John TaffinBetter bullets than you can cast yourself.
John can’t cast bullets any better than this himself.
Today “Keith bullets” has almost become a generic term for any semiwadcutter design, however Keith himself laid down specific attributes for his design of bullets. They had to have three full-caliber driving bands all of the same width with a deep crimping groove between the shoulder and middle band and a large square-bottomed grease groove between the middle band and the base. The nose was to be as long as possible for the caliber and have a flat point.
Keith bullets had to be custom cast of a hard — but not too hard — alloy, preferably 1:16 tin and lead mixture and then sized and lubricated in a machine designed to perform both operations. I operated by these principles for at least three decades. Over the years I added lubricating/sizing machines from five different companies as well as dozens upon dozens of sizing dies in various diameters for .38, .44, and .45 bullets. I needed all of these dies, the casting alloy had to be mixed just right, and of course the lube used had to be just the right consistency. When everything was accomplished correctly the result was excellent accuracy.
Then about two decades ago commercial cast bullets began to arrive on the scene. They went against everything I knew to be true about bullets that would shoot accurately. The alloy was too hard, the lube was too hard, the base, instead of being flat, was beveled for easy casting in automatic machines, and there was too much weight in the body of the bullets and too little in the nose. It was obvious these would never do, at least it was obvious until I tried some. At the time I had one of the Smith & Wesson reincarnations of the Model 1950 Target .44 Special, the Model 24-3 offered in the early 1980s. It was a most frustrating sixgun!
The only load I could find which would shoot the Keith bullet accurately was the full-house loading of Keith’s favorite using the 17.0 grains of 2400 powder with a muzzle velocity of 1,200 fps. At the other end of the spectrum, it would also shoot Winchester’s 246-grain roundnose factory load with a relatively soft bullet at around 750 fps. Nothing else seemed to work, but I wanted a load heavier than the Winchester factory offering and well under Keith’s heavy load. I decided to try some commercial cast bullets knowing full well it was a waste of time and not realizing one old myth was about to die.
There's More Handloader
in the February issue
• Too Easy
• Silver Bullet
• Big Bores
www.sightron.com
Features \ Departments \ Gun Links \ New Products \ Subscribe \ Home
Customer Service \ Contact Us \ Search \ Advertising
Customer Service \ Contact Us \ Search \ Advertising