feeding a 500 handi

[indydave]

anyone try the lee 440 grain gas check  bullet in their handi's  ?   or what home cast bullets has anyone tried?
                                                                                                     dave

[ib_crawlin]

Yup,
My Lee 440 gs mold and .501 sizer arrived in the mail today. I threw a bunch of scrap lead (soft lead, fishing weights, lead shot, etc) into the lee bottom pour smelter and cast 53 bullets just to try it out. I had to smoke the mold about every 10 bullets or so and tap it (Quite hard at times...) with the mallet to get "em  to drop out. I will definitely lap this mold before I use it again !
I pan lubed 15 bullets for black powder use (bees wax and olive oil mix) and tumbled lubed the rest for smokeless powder. I ran all 15 of the black powder rounds through the sizer and hardly any lead was touched....
I will order some Hornady gas checks soon and load up some easy shooting rounds (black powder and smokeless) for my handi rifle and post the results.
I've also been experimenting with the oversized bore 44 magnum hand rifle too...
Anyway, this is my first post here and thanks guys for all the good info!
Ron

[Walks with a gimp]

  Yep, loaded up some 440 grainers with gas checks with 16 grains of Tite Group and they are doing around 1400 fps. Accuracy is around 1 inch at 50 yards now that I put on a different scope. Recoil is fairly tame too. Hopefully I'll have more time to shoot tomorrow.

[ib_crawlin]

Sorry, indydave, I should've paid more more attention to your OP. I have shot a dozen or so home cast 50 cal. Lee R.E.A.L. bullets (the box says 320 grain w/pure lead, I used straight wheel weights) through my .500 S&W Handi Rifle recently. Half were loaded with Goex 2fg black powder and the other half with a minimum load of Trailboss powder (15 grains I think?). All were very light recoiling and very inaccurate at 80 yards or so. A waste of time really... Recovered bullets showed very little engraving from the rifling and appeared to have key holed... No I don't have a chrony but I'd say they were going pretty slow...

I loaded up 15 black powder rounds after work today. Star-line cases, (they seem to be thinner than the winchester cases... ) Large rifle primers, 50 grains of old Dupont 2fg powder (LEE 3.4 cc dipper through a 24" drop tube W/ additional tapping on the case to completely settle the powder) topped off with the Lee 440 grain bullet (no gas check), lubed with my home brew bees wax-olive oil mix.. Powder compression is just under 1/8 of an inch, (too much?) I call this round my 50-50 Handi rifle short ...
Tommorrow these rounds will be shot downrange along with the Sierra 400 grainers, hornady 500 grainers, 325 XTP grainers .etc. etc.

Ron