Making your own bullets
 

Anyone out there with experience with Corbin bullet making equipment? Specifically anyone with experience with rebated boat tails? http://corbins.com/rbt.htm They claim to be 15% more accurate.

As a life long bullet caster, I always thought I would pick up some Corbin bullet swaging equipment and try making my own jacketed bullets as well. Corbin has a great reputation for quality equipment. It's kind of the ultimate playground for the reloading tinkerer.

Then I actually had the chance to use one of their bullet swages that a shooting acquaintence owned. I found out it's just not for me. It's a lot of work, and you can buy far better bullets than you can make, at least as far as jacketed bullets (cast is a different story). They just don't shoot as well as off the shelf commercial jacketed bullets.

My gun club has a very active competetive benchrest community. I'm acquaintences with many of them. Not a single one of them would consider competing with bullets made on Corbin equipment. Neither would the highpower competitors I used to hang out with. The bullets are simply not accurate enough. The jackets are not concentric enough, and other issues that keep them from shooting with the Sierras, Bergers, and the like.

Maybe the rebated boat tail is an inherently better design. Maybe it is far more difficult to make a good one, negating that advantage. It is certainly more difficult, if not impossible, to make even a standard flat base bullet with Corbin equipment that will shoot as well as off the shelf bullets. So you are at a disadvantage right there. Then the rebated base adds another variable to control.

The rebated boat tail is really nothing new. They have come and gone over the years, with apparently no real advantage that made it worth anyone's while to continue making them. Maybe one of the larger manufacturers, or even one of the small "boutique" manufacturers, that already makes accurate bullets, will give rebated boat tails a go some day again. I kind of doubt it. I think they have already established they are not worth the effort.

I'm just getting into reloading. I don't plan on ever casting my own bullets.

Now if only I could make my own shot... ;)

Try blackpowder and it will change your mind. Its fun, cheap and making bullets and such are not that difficult.

Start saving your wheel weights now!

Whoa, Joe. Had no idea you were on the dark side:D I once balked at casting but having done it for a few years now I know it's a requirement for good accuracy with BP. Custom Paul Jones moulds drop perfectly concentric bullets.

Wheel weights = too much antimony

Wheel weights make great pistol/revolver bullets. That's all I shoot from my variety of hand guns. Most guys use foundry certified lead/tin alloys for black powder cartridge rifle shooting. 30:1, 20:1, and 16:1 (lead:tin) are popular. The tin really helps fill out those huge .45 and .40 molds for the 500-550 grain .45's and 400+ grain .40's. Muzzle loaders typically shoot best with pure lead; round balls and conical bullets have to be soft enough to obturate and fill the bore upon ignition, because they can't be large enough to fill the bore and still get them loaded down the barrel. They would simply be too tight.

And always remember the imortal words of Steve Garbe - "smokeless powder is a passing fad..."

Jeff,
I was speaking of BP cartridge bullets...guess that wasn't clear. Agree, WW are fine for the purposes you mentioned.

I thought you were pretty clear, Mark. I was agreeing with you. I must be the one that wasn't being clear when I was trying to clear things up for the non-casting shooters reading this.

Mark,

I was exposed to the dark side as a college student when I got a TC Hawken .50 rifle. Been worthless ever since! :)

Joe

I have several BP guns that I made from scratch. 1 flintlock rifle, pistol, and a cap pistol. You can use a rock in them and do as well as any cast hunk of lead. No chance of a 0.3" group at 100 yards and zero chance of even hitting the target at 1000 yards.

Thank you for the info on Corbin. Sounds correct as it jives with what I see in the field.

Geezus Snowmonkey you are a lousy shot then....

Interesting. My caplock Ruger Old Army is one of the more accurate revolvers I own. My .54 caliber Lyman single shot is one of the more accurate pistols I own. Every muzzle loading long gun in the house (flint and percussion) will group into 2", or sometimes better, at 100 yards. I have competed in 1,000 yard black powder matches (using a couple of Sharps and a Ballard breech loader) against guys shooting muzzle loaders. They do quite well, easily staying on the standard NRA long range target. You must be doing something wrong. Black powder can be made to shoot quite well, either from muzzle loaders or breech loaders.

You said 2" 100 yards, I said 0.3" at 100 yards or an order of magnitude more accurate than your statement. Many modern guns, with good ammo can make a one hole group at 100 yards, I don't know of any black powder ones that can. A modern gun can do 3" groups at 1000 yards (although thats record territory), black powder is just lucky to make paper at that range.

Snowmonkey you should really get a copy of "The Percussion Caplock Rifle" by Ned Roberts. It was orginally published back in the 40's by an old time BP shooter. Phew, at 220 yards 11 shots in the size of a half dollar, the shooter made the letter W, each shot overlapping the other. So your telling me BP isn't accurate?

Then there are the Creedmore, Elcho Shield and Wimbleton Long Range matchs (1000 yard). They were using Sharps, Remington and Peabody rifles for the American Team and Rigby Percussion rifles for the Brit, Aussie and Irish teams. The Americans won basically by default one of the other countries team members shot at the wrong target by mistake, so they lost by a point.

BP can be very accurate...the limitations backe then were the optics or lack thereof.

These are run of the mill hunting muzzle loaders, Snowman. Finer accuracy is obtainable with dedicated match rifles. Slug guns will routinely shoot well under and inch. At 200 yards. Take a look at the Rowland Pope; widely considered the most consistantly accurate rifle ever made until just a decade or so ago.

Alas, most of these rifles are just as useless in the real world as their tack driving modern offspring. Give me a real rifle that can be carried into the field, and the gap between black powder and smokless powder accuracy quite literally goes up in smoke. Highpower match rifles and long range black powder match rifles are a step closer to this than the bench and slug guns, although I still would not want to be burderned by either in the field.

The gap in scores between highpower and black powder at mid and long range is closer than you might think. Yes, highpower will often see clean targets prone at 600, with winners determined by X count. Black powder, at the same range, demands scores in the high 90's, with the occasional clean score, to be competitive. At 1,000 yards, if you are not shooting into the 90's (on a calm day), guys like me will beat you. Not many highpower guys will hang with us at that range.

Yes, a modern gun has fired into 3" at 1,000 yards. One gun. One shooter. On one day; never repeated. There are hundreds of people across the country competing in 1,000 yard benchrest. They fire tens of thousands of groups every year, year after year. There is statistically bound to be an anamoly like a 3" group, eventually, with so many being fired. The average at these competitions is four to five times that spread, and that is for the winning groups. With rifles that sometimes take two people to carry to the line. Hardly representative of what the modern rifle will do.

Was thinking the same thing. The old time buffalo hunters with a Sharps rifle would do a lot better than this and that was 150 years ago.

I love this thread ;)

Its a great thread. I own BP guns to. When I think of BP I think of flintlock, not bastardized versions of modern gun using BP. I challenge ANYONE, especially free hand, to shoot a flintlock accurately. You watch the hammer go down, the blinding flash, and still have to hold it on target, until after a seemingly agonizing long wait the damn thing actually goes off. If you hit paper its a good day.

A good cap gun is ok, except for the stinky mess you have to clean up. Still you must deal with a trans sonic bullet and whatever it does en route at long range. If you can shoot good with one of these you can do a lot better with a modern supersonic bullet that stays supersonic all the way to the target.

Never shot a flinter but always wanted to. I just shoot repro BP cartridge guns...mostly Winchester High Wall replica. Achieved NRA Master at Creedmoor about a year ago. Never got into modern guns at those ranges.