Bullet Casting Pro's and Con's

[76Highboy]

Originally Posted by gun-nut

It is an expence up front but after a few thousand it will pay for its self. I just got lucky to sell cast bullets to a few friends and that payed for it faster. I dont charge more than $75.00 per 1K. Thats still cheaper then some places but my friends dont pay for the shipping. so in the long run its cheaper for them. NO FFL needed to sell just the cast bullets.

That is what I thought and that is just what I plan on doing. I just want to sell enough to initially pay for my E.Q. and then support the powder and primer cost.

[Clipper]

A few years back, a couple of lads here in town, started up a bullet casting company. I think they make a great product, better than I can cast, and only about $55 per thousand for 45 ACP. 38/357 are a tad cheaper, and his 9mm stuff is even less expensive. I can't buy direct from them, but my pal at the local shooter's supply carries them, and will order for me whenever I get close to running out. I would think they use something a bit more automated than a 20# pot and a couple of Lee molds....

[DBMJR1]

I just got done casting 50 lbs of 158 gr LSWC's in .358 This batch is dead soft lead, intended for .38 spl at about 780 fps. No leading.

Happiness is always having a couple thousand bullets on hand.

I use the Lee Tumble lube mold. Since I water drop, I have to wait for them to dry, then lube, size them, and re-lube.

[76Highboy]

Originally Posted by DBMJR1

I just got done casting 50 lbs of 158 gr LSWC's in .358 This batch is dead soft lead, intended for .38 spl at about 780 fps. No leading.

Happiness is always having a couple thousand bullets on hand.

I use the Lee Tumble lube mold. Since I water drop, I have to wait for them to dry, then lube, size them, and re-lube.

50lbs? How many bullets is that? By my math, 7000 grains = 1 pound. 7000g/158g=44.3 bullets. 44.3 x 50 = 2215. That's a nice stash. How long did it take to cast them?

[76Highboy]

Originally Posted by gdmoody

Alpo, I put a gas check on every .44 mag and .357 bullet I cast.

Highboy, before you spend that $240 at midway, you might want to look at Graf & sons for the same items. I have found that Grafs may be a tiny bit more on some items, in the long run it ends up being cheaper because of the shipping charges. Midway is kind of high on ship and handle charges where Grafs only charges a handling charge.

I have a couple of Lee molds that I have been using for 30+ years and have not worn them out yet. If you decide to sell the lead, I would like to take some of it off your hands!

Moody, Graf & Son's is a great place for most shooting supplies. Thanks for the great info because it looks like I found my place to order my supplies.

From the looks of things, it looks like you were holding out on us.

[aa1911]

what really sucks is a few years ago they stopped using lead for wheel weights. I found out when I went to a shop for an alignment a while back, asked the guy if they had any WW's he could sell.

"I can sell you WW's, but they're not lead..."

"huh?"

"it's an environmental hazard so they switched to zinc and something else"

or..... someone paid someone so that whoever is selling zinc can get rich. What a bunch of BS; what about the thousands of fishing weights in the river? but no, a random piece of lead here and there is just crushing our planet, freakin' idiot crunchies....

anyway, sweet talk a range that reclaims their stuff or shop around and find a place that does non-ferrous metals; place here in Tacoma area will sell you as much as you want for very cheap. that's pure lead though, need to buy your mixers to get linotype or whatever you desire. Looks like you won't need to buy lead for a few years though, 500# will last a good while.

if you do any muzzleloader, try to stick with pure lead though. everything else should be pretty hard. WW's are usually much softer than #2 FWIW also but harder than pure lead.

[76Highboy]

Originally Posted by aa1911

what really sucks is a few years ago they stopped using lead for wheel weights. I found out when I went to a shop for an alignment a while back, asked the guy if they had any WW's he could sell.

"I can sell you WW's, but they're not lead..."

"huh?"

