Interesting topic. I just recently got into airguns (2 years ago) and only in the last year got into the high power HPA stuff. My background, of course, is cartridge guns. I hand load something around 22 different calibers and cast my own slugs for all but the tiniest calibers.
Recently, I built up a 357 caliber rifle on all Cothran parts and a TJ barrel. Beautiful stuff, all 304 stainless and strong. Well, anyway, I built the gun, and it didn't take long before I was wondering if any of those moulds I had for my 35 cal pistols would produce good shooting projectiles in my new rifle. I slugged the barrel (standard practice for guys that cast their own projectiles) and ordered up a sizing die of the appropriate dimentions. The next issue was that I needed pure lead, fire arms don't use straight lead, they sweeten it with tin and antimony thus making it harder and better flowing. This is not good for airguns as it is too hard to seat the slug into the leade. So I had to find a source for pure lead.
Something else I normally do for my cast projectiles is to powder coat them. This is done for a couple reasons that I'll not go into here. For my air rifle, I just fill the lube grooves with a standard bullet lubing wax and run them thru the sizer die. I have a lot of 35 cal moulds, ranging from tiny little 95 grain slugs for 380 auto to giant 220 grain slugs for 35 Rem. I have found that up to about 155 grain they all shoot quite well. Larger works well too, but I don't like how much the velocity falls off.
It has always been my experience that you have to find what works best in your gun for what you want to do with it. Pellets work fantastic (and even better if sized), but as you know, in 35 cal, you can count the available offerings on one hand. And even worse, they are stupid expensive. So for me, figuring out how to intermix stuff from one side of the shooting hobby to the other has been tremendously useful. And what the heck, I can make pretty much any slug for a couple pennies. Even less when shooting into a trap and I can reclaim them. And oh yeah, don't discount roundballs, they may seem like something that should have been left in the 1800's, but they work really well in airguns.
Recently, I built up a 357 caliber rifle on all Cothran parts and a TJ barrel. Beautiful stuff, all 304 stainless and strong. Well, anyway, I built the gun, and it didn't take long before I was wondering if any of those moulds I had for my 35 cal pistols would produce good shooting projectiles in my new rifle. I slugged the barrel (standard practice for guys that cast their own projectiles) and ordered up a sizing die of the appropriate dimentions. The next issue was that I needed pure lead, fire arms don't use straight lead, they sweeten it with tin and antimony thus making it harder and better flowing. This is not good for airguns as it is too hard to seat the slug into the leade. So I had to find a source for pure lead.
Something else I normally do for my cast projectiles is to powder coat them. This is done for a couple reasons that I'll not go into here. For my air rifle, I just fill the lube grooves with a standard bullet lubing wax and run them thru the sizer die. I have a lot of 35 cal moulds, ranging from tiny little 95 grain slugs for 380 auto to giant 220 grain slugs for 35 Rem. I have found that up to about 155 grain they all shoot quite well. Larger works well too, but I don't like how much the velocity falls off.
It has always been my experience that you have to find what works best in your gun for what you want to do with it. Pellets work fantastic (and even better if sized), but as you know, in 35 cal, you can count the available offerings on one hand. And even worse, they are stupid expensive. So for me, figuring out how to intermix stuff from one side of the shooting hobby to the other has been tremendously useful. And what the heck, I can make pretty much any slug for a couple pennies. Even less when shooting into a trap and I can reclaim them. And oh yeah, don't discount roundballs, they may seem like something that should have been left in the 1800's, but they work really well in airguns.
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