So I been playing with a little bit of bismuth I pulled from a few RST loads which was painful as they were $3.50 a pop. They pattern so well though I was curious how they were loaded and what the quality of bismuth looked like. I measured a powder charge of about 29gr-30grs these are 1 1/4oz at 1250fps according to the box. The powder is the same shape and size as Bluedot but alot darker. I think this bismuth is perhaps from rotometals as you can see sprue marks on it from casting and I read rotometals casts their bismuth shot #2 and larger. It looks almost identical to nickel plated lead shot a slightly different hue to it though. I decided to plier test them since modern bismuth shot should be alloyed to alleviate the problems it had in the past. Its quite interesting how it "fragments" it basically breaks up into 3 equally sized jagged pieces doesn't turn into dust like I have heard. If you have seen any of the solid copper hollow points sold for self defense where the nose breaks up into 3 jagged shards essentially like that. Now I have read some hunters like this about bismuth as it rips through the inside of the bird and kills quicker I have seen it compared to how blindside shot works.
Oh yeah I weighed the pellets as well compared to the same size lead pellet, I got 4.9-5grs with #2 lead and 4.7grs with a #2 bismuth. According to a muzzle energy calculator at a modest 1150fps this would be 15 ft lbs of muzzle energy for the lead and 14ftlbs for the bismuth. The RST loads look to be loaded with a SP-10 wad.
From what I could roughly estimate it would cost me around $2.40 per shell to load bismuth if I had bought tungsten matrix recently when it was on a closeout sale for $10/lb it would be around $1.80 per shell. I would still probably keep some RST loads on hand since my NH grade seems to prefer them over anything I have yet handloaded
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Anyone loading bismuth?
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