"it's an environmental hazard so they switched to zinc and something else"

or..... someone paid someone so that whoever is selling zinc can get rich. What a bunch of BS; what about the thousands of fishing weights in the river? but no, a random piece of lead here and there is just crushing our planet, freakin' idiot crunchies....

anyway, sweet talk a range that reclaims their stuff or shop around and find a place that does non-ferrous metals; place here in Tacoma area will sell you as much as you want for very cheap. that's pure lead though, need to buy your mixers to get linotype or whatever you desire. Looks like you won't need to buy lead for a few years though, 500# will last a good while.

if you do any muzzleloader, try to stick with pure lead though. everything else should be pretty hard. WW's are usually much softer than #2 FWIW also but harder than pure lead.

I have a friend that is very giftful with it. I should get about 100 pounds more next month. Another place that I get lead is in pawn shops. I look for tackle boxes. When I find a tackle box full of fishing weights I offer a way low price and most of the time I get it because the lead is not inventoried specifically. Usually the buy the lot and expect to make the money on the box and the tackle. If they are not into lead they won't catch on to what you are doing. I picked up 25 pounds for three dollars. I offered it to the guy and he said hell ya, you gather it up and it's yours. I went home and weighed it and it was right at 25 pounds. Some of the weights were huge and had never been used.

[gdmoody]

Originally Posted by 76Highboy

Moody, Graf & Son's is a great place for most shooting supplies. Thanks for the great info because it looks like I found my place to order my supplies.

From the looks of things, it looks like you were holding out on us.

I wasn't trying tohold out, I tell about Grafs every chance I get. You know, I can buy Berry's bullets cheaper at Grafs than I can get them from Berry's

[76Highboy]

Also, if I drive by a garage sale and see fishing poles I stop and see if they have fishing tackle. If they do, I buy the tackle with the lead included for a low amount and bingo,,, lead score. It adds up quick. Also, flea markets. You can find lead there but sometimes they know what lead is worth.

[76Highboy]

Originally Posted by gdmoody

I wasn't trying tohold out, I tell about Grafs every chance I get. You know, I can buy Berry's bullets cheaper at Grafs than I can get them from Berry's

I knew that. I just had to see if you were paying attention. I guess I'm busted. Ouch.

[76Highboy]

I am impressed with Graf & Son's website because they have excellent selection, excellent pricing, and the website is user friendly.

[aa1911]

ha! very nice.

I bought 500# of WW's about 6 years ago, got some left still. Will be doing some home-made alloy pretty soon though. Finishing up a chemistry class this week, should be able to figure out the mixtures accurately. My dad used to mix his own also but materials are a ton more expensive these days. Scrounge it wherever you can!

Since I bought a .458 and a bunch of slug/buckshot molds, I've been eating thru my lead very fast lately; I'll munch thru 15-20# easily in an hour or so doing shotgun stuff, ouch. Still tons cheaper than buying slugs; loading them for about 18 cents each vs. over $1/round although the reloads are just for practice.

another pro for casting your own stuff is that you get to size them to what you want in your lubricator/sizer press. (which is also very time consuming, especially with the GC bullets). I know lee has a bunch of the tumble lube stuff but I don't trust it especially using WW lead.

[aa1911]

grafs is what everyone seems to be using lately, even with a hazmat fee for powder/primers, as long as you order a decent amount at a time, it is super cheap compared to local suppliers.

I've been starting to use them for my shotgun stuff and powder/primers.

[76Highboy]

Originally Posted by aa1911

ha! very nice.

I bought 500# of WW's about 6 years ago, got some left still. Will be doing some home-made alloy pretty soon though. Finishing up a chemistry class this week, should be able to figure out the mixtures accurately. My dad used to mix his own also but materials are a ton more expensive these days. Scrounge it wherever you can!

Since I bought a .458 and a bunch of slug/buckshot molds, I've been eating thru my lead very fast lately; I'll munch thru 15-20# easily in an hour or so doing shotgun stuff, ouch. Still tons cheaper than buying slugs; loading them for about 18 cents each vs. over $1/round although the reloads are just for practice.

another pro for casting your own stuff is that you get to size them to what you want in your lubricator/sizer press. (which is also very time consuming, especially with the GC bullets). I know lee has a bunch of the tumble lube stuff but I don't trust it especially using WW lead.

