Casting bullets

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Wobblyshot1

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Today was nice and cool so I drug out the mag 20 and cast a few minie balls to shoot in my '53 Enfield this coming weekend. I also cast round balls of various diameters and bullets, on occasion, for my 45-70s, 40-65, and 38-55. Does anyone else around here cast their on bullets?
 
I have cast a bunch in years past and still have all of my equipment. I have cast round ball, miniball, and maxiball. I also have several rifle and pistol moulds. Through the years I have killed several deer with bullets I have cast. I also reload so the ammo crunch didn't affect me at all.
 
Hunter 257 does. He was nice enough to send me some .35 cal to shoot in my Marlin 336. Love the way they shoot so far. Just need a live test target. Like I need another hobby but man that looks fun. Kinda like catching a trout on a hand tied fly. Just something about it.
 
Bad part about casting your own is hanging around Truck stops and junk yards looking for wheel weights. Worse, prowling 2nd hand stores looking for tin and pewter stuff. I know guys who can converse at great length about the relative effectiveness of a Lee some-part-number or a Lyman and to what temp should you pre-heat you molds and HotPlate or mini-oven?

Theres a guy in Tampa with more than 10 tens of lead. Another over to Texas with around 4 tons.

It is a very addicting hobby.
 
I got lucky a number of years ago and found a stash of sheet lead for little of nothing. I had to make two loads in my little Toyota 4X4 to get it all. Most of my casting is for muzzle loaders so I'm using straight lead. The bullets I was making for the 45/70, etc. was an alloy of tin/lead. I had a source for 50-50 solder that I used for the tin part but I've just about dried all that up.
 
As Goodwin said, I cast bullets for both rifles and handguns. Since I started as a kid in college, the low cost was the primary motivator for me. I never cared about a specific alloy or hardness. Even now, I realize that there is only so much you can control when you consider the source for most casters lead alloys and how uncontrolled they are. Cast bullets are for the most part misunderstood in so many ways. Most shooters/hunters think of them as cheap and mostly ineffective practice ammo when that's not really true if loaded properly. Bullet shape has a lot to do with it and also alloy hardness. They aren't the best idea for the high velocity small bore rifles but even there they can be used successfully to hunt with and YES to practice with during the off season. Where they really shine for rifles are in the older cartridges that top out in the low 2,000fps range and have larger bores such as the 35's and up. In those cartridges you can pretty much load full power loads if you have a gas check design bullet and use clip on wheel weight alloy. I just ran the numbers here and for a box of twenty 35 Remington's loaded with 38 gr IMR 4320 and a 200 grain bullet w/gas check the cost is around $3. Now that does assume you are buying your powder in the large 8lb cans and buying both powder and primers in large enough quantities to spread the Haz Mat charge over a lot of shots. You also need about $300 in tools to get fully setup for casting and that is if you go with Lee. I've used nothing but Lee melting pots for years and they've always worked. My 10 lb pot was used a LOT while in college since I sold bullets to a local shooting range to raise money to buy my own reloading components. That little pot has been run through the mill. The problem with starting up in casting now is that scrap lead is quickly disappearing. I've scrounged up around 3,000lbs and even with that amount, I cringe every time I shoot a bullet that I can't recover. :)

Oh yeah, my favorite cast bullet rifle is a Marlin 1894 in 32-20. That little rifle is about as fun as it gets with my cast loads. A Lyman 115 grain bullet, 5.7 grains of Unique gives around 1,280fps. Cost per 50 shot box $1.55. This can't be duplicated with current cost components but I still have bunches of components bought at much lower prices. At current prices it is more like $2.55 per 50 round box. :) This load drops a squirrel with authority that a 22 LR can't even come close to but doesn't tear up hardly any more meat. It vaporizes walnuts too for fun target shooting.
 
I cast 28 lbs of Accurate Molds slick sided 9mm bullets 2 weekends ago. Gonna cast about 2 or 3 times that amount in the next weekend or 2. They will all be coated with HiTec coating. I killed my first elk with a Lyman .348 bullet I made in my garage. It has even gone so far as I had Mountain Molds cut me a mold for my 629 and I whacked a deer with it. How cool is that? I have many, many molds and plenty of lead- just not enough time to enjoy everything. I cast using a 40 lb Magma.
 
Man, you have certainly got a bad case of it. I sometimes look at casting as chore but the end results are always satisfying.
 
Wobblyshot1":2hetscfe said:
Today was nice and cool so I drug out the mag 20 and cast a few minie balls to shoot in my '53 Enfield this coming weekend. I also cast round balls of various diameters and bullets, on occasion, for my 45-70s, 40-65, and 38-55. Does anyone else around here cast their on bullets?
Click to expand...

