|
FWIW – still working slowly on this. I’ve done the epoxy-conversion on another bullet as well, to use as a starter load to work up from. The original ones were XTP-Mag’s; originally 240-grain .452’s, that ended up at 91-93 grains when done. These second ones are normal XTP’s; 185-grain .451’s, that come out at 46-48 grains when modified. The thinner jacket on the non-“Mag” version of the XTP makes a real weight difference.
These second ones are really intended for .45acp loads and don’t have a cannelure, so they’re not perfect, but being .451’s they’ll reduce barrel friction and backpressure somewhat, as long as chamber pressure is kept low enough to not disrupt the thinner jacket that they have. I plan to start with .45LC loads and gradually work my way up to the Casull range, using only the -Mag's in the upper-range loads.
My thinking is that the thicker jacket of the “–Mag” version ‘should’ negate any complications due the differences in hardness of lead & epoxy, when entering the forcing cone & such. Only gradual load workups & evaluation will tell if that holds true or not.
I’ve not touched any of them off yet, because I wanted to clock them as I progressively worked my way up the load scale, and (this is embarrassing to admit) I didn’t own a chronograph. I’ve been several years without one, just using past, familiar, loads, and not being overly concerned with (or interested in) clocking them, since they were loads I’d already used for years previously.
Anyway, I received the new chrono yesterday, and with any luck will get some time to load up and test out some of the starter loads in the next week or two. When I do, I’ll post results here.
If I don’t post in the next few weeks, it means I've either been very busy [which I have been lately] or else I did something very stupid in my experimenting...
|