Thyis is where my knowledge falls short. Why?

[aa1911]

I'm sure it is fine but I've always trusted my sizer to get them perfectly uniform; different hardnesses of lead can actually shrink more or less as they cool in the mold before you drop them. It's not much difference but it's just a superstition of mine, nothing to worry about. It is enticing for pistol bullets though, doing a batch of 500 at a time gets old about halfway through. the tumble lube stuff saves a lot of time.

[ryan42]

Originally Posted by aa1911

gas checks add (a very small amount) to the price per shot but they help keep the bore from leading up as fast. I generally don't use GC's on pistol though, I do for much of my rifle molds.

from my point of view, there are no cons, only pros for casting your own! I'm addicted... it's a handy skill to have for fishing or shooting and it's a hellufa lots of relaxing fun not to mention satisfaction. Just make sure you do it safely; eyepro, heavy apron or clothes and good ventilation.

you can handle lead all day and not get any in your system, the only ways to absorb lead is ingestion or inhalation of lead fumes. (don't lick your fingers!)

happy castin' to ya!

Im glad you mentioned the safety stuff.I dont know anything about casting bullets but I do know chemestry and what alot of people dont realize is you can ingest chemical through you eyes and bad thing is it goes straight in you blood stream.Like you said got to be safe.

[aa1911]

I asked to have a lead test done (blood level, most people are around 1 or 2) but the doc I work for said that it is so rare that it's usually not done unless you worked at a lead smelter factory for 30 years or some insane amount of exposure. I would bet mine is around 5 or 6 but it's extremely uncommon, especially nowadays.

safety is for sure important, the biggest concern is the fumes and of course serious burns. It is funny though, look up Mythbusters on the ladenfrost (spelling?) effect in molten lead; they dip their (wet) fingers into a lead pot and don't get burned. But not for me!

Also worth mentioning is to keep liquids away from the pot; water will 'explode' the molten lead outta the pot as it rapidly turns to steam, not fun.

[gdmoody]

When I was in my 20's (about 40 years ago) I worked part time at a service station that balanced tires. The owner let me have all of the old wheel weights. I was in the Army at the time and I moved several times in the next 20 or so years and I toted 300 or 400 pounds of wheel weights around with me where ever I was stationed. In about the mid 80s, I finally got around to buying an ingot mold and melting them down to 1 lb ingots. I am still using those wheel weight ingots to make bullets. I have never had any problems with my wheel weight bullets. A couple of years ago I bought 50 lbs of linotype ingots so now I add 1 ingot of linotype to every 5 ingots of WW lead. Works out even better for a little harder bullet.

[gdmoody]

Originally Posted by aa1911

Also worth mentioning is to keep liquids away from the pot; water will 'explode' the molten lead outta the pot as it rapidly turns to steam, not fun.

Yep, I have a scar under my left eyebrow from where I was leaning over the melting pot when I was making WW ingots. A drop of sweat fell into the molten lead and it truly exploded, sending lead every where. If it had hit 1/2 inch lower, I would most likely be blind in my left eye!!

[DBMJR1]

Originally Posted by 76Highboy

50lbs? How many bullets is that? By my math, 7000 grains = 1 pound. 7000g/158g=44.3 bullets. 44.3 x 50 = 2215. That's a nice stash. How long did it take to cast them?

Your math is correct. It's about 2K bullets. I use two Lee Six cavity molds and water drop into a half full 5gal bucket. It really speeds up the process. My little Lee pot keeps up just fine. I keep two ingots on top of the pot, pre-heating them, and drop them into the pot as they will fit. Always trying to keep the pot full.
It took me about two and a half hours, but a half hour of that was waiting for the pot to heat up.

They should be dry this morning. Now I have to tumble lube them, size them, and re-lube. Then they have to dry before I can load them. So I'm not done. I've probably two more hours work before they're actually done.

Originally Posted by aa1911

ha! very nice.


another pro for casting your own stuff is that you get to size them to what you want in your lubricator/sizer press. (which is also very time consuming, especially with the GC bullets). I know lee has a bunch of the tumble lube stuff but I don't trust it especially using WW lead.

