Lead hardness in vintage revolvers

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propliner

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I'm wondering if there's much danger in casting harder lead bullets for vintage revolvers, say an Enfield MKI/II or Webley.

I read the soft lead theory came about because of hollow-based bullets or muzzleloaders. How hard is too hard for an old cartridge pistol? Wheel weight, hardball or does one need to stick to soft lead?
 
i alwais taught that hardness is related to the prssure of the load, not the gun.
if the pressure is not enought to deform the bullet,the seal betwin the bullet and the bore will be poor and the gas will create lead cutting than u'll have a great time to clean ur barrel!!

There is so much info about presure and hardness on lasc.us !!! i've leanr a lot from there! :)
 
In my opinion the major reason for using softer cast bullets is that they tend to be more accurate in the old, low pressure revolvers. I don't know to what degree lead hardness affects barrel wear and suspect that depends on the make of revolver, but most of the pre-1895 revolvers had iron or steel barrels much softer than is normal today. You won't do them any favours by shooting hard alloys or jacketed bullets.

The MKI and MKII 455 webley revolvers have very soft iron barrels, softer than many of the other revolvers at that time. I've seen several of them that are smoothbores from shooting jacketed bullets.
 
N1c0l4s said:
i alwais taught that hardness is related to the prssure of the load, not the gun.
if the pressure is not enought to deform the bullet,the seal betwin the bullet and the bore will be poor and the gas will create lead cutting than u'll have a great time to clean ur barrel!!

There is so much info about presure and hardness on lasc.us !!! i've leanr a lot from there! :)
Click to expand...

And you are correct.
 
N1c0l4s said:
...if the pressure is not enought to deform the bullet,the seal betwin the bullet and the bore will be poor...:)
Click to expand...

yes, especially with Webley MKI/II 455 revolvers. They have stupid-tight throats that swage bullets down several thousandths undersize and also have shallow Metford-style rifling. It's a combination that sure as heck wasn't designed with accuracy in mind.

A soft bullet with a "stout" powder charge (by webley standards) behind it can still obturate to engage rifling, but a too-hard bullet has no chance at all.
 
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I go almost pure lead (SOWW would do) with some tin in my Swiss 7.5mm revolver. I do that not for fear of damaging the revolver more so than I need the bullet to obdurate at such a low pressure. Oddly enough one the few pieces of literature available on the round specifies "hard lead" whatever that meant in 1885.

I seem to be able to get nice groups with it and I have a small quantity of pure lead to make them with. For me there's no reason to go harder.

If I didn't have enough pure lead or SOWW I wouldn't go harder than 50/50 Clip On Wheel Weights / Stick On Wheel Weights (pure pb). You're only asking for problems (leading if undersized) or cracking soft iron components if over sized. Both conditions will not provide accurate results so there's no point. IMHO.

You may get away with going harder if the bullets can be perfectly sized to you gun and the gun itself doesn't have any anomalies like smaller throats than the bore or vice versa. A lot of those vintage revolvers weren't made with proper tolerances and can suffer from oversize chambers vs the bore as well.
 
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