I do for my .50 cal ML's now. I made my mold by reverse engineering the boolits that I liked to shoot(lead conicals), and made a couple molds in the shop in my free time. I killed my first buck with bullets that I hand poured, from a mold that I made, in 2009. Been collecting wheel weight lead ever since. :)
 
Bad habit":2m8y4iuu said:
I cast 28 lbs of Accurate Molds slick sided 9mm bullets 2 weekends ago. Gonna cast about 2 or 3 times that amount in the next weekend or 2. They will all be coated with HiTec coating. I killed my first elk with a Lyman .348 bullet I made in my garage. It has even gone so far as I had Mountain Molds cut me a mold for my 629 and I whacked a deer with it. How cool is that? I have many, many molds and plenty of lead- just not enough time to enjoy everything. I cast using a 40 lb Magma.
Click to expand...

The highest $ and largest pot I've ever used is the Lee 20lb pot. I've always been of the mindset that I'd rather buy more lead than tools. :) When I switched from the 10lb Lee to the 20lb, I did like the fact that the larger pot seemed to hold temperature better. Fewer breaks in my production due to nozzle freeze. Last year was my 1st experience with custom molds when I went with the Accurate Mold for the 200 gr .358 bullet (36-200A). Before that I'd always gone with a standard factory mold, my thinking being to 1st look to Lee to see if they had a bullet that would do what I wanted, if not go to RCBS or Lyman. I read about people having trouble with Lee molds but I've used them and bought LEE molds through the years starting around 1979-80 to the present and never got one that didn't work. Some do drop bullets better than other though but sometimes that's affected by the bullet shape too. The Accurate mold I will admit is a pure pleasure to use. Those bullets drop like pancakes from a Teflon skillet.

My highest volume bullet casting session was one weekend while in college - I should have been studying - myself and my roommate cast 3,500 bullets to sell from the Lee 358-140-SWC bullet. I'm sure we cast probably 500 more than that because we threw them back in the pot if there was any visible flaw at all. We were young with endless enthusiasm for guns and wanted to make a good impression on the gunshop we were selling them to. Over the years we cast a lot of 5 gallon buckets of those 38 Special bullets then I got a Lee 44 mold that has since been discontinued to expand our business venture. :) I used that mold until it got to the point that the blocks didn't want to close properly anymore. It was a 255 grain SWC. It's really hard to ignore the Lee designs because for less than the price of one box of factory bullets, you can get a new mold.

I look forward to getting a deer with one of my bullets. Hopefully this year!
 
MUP":2qjdpqg1 said:
Wobblyshot1":2qjdpqg1 said:
Today was nice and cool so I drug out the mag 20 and cast a few minie balls to shoot in my '53 Enfield this coming weekend. I also cast round balls of various diameters and bullets, on occasion, for my 45-70s, 40-65, and 38-55. Does anyone else around here cast their on bullets?
Click to expand...

I do for my .50 cal ML's now. I made my mold by reverse engineering the boolits that I liked to shoot(lead conicals), and made a couple molds in the shop in my free time. I killed my first buck with bullets that I hand poured, from a mold that I made, in 2009. Been collecting wheel weight lead ever since. :)
Click to expand...

That's something I'd really like to do - making your own mold! Self reliance is a good thing. :) I assume you did this on a lathe with a 4 jaw chuck? Or a mill with a boring bar? I mean to make the bullet cavity. The cuts in the side for the handles would be done with a mill I'm sure.
 
3D programming on a cnc milling machine brother. It's what I do for a living. Comes in VERY handy at times. ;) I created a 3D model of the mold, then machined it out in the milling machine.
 
MUP":18qmjslf said:
3D programming on a cnc milling machine brother. It's what I do for a living. Comes in VERY hands at times. ;) I created a 3D model of the mold, then machined it out in the milling machine.
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I knew that you did machining for a living from comments you'd done before. I mess around with it as a hobby using my cheapo Chinese machine but sure wish I had your experience. As much as I like the manual machines, having a CNC machine for intricate work such as a bullet mold cavity is mighty nice! It'd be mighty hard to do an ogive manually. Would take hands a LOT steadier than mine for sure.
 
Hey for 35 Remington shooters interested in casting (GOODWIN - this might be you :) ), Lee has finally brought out a mold for a 35 caliber rifle that looks real good.

http://www.midsouthshooterssupply.com/i ... 358-200-RF


$19 is hard to beat for a lifetime of cheap bullets.
 

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See. Casters are seriously serious into their hobby.