I use Lee Tumble lube, and can push them pretty darned fast if I alloy them. Lee Alox lube does an excellent job of preventing leading, but lube alone is not the entire story. You have to have a properly sized bullet, and the right alloy.

Originally Posted by aa1911

I'm sure it is fine but I've always trusted my sizer to get them perfectly uniform; different hardnesses of lead can actually shrink more or less as they cool in the mold before you drop them. It's not much difference but it's just a superstition of mine, nothing to worry about. It is enticing for pistol bullets though, doing a batch of 500 at a time gets old about halfway through. the tumble lube stuff saves a lot of time.

Yes, the more pure the lead, the more shrinkage you will find. Especially if you water drop as I do. Fortunately my Lee Molds are generously sized to accommodate this. Also, pure lead doesn't always pour well. You can end up with wrinkles in your bullets, or partially filled mold cavities. I have learned how to overcome this, but if you're having problems with this, add some tin. Tin makes lead pour much better.

While we're on this subject. I can push my .358's pretty fast. AA9 fast. I do it by alloying one pound of tin to ten pounds of lead. Tin is a semi-precious metal, and is priced accordingly. To get a cheap source of tin, you'll want to go to garage sales. Buy pewter trinkets, candle sticks, mugs, whatever. Get a dietary scale to weigh your alloys, and mix when you make ingots.

I use a set of Harbor Freight Letter Stamping Dies to mark my ingots. I mark them :

"S" for soft. Pure lead. This is what I use most. I push these at low pressures. ~780FPS.

"M" for an alloy of 20#'s lead to 1# of tin. I have to use this alloy in one of my revolvers that has a rough bore even at low pressures.

"H" for hard. 10#'s lead to 1# tin. For higher pressure loadings.

You want to slug the bore on the firearm your casting for. Be sure to size .001-.002 larger. If you're bullets are too small, you'll get leading in the bore.

Soft lubes work much better than hard lubes to help prevent leading the bore. I use Lee Alox Tumble lube just for this reason. I lube before and after I size.

Originally Posted by gdmoody

Yep, I have a scar under my left eyebrow from where I was leaning over the melting pot when I was making WW ingots. A drop of sweat fell into the molten lead and it truly exploded, sending lead every where. If it had hit 1/2 inch lower, I would most likely be blind in my left eye!!

Water and Molten lead DO NOT MIX.

Always wear eye protection.
Cast only in very well ventilated areas.
Keep your hands out of your mouth. Scrub well before eating.
No food or drink in the reloading area.

[Alpo]

Ah yes. "Hard lube" and "hard cast bullets".

You would guess, from the fact that that's what they sell, that that is the best stuff. Not so.

Cast up a bunch of bullets, at the correct hardness for the best shooting, dump 500 of 'em in a box and ship 'em off to Timbuktu, and when they get there, after bouncing around in the UPS truck for a week, they will be dented. This produces annoyed customers. How to solve? Cast them from a harder alloy. They don't get damaged from travel. They don't shoot as good, but they look better.

Lube. Alox. Soft. Sticky. Lube up a bunch of bullets with Alox, dump 500 in a box and ship 'em off. After a week of bouncing around in the UPS truck, when they get where they are going there is lube everywhere. Again, annoyed customers. Solution? Lube made of candle wax. Color it blue or red, and tell the customer that that special "hard lube" is so much better than old "soft lube". It is better. For the seller. Not as many annoyed customers.

Cast your bullets soft, use a soft lube and you'll be much happier, you'll have much less leading and your loads will probably be more accurate.

[76Highboy]

Originally Posted by aa1911

I asked to have a lead test done (blood level, most people are around 1 or 2) but the doc I work for said that it is so rare that it's usually not done unless you worked at a lead smelter factory for 30 years or some insane amount of exposure. I would bet mine is around 5 or 6 but it's extremely uncommon, especially nowadays.

safety is for sure important, the biggest concern is the fumes and of course serious burns. It is funny though, look up Mythbusters on the ladenfrost (spelling?) effect in molten lead; they dip their (wet) fingers into a lead pot and don't get burned. But not for me!

