not lead up, it didn't seem worthwhile any more.
They worked much better with .45 and reduced .44 Magnum loads but here the question was whether they were worth the time to do. When I shoot handguns, I tend to shoot several boxes of ammunition at a time.
With my own cast bullets, I was getting superb quality, but most of the time, superb accuracy in a handgun goes unnoticed. If my gun can hold a 1 inch group at 25 yards off the bench or a 2 inch group makes no difference if I am shooting from a standing position! Casting for handguns was using up my lead supply way too fast especially with a 6 cavity mould.
Buying cast bullets gave me quality quite good enough for what I was doing.
Now with RIFLES, on the other hand, the quality of cast bullets is quite noticeable and buying good cast bullets is either expensive or impossible. As before, I stick with bullet (boolit) configurations that do not require anything special such as a gas check.
With .45 caliber rifle (.45-70), I was getting my best results with a Lee 450 Grain bullet though I tried as low as a 400 Grain and as high as a 535 Grain Postell bullet. Interestingly, I was getting no leading even when running these bullets up to about 1500 fps but the same wheel weight bullets were leading pretty seriously by 1150-1200 fps. My theory is that the revolver jump from cylinder to forcing cone has something to do with it.
I didn't go much higher than 1500 fps because the recoil made shooting not a lot of fun at that point.
I also did some experimenting with a .40-65 rifle but don't recall the specific bullets I used. I knew they are much lighter which was the point of the caliber which is just a necked down .45-70.
I also did quite a bit of experimenting with casting for Black Powder 1859 Sharps replicas. Results were generally pretty good when the guns and moulds were more or less in agreement but there was a lot more scatter with the results.
I did find a good use for .45 caliber cast bullets in the end. In a .45 ACP, they go away too fast, but they function just fine in the .44 caliber Black Powder Revolvers and are quite accurate as well. They can be use as cast and grease over the bullet is sufficient lube.
-Ivan.