- Original poster
- #21
Alright, made some time to revisit this project yesterday and today.
First step was working on the leade of the .25 barrel, goal being to make it easier to feed the slugs from the MP molds. After that, swapped the .25 barrel back into the gun.
Then today, casting session. BIG one. Spent just under 3 hours casting like a madman. Ended up with over 9lbs of slugs.
The hope here was to not need to cast again for awhile.
If my math is right, working from the total weight, there are about 1350 slugs there. Should keep me set for awhile.
The biggest difference in the casting here was that I used a ladle with a nipple for the first time. Some of the casters online have talked about the merits of a "pressure fill" method, and I can attest to them being bang-on. Soooo much easier to get good fill out of the mold. Once up to proper temps, I was getting all 8 cavities full with a nice clean sprue, 99.7% percent of the pours. I also ran my melting pot much hotter than I have in the past. Which also seemed to help.
Once everything cooled down, I randomly weighed about 25 of them, and they're all within 0.4 grains of each other, the range being 47.4-47.8, with the vast majority being 47.5-47.8 grains. In past casting sessions I had a much greater weight variance and was needing to weigh them all and sort them. Glad that ridiculous step is no longer needed.
As for shooting them...
All the testing today was done with the 0.145 transfer port, which is holding the slugs back to about 715fps for the muzzle speed. Initial accuracy was something like 3/4-1" @ 30 yards and 5ish inches @ 99 yards. Went back to 30 yards later and the holes were touching.
This Condor wears a PARD electronic scope with a built-in ballistics app. Whenever Ive shot these cast slugs I've needed a pretty high BC for the predicted trajectory to match actual. So today I decided to collect some downrange speeds and work out an actual BC.
Average of 9 @ the muzzle = 712.6, ES of 13.
Average of 5 @ 99 yards = 666.4, ES of 14.8.
If you're a G1 proponent...
And if you think G7 is more appropriate for this shape....
The ballistics app in the PARD must be using G1 in the calculations, cuz the actual 30 yard versus 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 99 yard trajectories match up better with 0.167 as a BC than they do with 0.097.
Accuracy still isn't great though.
I tried some sized through a go/no-go sizer and they might be a bit more accurate when sized. But sizing them down also costs 25-30fps. Based on observations, my sizer seems to be making them a hit under-sized.
Have strongly considered cutting the choke off but I can see daylight all the way around the slug when in the barrel, except for when the the slug is sitting right in the death grip of the choke. So Im not certain that hacking off the choke will have the desired outcome.
Here are the last 21 slugs I had out on the bench with me, right before calling it a lead-filled day...
(In this wind)
The orange sticker is 3", and mostly just an aiming point. The max magnification of the PARD riding atop the Condor is 11.2x, and a grainy/blurry 11.2 at that.
With where I was holding and what I was witnessing, I think I'd have 16/21 on, or right close to the edges of that sticker without the 20+30mph crosswind gusts.
Soooo....I'd like to see better accuracy than that. Will it work for whacking the holy snot out of something? Yes. Was it super windy today to be testing accuracy? Yes. Are those accuracy results somewhat decent, considering the max gusts and that those big chunks of lead were not getting pushed very much? Yes.
Next step is to see if they'll tighten up with some more speeds.
Oh, as for lead, I used up less than 1/10th of my squirreled away lead collected from pellet traps. I know that it's that much because I keep all the lead in empty plastic jugs, and each one weighs 10-12#. And today's casting was not quite a full jug. One down, nine more to go.
Of course that's an ever growing number, as I seem to average about 10-12lbs in the traps every 6-10ish months.
While somewhat of a pain in the butt working through all this, "free" (not counting my time) ammo is an alluring concept. And the ballistics performance is also intriguing. At this point, even with the very pedestrian speeds of 715fps, I can whack something much harder @ 100 yards than I can with any of my other airguns, due to retained energy (bc). I've squandered a couple chances at coyotes in the past couple years with underpowered-for-the-task airguns. Even if I can figure out how to only get them to all stay on that 3" sticker @ 100 yards, I'd be pretty tickled.