Also worth mentioning is to keep liquids away from the pot; water will 'explode' the molten lead outta the pot as it rapidly turns to steam, not fun.

When I was around 12 years old, give or take a few years, my father was casting bullets. He had a Pepsi-Cola in a glass, but he had it sitting on another shelf about 5 feet to the right of where he was casting. To the left of him, about two feet on the floor, our lab had taken her litter and tucked them next to the end of the bench trying to re position her litter just as dogs try to do. The pups were born prematurely and we were bottle feeding them every hour. One had a half developed lip but believe it or not the lip continued to form. Anyway, the cat came into the garage and the dog tried to attack it (that is what I remember) and the cat jumped up on the shelf and knocked the Pepsi over. The Pepsi dumped over and ran down the shelf, then gushed down onto the second shelf, and it traveled down that shelf and went directly into the melting pot. The lead literally exploded. I remember my father telling us kids to get away, he was screaming at us. Once it was done we saw that our lab and her pups were covered in it. The pups were crying and the saddest part was our dog, the mother was hurting but she would not quit trying to rescue her pups. If I remember right only two of the pups lived. My father was always the strong type but me cried. We couldn't pick the lead off because it was stuck to them, so we had to wait for it to just come off on it's own. By that time the pups were dead. The mother was a half breed lab/retriever/and something else mix and she was the best bird dog we ever had.

Now when I am in the garage and I have something to drink, I place it on a dedicated table that is lower then my bench that sits away from me. Every time I set a drink down that accident goes through my head. It goes so show you that you can never be careful enough.

[76Highboy]

Originally Posted by Alpo

Ah yes. "Hard lube" and "hard cast bullets".

You would guess, from the fact that that's what they sell, that that is the best stuff. Not so.

Cast up a bunch of bullets, at the correct hardness for the best shooting, dump 500 of 'em in a box and ship 'em off to Timbuktu, and when they get there, after bouncing around in the UPS truck for a week, they will be dented. This produces annoyed customers. How to solve? Cast them from a harder alloy. They don't get damaged from travel. They don't shoot as good, but they look better.

Lube. Alox. Soft. Sticky. Lube up a bunch of bullets with Alox, dump 500 in a box and ship 'em off. After a week of bouncing around in the UPS truck, when they get where they are going there is lube everywhere. Again, annoyed customers. Solution? Lube made of candle wax. Color it blue or red, and tell the customer that that special "hard lube" is so much better than old "soft lube". It is better. For the seller. Not as many annoyed customers.

Cast your bullets soft, use a soft lube and you'll be much happier, you'll have much less leading and your loads will probably be more accurate.

Thank you for that advice. Good info for sure.

[RustyFN]

This is my experience.

Pro's,
1: If you try you can find lead for free, free lead = free bullets.
2: I always have bullets when I need them.
3: I can cast and size the bullets to the size I need to not get leading.
4: For me it's another enjoyable hobby.
5: To sum it up it lets me load 45 auto for my 1911 for $25 per 1,000 rounds with accurate no leading bullets.

Cons,
I can't think of any.

[76Highboy]

Originally Posted by RustyFN

This is my experience.

Pro's,
1: If you try you can find lead for free, free lead = free bullets.
2: I always have bullets when I need them.
3: I can cast and size the bullets to the size I need to not get leading.
4: For me it's another enjoyable hobby.
5: To sum it up it lets me load 45 auto for my 1911 for $25 per 1,000 rounds with accurate no leading bullets.

Cons,
I can't think of any.

That is great. The info you guys are giving me is what I am looking for. My decision is to do it. I will be ordering my stuff through Graf & Sons exclusively but I am sure my wife will make me wait until my birthday to open it.

My next question. How do I know what size molds I need. Rusty said that he can re size to the size he needs so he doesn't get leading. How do I know what size that is. So far I have learned that for .357 I need a .358 mold, and for .429 I need a .430 mold. Also, how do I "Slug" a barrel? Will that help me determine the "Best" size for not leading my barrel? Also, if I have excessive leading, will Alpo come over and scrub my guns?