I'm curious of this with the wheel weights, why should one never use them? I had no problem out of Uberti SAA's with casted reloaded .45's but this has grabbed my attention.
Wheel weights are not made of pure lead, so the skirt on the Minnie ball will not, or may not expand as it should. And you have no idea how hard it is and that hardness will vary from wheel weight to wheel weight.
The more in-depth answer is that you want to use pure lead so the Minnie will orbitrate (spelling?) as easy as possible. When a pure lead Minnie ball is used, the explosion of the gas not only expands the skirt of the Minnie to engage the rifling and seal the bore, but also the rear of the bullet begins to move forward, but due to inertia, the front of the bullet remains in place. This action causes the bullet to get squished a tiny bit shorter, and also fatter. This act of orbitration also adds to providing a better seal of gases and helps to engage the rifling along the whole length of the parallel sides of the bullet. If the bullet did not orbitrate, if only the skirt engaged the rifling, yaw would be induced to the nose of the bullet and it would wobble down the bore. With orbitration, where the bullet has expanded to fill the bore, the parallel sides of the bullet are supported by the bore of the barrel and bullet yaw is minimized, and this helps with accuracy. Remember that we are shooting an undersized bullet, one that the caliber of the bullet is smaller than the caliber of rifling of the bore by a few thousandths of an inch. The expanding gasses will begin to overcome the bullet's inertia, and begins pushing the bullet down the bore. Using a projectile that is not made of pure lead, one that is harder than pure lead, does not accomplish all of the above as efficiently as pure lead does.
I noticed the original poster said he made some of his bullets out of plumbers lead, and in my experience that's pretty pure lead. You should be able to easily scratch pure lead with your thumbnail.
I normally purchase my lead from a metal recycler and if I want to cast a harder bullet, I'll get some tin from them also. I shoot black powder cartridge, and due to higher velocities I have to use a harder lead or the bullet will lead the bore. But if I were to use wheel weights, I have no idea of how hard that mixture of metal is. If I want a bullet that is say 20:1 lead to tin, I buy 20 pounds of lead and 1 pound of tin, and now I have a known hardness. To shoot accurately, one must be consistent in every thing one does. Casting bullets, loading rounds, the act of shooting; accuracy demands consistency.
You may be able to get away with using a harder lead in a SAA as when you load the cylinder, your sizing the bullet down to effect a good seal in the cylinder. When fired, the bullet travels through the cylinder, then gets swaged down again via the forcing cone at the rear of the barrel, then travels through and exits the barrel. How much lead to you find on the forcing cone? If you used a pure lead bullet, you may find its easier to load the cylinder and may not have so much lead embedded in the forcing cone. And perhaps you'll gain some accuracy. But in your pistol, your using oversized bullets that get swaged down, first by you and the mechanical advantage of the loading lever, then by the expanding gasses pushing a slightly oversized bullet into the forcing cone and into a slightly smaller caliber barrel. So you don't need the bullet to orbitrate like a musket does. Your pistol bullet starts out larger and gets reduced as it goes through the shooting process. The musket bullets starts out small, and need the effects of orbitration to make the bullet bigger. I suppose you can get away with using a harder bullet, but it's probably a little harder on your pistol. And in using wheel weights, your bullet hardness varies, as does your bullet weight. Neither one of those things would happen if you used pure lead, (providing you can do a good job of casting your bullets).
When I shoot my black powder cartridge rifle, similar to your pistol, I'm shooting an over sized bullet (0.457) into a bore of 0.45 caliber, plus I'm pushing the bullet into the lands of the rifling about an eighth of an inch when I chamber it. What this does, unlike your pistol, is the powder is generating a lot more pressure before the bullet begins moving down the bore. And while I'm using a charge of 68 grains of 3f powder, similar to the charge used in a CW era round, the increase of pressure that I'm generating (around 1350 feet per second), will cause a pure lead bullet to leave streaks of lead in the barrel and give real poor accuracy. Thus I cast my bullets at a 20 to 1 lead to tin ratio to make the bullet harder. I forgot to add that I'm also compressing my powder charge in the case by an eighth of an inch. Compressing black powder also will increase its pressure/velocity. To help ignight compressed powder, I'm also using a magnum primer, to give a hotter and longer flame, which again increases pressure. I also lube the bullet to help with the leading, and to help keep the fowling soft, as hard fowling can also impair the accuracy. Of course, a muzzleloader lubes their bullets too, but that's primarily to keep the fowling soft, as their muzzle velocity probably doesn't get to 1200 feet per second, and at this velocity level, one should not expect their soft lead bullet to lead the bore.
OK, kids. Class is over for the day. I'll be in my office if there are any questions.
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