First step was working on the leade of the .25 barrel, goal being to make it easier to feed the slugs from the MP molds. After that, swapped the .25 barrel back into the gun.
Then today, casting session. BIG one. Spent just under 3 hours casting like a madman. Ended up with over 9lbs of slugs.
The hope here was to not need to cast again for awhile.
If my math is right, working from the total weight, there are about 1350 slugs there. Should keep me set for awhile.
The biggest difference in the casting here was that I used a ladle with a nipple for the first time. Some of the casters online have talked about the merits of a "pressure fill" method, and I can attest to them being bang-on. Soooo much easier to get good fill out of the mold. Once up to proper temps, I was getting all 8 cavities full with a nice clean sprue, 99.7% percent of the pours. I also ran my melting pot much hotter than I have in the past. Which also seemed to help.
Once everything cooled down, I randomly weighed about 25 of them, and they're all within 0.4 grains of each other, the range being 47.4-47.8, with the vast majority being 47.5-47.8 grains. In past casting sessions I had a much greater weight variance and was needing to weigh them all and sort them. Glad that ridiculous step is no longer needed.
As for shooting them...
All the testing today was done with the 0.145 transfer port, which is holding the slugs back to about 715fps for the muzzle speed. Initial accuracy was something like 3/4-1" @ 30 yards and 5ish inches @ 99 yards. Went back to 30 yards later and the holes were touching.
This Condor wears a PARD electronic scope with a built-in ballistics app. Whenever Ive shot these cast slugs I've needed a pretty high BC for the predicted trajectory to match actual. So today I decided to collect some downrange speeds and work out an actual BC.
Average of 9 @ the muzzle = 712.6, ES of 13.
Average of 5 @ 99 yards = 666.4, ES of 14.8.
If you're a G1 proponent...
And if you think G7 is more appropriate for this shape....
The ballistics app in the PARD must be using G1 in the calculations, cuz the actual 30 yard versus 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 99 yard trajectories match up better with 0.167 as a BC than they do with 0.097.
Accuracy still isn't great though.
I tried some sized through a go/no-go sizer and they might be a bit more accurate when sized. But sizing them down also costs 25-30fps. Based on observations, my sizer seems to be making them a hit under-sized.
Have strongly considered cutting the choke off but I can see daylight all the way around the slug when in the barrel, except for when the the slug is sitting right in the death grip of the choke. So Im not certain that hacking off the choke will have the desired outcome.
Here are the last 21 slugs I had out on the bench with me, right before calling it a lead-filled day...
(In this wind)
The orange sticker is 3", and mostly just an aiming point. The max magnification of the PARD riding atop the Condor is 11.2x, and a grainy/blurry 11.2 at that.
With where I was holding and what I was witnessing, I think I'd have 16/21 on, or right close to the edges of that sticker without the 20+30mph crosswind gusts.
Soooo....I'd like to see better accuracy than that. Will it work for whacking the holy snot out of something? Yes. Was it super windy today to be testing accuracy? Yes. Are those accuracy results somewhat decent, considering the max gusts and that those big chunks of lead were not getting pushed very much? Yes.
Next step is to see if they'll tighten up with some more speeds.
Oh, as for lead, I used up less than 1/10th of my squirreled away lead collected from pellet traps. I know that it's that much because I keep all the lead in empty plastic jugs, and each one weighs 10-12#. And today's casting was not quite a full jug. One down, nine more to go.
Of course that's an ever growing number, as I seem to average about 10-12lbs in the traps every 6-10ish months.While somewhat of a pain in the butt working through all this, "free" (not counting my time) ammo is an alluring concept. And the ballistics performance is also intriguing. At this point, even with the very pedestrian speeds of 715fps, I can whack something much harder @ 100 yards than I can with any of my other airguns, due to retained energy (bc). I've squandered a couple chances at coyotes in the past couple years with underpowered-for-the-task airguns. Even if I can figure out how to only get them to all stay on that 3" sticker @ 100 yards, I'd be pretty tickled.
(sorry farmers!) They are making a bit of a mess in the Canadian prairies now but not a real problem where I live...yet.