And as you can tell, they share every secret and latest thing in the casting universe. Great people, every last one. However, never forget, thes guys are used to dealing in Lead, Friend.
 
Hunter 257W":a71k9c18 said:
Hey for 35 Remington shooters interested in casting (GOODWIN - this might be you :) ), Lee has finally brought out a mold for a 35 caliber rifle that looks real good.

http://www.midsouthshooterssupply.com/i ... 358-200-RF


$19 is hard to beat for a lifetime of cheap bullets.
Click to expand...

That's a good looking bullet. Most of my molds are steel Lymans but speaking of Lee, I wouldn't hesitate recommending one of their molds. I own several and for the price they can't be beat.
 
DaveB":1rl4ev25 said:
See. Casters are seriously serious into their hobby.

And as you can tell, they share every secret and latest thing in the casting universe. Great people, every last one. However, never forget, thes guys are used to dealing in Lead, Friend.
Click to expand...

There's not many people crazy enough to stand over a smoking pot of molten metal inhaling the fumes, Dave. When we meet another fellow nut, we get excited, right? :tu:
 
Speaking of smoke and fumes, I remember smoking up the whole hallway in the dormitory in college when we would be casting. We'd open the hallway door and let the draft through the windows clear it out some but we certainly weren't going to waste money on a silly fan so if the wind wasn't in our favor, we just sucked in the smoke and kept casting. Our room was always full of interested guys asking questions about what we were doing. Never got in trouble about it at all though. Probably couldn't get away with it now I bet. Those were good times. We'd swap chores so that one guy was casting while the other counted, inspected and ran the bullets through a Lyman Lube Sizer press. We even sold some 150 grain .309 gas check bullets. The gunshop would give us the checks for free then we'd sell them those bullets at the same price as the non checked bullets. Best I recall we got $22 per 1,000. This was from 1978 to 1982. I think Mr Big knows the place we were selling them to, which is Bend of the River near Cookeville. :)
 
Hunter 257w, I dont remember Bend of the River being there when I graduated from Tn.Tech. in 1972. I assume the college was TTU where you did your casting.
 
Yes I'm talking about Tenn Tech. I was there from 1978 to 1983. Not sure when Bend of the River opened. They may not have been there in 1972. They actually had skeet & trap shooting classes for the school that counted towards PE credits. You can bet I jumped at the chance to shoot for school. :)
 
I went to my local metal scrap yard over the weekend and they told me that they were no longer buying wheel weights. Reason being that so many steel weights are coming in that it's not worth their time sorting through them. I knew this day was coming and that's why I've scrounged up such a pile of lead over the years. Sad times for shooters.
 
Oh heck man, it's just our federal govment protecting you from the harmful effects of evil lead. I remember the day when I could go to the scrap yard and buy all the lead I could haul for 15 to 25 cents a pound. I also remember being able to buy a can of real black powder right off the shelf. I didn't realize at the time the danger I was putting myself in.
 
GOODWIN":31ssp373 said:
Just stumbled upon a 5 gal bucket of wheel weights and a lee melting pot. Dang it ... Here we go.
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HAHA - I knew you were probably already infected. Enjoy! :)

There are basically 2 routes for sizing lubing your bullets. One is to get a press such as the RCBS or Lyman. The other is the Lee push through die that goes in a standard loading press. A friend of mine who shoots a LOT of cast bullets started out with the RCBS lube/sizer press but mostly uses the push through die now. Part of that reason is speed of operation but mainly because he feels that he gets better bullet concentricity when pushing pullets through a die nose 1st since the bullet is allowed to float and self-align with the die in the reloading press sizer die. The alignment factor may be true but I disagree regarding it being faster because you still have to lube the bullets in a separate operation, whereas the dedicated lube/sizer press does it all in one stroke.

If you do go with a lube/sizer press, I'd recommend the RCBS over the Lyman. They both use the same basic design to pressurize the lube, which is a threaded rod that pulls a piston into the lube, but my experience with the Lyman is not good. Admittedly this was 30+ years ago so they may have fixed the problem but the Lyman press we used in college broke the head off the threaded rod several times. I didn't weld or braze at the time so the fix cut into our already small profit each time. I've had a RCBS since the mid 1980's and never had a problem at all with it. The only thing I don't like about the newer RCBS is that it uses a slide-handle type bar for turning the lube rod rather than having a hex shaft that you can put a ratchet wrench on so that the wrench is always in the same position to your hand. I can get in a good rthymn with mine where I insert bullet(w gas check if applicable), pump handle, give ratchet a 1/4 turn, and repeat. It's a little slower with the slide-bar since you are reaching for it at a different place each time. Picky I know but that's what I've observed.
 

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