Unconfigured Ad Widget

**BIGOX** · 10-11-2022, 7:46 PM

https://www.calguns.net/calgunforum/showthread.php?t=1823751

Here's a good deal for someone near Huntington at $1 a pound

**BIGOX** · 10-11-2022, 7:51 PM

Originally posted by Steve45-70

Lead has gotten crazy expensive and hard to get especially here in California but if you are always looking you can find it. To get started Bigox looks to have a decent deal, especially for pure lead.

I bought 240#s of roofing lead about 6 months ago. I use either 50/50 solder to make 25-1 or mix foundry lead to get the hardness I want. Cast Boolits has a great calculator. I find the solder off Craigslist or Facebook for 7-8 bucks a pound and have been getting foundry lead off Ebay.

I also have a couple hundred pounds of an unknown lead but it has a hardness of about 10 and pours great. For my 45 acp it works great. I cast for my45-70's , 45 acp, 45 colt and 44 mag. I also have molds for my 9mm's but that is not going so well.

I can get you solder a lot cheaper. Normally I sell pewter around $7-8 sometimes cheaper. Give me a PM if needed.

**TKM** · 10-11-2022, 9:27 PM

This is more of a concern for big bullets.....

Large, 400grs plus, bullets hold a lot of heat. Chilling the molds on a wet towel will help.

When I started casting 500 slugs they would slump under their own weight, even in the bucket.

Hard to size oval bullets.

I learned that each bullet has it's own rhythm, 45 is different from 30 is different from 500.

Just part of the learning curve.

If the sun goes down and your pot is glowing, it may be too warm.

If the tinsel fairy shows up, comb your hair.

It is too still hot, don't touch it.

**croue** · 10-15-2022, 4:56 PM

No lube - powder coat. Super easy and no annoying smoke when shooting at an indoor range.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

**Sanderhawk** · 11-27-2022, 5:29 PM

If you have any BLM land around you can go pick up spent bullets that are laying on the ground or on the side of the hill. I get all my lead that way . I can pick up 15 to 20 lbs in about an hour or less and its FREE.

**fguffey** · 11-28-2022, 11:26 AM

Thanks. I see the sense in what you have written. Practice makes perfect and mistakes at the beginning of the learning curve are likely.

Practice does not make 'it' perfect, 'correct practice makes it perfect'. It is possible to practice it incorrectly ever time and get it wrong every time.

F. Guffey

**stilly** · 11-28-2022, 1:07 PM

Originally posted by Dirtlaw

The five most important things to remember. Your best advice please.

1. Gotta keep the mold HOT but not TOO hot.
2. Spray mold release or use a burning candle or something in it.
3. Stop sniffing your melt.
4. Do NOT get attached to your boolits.
5. Antimony is needed unless you just want soft as hell boolits.
5. Tin is needed for a good flow into the mold.
5. You want an electric coil plate for keeping your mold warm between casts.
5. Get a PID if your pot does not have one.
5. Leather welding gloves are good to use.
5. Not recommended to cast in shorts.
5. If your hair smells like some nasty sticky meth mess, get a heavy metal test after the 5th time...

**Sandspider500** · 11-28-2022, 5:02 PM

A properly cleaned and broken in bullet mold will drop beautiful bullets, no spray or soot required.

**CGT80** · 11-28-2022, 9:18 PM

Originally posted by Toxic Shock

My best advise on casting bullets: A chore is a burden to be endured, while a hobby is a pleasure that's looked forward to. Don't get into bullet casting to save money. Don't get into it because reloading supplies and other resources are scarce. Don't do it thinking that it's an extra necessity to continue shooting. The only reason that anyone should take up bullet casting is if they find enjoyment in creating their own components and tailoring their own loads. Learning the techniques of casting and loading cast ammo is an advanced level of reloading. If you enjoy reloading and are looking for more opportunities to expand your skills, then bullet casting may be something just for you. There's a huge amount of knowledge to be learned, but casting is something that can be started out on with a few simple tools, and then can expand to the extent that you wish to follow it. My best advise to people curious about learning bullet casting is to do it only because it's something that you want to do.

I agree, mostly. When I was a kid, bullets either came out of the pot or were bought for a lot of money. As a teen, it was cool to learn to cast. Years later, after competing for a while and needing many bullets and also wanting to shoot lighter loads in some rifles, I got back into it.

Expand my skills.......why yes.

What if my body hates me for casting bullets because health problems happen and I already work a physical job?

What if the Castboolits guys brag about the 40 or 50 pound casting pots they built, or how they bought a casting machine or automated the machine they bought?

My answer was to build a 100 pound casting pot, then turn it into a casting machine, even though I had only seen pictures and videos of them, and then I automated it with electronics another boolit caster built.

By the way, sizing powder coated bullets is mind numbing and painful......so I built an automated machine for that too.

I have shared these on this forum before, but I just got the casting machine out again last week and built an arm for the display and cleaned up the wiring. It needs some more fabrication work and tweaking so I can do another run of bullets.

NOE also sells brass moulds and that is what I built my machine to use, exclusively.

What started this build? The need for more pressure in my 10 and 20 pound lee casting pots. When the pot gets low on lead, even at half way, there is less pressure and the flow is too slow. It makes it hard to get consistent fill out, even when not pressure feeding the mould. 10 pound from the 20 pound pot was not enough for a casting session, especially with a 4 cavity brass hollow point MP 45-270SAA mould or 6 cavity aluminum NOE mould. I wanted to power through a bunch of bullets in one evening when my body was up to it and not spend my time messing around with the pot.

This was after the temperature problems, mentioned by Stilly. A PID fixed the temperature issues on the lee pots.

The casting machine has the PID I started with and I built the pot from scratch and hand cast. Once that worked, I built the lower portion and after that ran by hand, I bought the PLC and touch screen setup from Hatch on castboolits and set all that up. It took a year to build the casting machine as I had free time and felt like messing with it, but the sizing machine only took a month of free time to knock out afterward. Once I got a foot down the rabbit hole, it was too hard to look back and I had to see where it would lead to. No pun intended

The goal with these machines was to cast a few times per year and enjoy the technical process while saving the repetitive work on my body. It would have been easy to buy a master caster, but that wouldn't have furthered my fabrication and mechanical, or problem solving skills like building this machine. The master caster almost certainly works better than my machine so far, but I'm not done fine tuning it and doing the finishing touches. This project has been as much about the journey as it is the bullets that come out of it.

Speaking of the boolits from this machine...

After more than 3 years away from the competitions, I did lever action silhouette again last month and again yesterday. My 30-30 bullets are very consistent and scored me 2nd place and 3rd place for the matches. (Saeco 315 GC clone in brass finished with aluminum gas checks and white label cred wax lube sized to 0.311 in an old rcbs LAM I, 170 grain bullets over 19.0 grains of 4895 for a load that is easy on the shoulder and ears but knocks steel pigs down easily with a 1973 Win 94 20" carbine)

https://youtu.be/c5AQGQn4qkk