40 s&w

Unique or Universal would work well, but I am finding that W231 outperforms almost everything else in my medium bore pistols.

I started casting for .40 a couple of seasons ago, the Lee TL401-175-SWC. It's a challenge, many shooting sessions I have come home with strips of lead ribbons falling out of my barrel. There are a couple of guys over on castboolits.com who have put a tremendous amount of effort into figuring out why the .40 is such a bear to shoot cast in. Reading their comments is very interesting. Number one tip: don't use the Lee (or any similar) factory crimp die on cast bullets in the .40 S&W!
 
i reload cast in my 40..I use 66% wheel weights 33 % lead and add 12" of 95/5 solder to the mix and water drop out of the Lee 175 mold. use 5.3 grains of unique powder..Have no leading problem.I shoot around 500 rounds a week
 
I was using blue dot when I had some cast to shoot. I just took my load out of the hornady book, and selected near the bottom end of the scale. I had no problem with cycling or excess build up in the barrel. Right now I'm trying out 700x, (simply because I was given some free), went online and downloaded recipes from Hodgdons website, ( so the loads are factory sanctioned so to speak), so far so good! Bullets are 200g jacketed truncated cones, with 3.6g of 700x.
 
I tried loading some 155gn SWC in my 226 and found that they would fail to feed maybe 1 every 10 shots. What overall length are you guys using, I might be seating them to deep for my Sig which feeds everything else great.
 
I always use 1.125", (+- a few thou) seating depth. I had a feed issue feeding 180g truncated cones in my 226. I got out the dremel with a polishing head and polished the feed ramp, and the edges around the breach opening. That seemed to fix the issue. Should note too, it was only with the truncated cone rounds. Round nose, or HP, no problems. It was the angle of the bullet tip that caused the log jam.
If you are going to give this a try the name of the game is NOT material removal, just polishing.
 
Around 4.0 grains of Titegroup should make for a nice mild load if you're not too concerned about duplicating factory velocities.
 
I was looking up data for lead SWC and found a number if hand loaders prefer Winchester WST. It is supposed to produce little smoke compared to other powders. If you are trying to make major PF you will be at the max load published or more. The Brian enos forum had lots of posts regarding best powder for loading lead.

Hope this helps,
 
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