I have dabbled with these in the past without much success, but this weekend I picked up a pristine Parker Hale P61 so now it's time to get serious. I know Buckshot here on the forum has no little experience with these and there must be others. So, who has suggestions?
Yesterday I tried it with some old Lee improved minies I had cast up, dip lubed with several different kinds of normal rifle lube. I learned that normal lube is too thick and doesn't work well. The best were lubed with Pearl Lube, which is pretty thin. So, what lube? I have heard Crisco, and other types of grease. Do you lube the grooves? Put it in the base? How about sizing? These boolits would start with the palm of my hand and then go down. Ought to be close, maybe a little smaller so they slide the whole way.
Boolit design - heard of people getting good accuracy with the Lee "trashcan" boolit, Lyman has a mould just for Parker Hale rifles with thick skirts, RCBS makes nice looking "Hodgdon" moulds, lots of choices out there. This rifle has a 1:48 twist so should work with most if they fit. How about solid base boolits? NEI has one that looks like an overgrown "biglube" design and I have seen Moose Moulds has some interesting designs as well.
Powder - using 55gr. FFFg ho'made yesterday with good results, maybe try FFg next time to see what happens. 60gr. shot worse, 45gr. was really wimpy. Of course that will require lots of testing to settle on what works, but the boolit and lube will have to be first to make it mean anything.
Lead - pure or close as possible. Hard to find, anybody try j word cores? Lots of those around. Think they're soft enough?
I did try it with round balls. My Miroku '63 works great with them, this P-H is awful. I think the progressive depth rifling is the culprit. Combos almost too tight to load still showed blown patches. Lots faster and flatter though, would work great for hunting if they were more accurate. But I have my plains rifle for that.
So, open to any suggestions from those who have been there - help me down the path to minie' bullet bliss!
-Nobade