I'm 50 rounds into pulling bullets from 250 rounds of .32 Magnums with an impact puller.  If you've ever had to do this before, you might understand how pissed off I am.  The moron at Cast Performance (Grizzly Cartridge) who made these bullets should have to provide a tender part of his body for me to pound my impact puller on.

I bought these bullets:

https://www.grizzlycartridge.com/shop/cast-performance-bullets/32-95gr-rnfp/

I loaded them in .32 Magnum cases, with relatively light loads of Bullseye, for between 800 and 900 fps, out of an SP101 in .327 Magnum.  Not too far into the shooting session, I started noticing lead spitting.  Eventually, the cylinder locked up.  The barrel was so heavily leaded, I could barely see the rifling after about 50 rounds.  Why did I keep shooting them, you ask?  Because pulling bullets really really really sucks.  But not worse than having to take a revolver apart to clean chunks of lead out of the cylinder crane.

I took the bullets to work (I'm a quality engineer) and measured them with very accurate Mitutoyo OD Mics.  They measured .3144 to .3146.  I emailed Cast Performance (Grizzly Cartridge) three times, with no response.  I called once, and the lady who answered said the owner would call me back.  He never did.  Yes, I know, they don't look like they have lube.  Cast Performance claims that they have a magical "clear" lube.

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I talked to a different (reputable) bullet caster, who told me that .32 bullets are sized to nominally .3130 with a tolerance of ± .0005.  With bullets a full .001 larger than other companies would ship, that would explain the lead spitting and barrel leading.

To their credit, Midway (who I bought them from) gave me a full refund.  Cast Performance (Grizzly Cartridge), can go to hell.  They are just lucky I didn't try their garbage in one of my expensive guns.

Ohh sweet that's nice.
I have 1000 of these exact bullets.
I did have the pleasure of handling 250 of them due to Larry's packing or lack thereof.
Did notice there were a lot of bad base bullets.
Looks like I'll be powder coating and sizing mine.
They were cheap enough I thought I would try them.

Quit wasting your time with the impact puller.

The bullets are crap, and you got a refund.

I’m assuming you have a single stage press.  

Remove the die, place a loaded round on the shell holder, and raise the ram.

Grab ahold of the crap bullet with vise grips and lower the ram.

Repeat.

Missing a part of the equation:

What do your cylinder throats measure?

Ruger is known for undersized throats vs. bore diameter

I’ve sent my 45 colt Blackhawk to have cylinders honed and it made a world of difference in accuracy and went to zero leading

ETA: .001 oversized isn’t the issue, also slug the barrel

^^^THIS^^^

I'd be far more suspect of Ruger and the cylinder throat diameters than I would be of oversized bullets. I had a Ruger Vaquero that had undersized cylinder throats that shot horribly and leaded profusely until I had the problem corrected.

I love it when people think the reseller should be made responsible for OEM problems.  That is just plain WRONG.
This is a CP issue, not Midway.

Agreed. The bullet diameter isn't what's causing your leading. Light loads + tight throats + fairly hard bullet = poor obturation, and poor obturation is what causes leading.
A softer bullet (BHN 10 or so) would be able to squeeze down through the throat, then "slug up" (obturate) to seal the bore, but your accuracy would almost certainly be poor. Hotter loads with those hard (BHN 18-21) bullets might generate enough pressure to do the same thing, even with the tight throats.
You've got excellent measuring tools at work. Slug your bore, take the slug and your cylinder to work, and measure the slug and your throats. Ideally, they'll be the same, or throats just larger than the bore, never smaller than the bore.

I only called Midway after three unreturned emails and one unreturned phone call to Cast Performance.   Did I expect Midway to give me a full refund?  No.  On the other hand, they’ve made a lot of money off of me over the last 25 years.  Now they can continue to earn my loyalty.  I’m certain they will hold Cast Performance accountable, since they do a lot of business with them.  I figured they also should know that they may have really bad bullets in stock.  There were half a dozen reviews on the Midway site, talking about how crappy they were, but there were a ton of good ones.  I should have read the bad ones.  

I have a Dillon 550.  This probably would have worked though.  Too late.  

