Lyman 452389

Greetings,

Found a bag of Lyman 452389 bullets looking for something else.

I sorted out nineteen "good looking" bullets and greased/sized them to 0.452"

Loaded to an overall length of 1.115"



Below is the resultant group at 50 yards using a Colt factory Gold Cup barrel mounted in a mechanical fixture.

That is pretty impressive. Just goes to show you, until you try it you don't always know how something will work.

Do you know the Pb:Sn ratio?

I have a mold for that bullet and have been thinking about casting some and trying them out!

Greetings,

It is good to document your process.

Sadly, I have no clue as to the exact composition of the bullet alloy. The SAECO hardness tester translated to 22 Brinell; so, I suspect I cast them out of LinoType.

For some reason I sold the mould. Oh well, I have done sillier things in my years....

Cheers,

Dave

I have some of those and they did work well for some reason but I didn't spend a lot of time with them. Maybe b/c it was a 2cavity mould. They're better than the #130 Or #163 H&G moulds

4.1 of TG? Zippy?

Greetings,

Technical data for the test group.

Cheers,

Dave

Thanks Dave, do you think you could maintain accuracy at a lower velocity?

Thanks

I found that the #130 had to go fast to work well too.

Thanks

Back in the day, Ellis Lea (former Army Pistol Team Captain) used to use this bullet in his S&W 1955 in an Auto-Rim case with 3.3gr of Bullseye at 25 and 3.5gr at 50.  His alloy was 85% lead, 10% antimony and 5% tin.

Greetings,

Testing is the only way to find out if the bullet will stay stable at different velocities.

I sold the mould, so no more testing on my end.

Regarding the H&G 130, I had the best group loading 3.9 Bullseye with a LinoType bullet @ 730 FPS.

COL Ellis Lea, my Father-in-Law shot with him in the 1950's. They, the Army team, won the Hard Ball Team match at Camp Perry and the photo is in an old American Rifleman.

The alloy you quoted (85-10-5) is very close to LinoType.

Thanks for the memory.

Cheers,

Dave