I just got some slugs to do this.  Still, .0016 (.3146) over nominal doesn’t help.  Other casters said that’s pretty bad. The one guy told me that when you get sizing dies, they are typically + 0 / -.0005.  He uses them until they start getting close to +.0005 (which would be .3135 in my case), then he throws the dies away and gets new ones.

I bought the same bullets.

When I looked them up shortly after buying them I see they were now a blem or something.

I think I bought a thousand for my .32 S&W long.  No bueno beyond 15 yards.  Bullets were very wrinkled with poor bullet fill out and rounded bases.  Junk.  If they came out of my mold they would have gone in the reject pile to be remelted.  

I would have been happy to find hornady swaged hollow base wadcutter but they’re not in production.

The near .315 size is fine as that approximates my cylinder throats.

I left my opinion on the Midway site.   Then I ordered a custom mold.

They weren't called out as factory seconds.

I guess if you're going to have poor control of your sizing operation in the casting business, you shouldn't make very hard bullets like these guys do.

Even water quenched lead alloy is malleable under enough pressure, as this post states.

I finally got around to cleaning the lead out of my gun.  After screwing around with lead removing solvent, which wasn't getting the job done, I managed to find an old brass patch from a Lee Lead Remover, and that knocked it loose.  What a pain in the ass.

Cylinder throats measured .3130 - .3140.  Barrel groove diameter measured .3125.  Isn't that about what they should?

Since the throat / bore dimensions seem correct, I'd be looking hard at lube (or lack thereof).
But first, I'd be reviewing Glen Fryxell's writings, since he's the guy who wrote the book on cast bullets.
Chapter 7 excerpt on leading:
Fryxell on leading

What I had was closest to this, which makes sense because the bullets were very hard and had magical “clear” lube.  


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“Streaks, following the rifling. If the leading is seen to "follow the rifling" (i.e. streaks that twist down the barrel in close association with the rifling grooves), then this is a tell-tale sign that the bullet is cast too hard and failing to obturate. Obturation is usually thought of as a plastic deformation that swells the bullet's diameter, but it also leads to a back-filling of engraving defects along the trailing edge of the land. If the bullet is cast too hard to obturate, these defects will not be back-filled and gas-cutting will take place through these voids, following the trailing edge of that particular land. This effect can be mitigated somewhat through judicious choice of lube, but lube by itself can only do so much. The real solution here is to go with a softer bullet and a better lube.”

Unless you're going to try to salvage your pulled bullets by (properly) lubing, sizing, and loading to a higher pressure, you might as well go the "vice grip and press" route to pull them. You'll end up with a few pounds of more-or-less mangled BHN 18-21 lead that can be melted into ingots and alloyed with pure lead to cast some bullets more appropriate to your desired load. That, or sell / trade to someone who casts. At least Midway refunded your $, but it was a somewhat harsh reminder that shooting cast bullets isn't always as simple as shooting jacketed. Thanks for posting this!

I just wanted the brand new cases and primers back.  In the next week or two, I'll load some of these and see how they do:

https://missouribullet.com/details.php?prodId=337&category=5

They measure right at .3130, which means they fit the throat well.  Plus, they are soft enough.  Crossing my fingers.  This time I won't load more than 50 before I'm sure I like them.

You don't seem to know much about how to load cast bullets.

A thousandth oversize is not a problem.

Blaming the bullet when you don't know what you are doing.

I've reloaded more than 150,000 rounds of pistol ammunition in the last 25 years, with 99 percent of them cast bullets.  I've never had this problem before.

Am I an expert on cast bullets?  No.  Am I a rookie?  Absolutely not.  The cylinder throats are the size they should be (for .313 bullets).  The barrel is the size it should be (for .313 bullets).  I've also never had bullets that looked so shitty, measured more .0015 over nominal AND were incredibly hard.  I think the problem is being oversize, while also being extremely hard.  If the bullets are going to be hard, they better be the size you need for your gun.

I'd also like to add that Cast Performance / Grizzly Cartridge has still never answered an email or a phone call.  If I was fucked up here, and they didn't have a known quality problem, they would have contacted me.  My feeling is that they suck, and they know it.

Take a look at GT Bullets.

Did you remove the lube from the bullet in your picture or is there no lube on these?

Supposed to be some clear proprietary lube.