[bigbadgun]

Lee .454 double cavity die. Ordered it direct from Lee paid $29 that includes shipping. Next on the list is a .490 and .380 mold. And I need to get a melter.
Anybody got one laying around they dont need or want. If not then I guess I gotta order a new one which kind of changes the order of the want list. LOL
Around here 2 boxes of balls cost $30. So all I need to do is make 200 balls and the mold is paid for.

[Ratdog68]

Does that make ya moldy? :D

[bigbadgun]

Ewww moldy roflmao
Maybe just a little.
Better moldy than crusty.

[Ratdog68]

Ahhh... but crusty can be oiled... moldy is just moldy.

[madcratebuilder]

Don't burn yourself Bob, that there stuff gets hot.

[bigbadgun]

Oh really!
Dam I didnt know that.LOL
I was thinking of maybe useing an old cast iron pot For a melter anybody ever do it this way? But then again $50 for a new lee melter is not bad. Ant body use that cheap lee pot?

[arcticap]

http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=166911&highlight=lee+melter

And Post #2 & #14 below:

http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=206707&highlight=lee+melter

[bigbadgun]

Thanks arcticap
Years ago I had a melter that I used for pouring sinkers and I loaned it to a friend of mine and never got it back. So now I am getting into it again for a different reason now so now I need to do something.

[Smokin_Gun]

That's one mold I would like to get ... I have the .380", .451"(.452"), and the .457" Lee molds for roundball. Yup I need a .454" mold for when I run outta the obag of .454's that Lee had sent me...

[bigbadgun]

Yeah like I said for $29 you just cant beat it.

[Ginormous]

Don't forget to soot up the cavities good with a candle, or some other smudge inducing flame source (fat lighter baby!). It sure helps the bullets come out a lot easier.

[NobleSniper]

BBG.................I am looking forward to the saem chore. Have about fifity to seventy pounds of roof lead to melt down into ingots and then pour into balls for the Walkers and Lemat and also minies for the '55 ;) Never pored my own before and anxious to try it :D

[bigbadgun]

Like I said I made my own sinkers for years and used wheel weights. Now this is a bit different gotta use that real soft stuff. Let me ask this where are you getting roof lead?

[NobleSniper]

I made friends with the foreman of the roofing crew that was roofing the new dorm ;) He brought me down a handfull of their scrap everyday. I imagine you could get the sheets of it at any plumbing supply house as well ;)

[Ginormous]

My modest collection of molds below, minus the .457 RB box. BTW, I use the bottom pouring Lee Production Pot IV as well. No problems in over 20 lbs of lead so far. It will occasionally dribble a bit on warm up, but twisting the rod attached to the lifting lever will clean the crud and put a stop that that. Good little pot for $50, and I really like the bottom pour functionality.

http://i701.photobucket.com/albums/ww19/Ginormous_pics/DSCF1680.jpg

[Das Jaeger]

I love bullets in the Morning . :D

Jaeger

[Ratdog68]

Holy Cow !!! Those projectiles shine like a diamond in a goat's (oh, never mind). :D Hmmm... me thinks me needs to get me some molds. Got the respirator mask already.

[Ginormous]

Me too. Fired up the pot to pour a few of these for this picture, and ended up casting a poop load of all four types of bullets. Casting is hella lot of fun!

[Ginormous]

Yeah, it took me several months to decide to do it. I wasn't real cool with the lead in the house, so I do it all outside on my back porch. Keeps the lead vapors, spatters, heat, and other nasties outside, instead of in the house. I'm weird like that.

Ratdog: I throw down some pretty lead by golly. A bucketful of those things are really sharp looking!

[Ratdog68]

Kinda makes ya go "Hmmmm....?" next time ya grabs ya a sammich while out feeshin' and have just handled tackle/weights... don't it? :D

Is it time yet? I feel a need to inflict some lead poisoning upon some poor unsuspecting
Bamboid type critter !

[bigbadgun]

I would never do it in my house that would just be crazy. Outside is where one wants to play Mr. Smelter.
Thats alot different than breathing lead. You are only ingesting a very small amount while handling a sinker while fishing.
But when you are smelting if you dont have good ventilation you could very well die.

[fyrfyter43]

I dunno. If I had it to do again, I'd buy Lee's Magnum Melter. Holds 20 lbs. of lead for a longer casting session without having to re-fill the pot and wait for it to come up to temp, and it doesn't have that silly bottom-pour spout. I have a Lee PPIV (Drip-O-Matic) and had so much trouble trying to bottom-pour that I welded the spout shut and use it with a Lyman dipper.

Using the bottom pour was more trouble than it was worth. If the spout wasn't clogged up, it was dripping. And about half of the balls I cast were under-weight, indicating a void in the ball. Now that I use a ladle, I only return at most the first dozen balls to the pot, and when I used to bother weighing them, every single ball was within 1 grain.

The reason I would want a bigger pot is because of my casting technique. I drop the sprues on the table next to the pot and only add them back in when the pot gets low. Then I have to wait 1/2 hour or so to get the lead back up to temp.

The last time I ran ball (.454), I started around 9:45 am. By 11:00 the lead was so low in the pot that I couldn't get enough in the ladle to fill both cavities in the mold. When I sorted the balls, 9 were wrinkled and had to go back into the melt. There were 217 usable balls. So at 141 grains per ball, I made usable balls out of nearly 4.4# of the roughly 9# I started out with. There was probably 1.5 - 2# left in the bottom of the pot when I stopped casting...the rest was sprues and the 9 bad balls that I returned to the melt.

Once I returned the sprues to the pot, I had to call it a morning, since it takes about 1/2 hour for the lead to come back up to temp, and I only had an hour until I had to leave to pick my daughter up. A bigger pot would have had enough lead in it that I could have continued casting for that hour.

One other thing that I find helpful, depending on the mould and the purity of the lead. If you have trouble getting the mould to fill out (especially with pure lead), try adding a small bit of 50/50 solder. I use 25 grains in a full pot (roughly 9#) of pure lead. That's about 0.02% tin, which won't really affect the hardness of the lead, but helps the mould fill out much better.

[zimmerstutzen]

Those bottom pour electric melters are ok. They drip and sometimes clog and can be a PIA. I use and old deep sided cast iron skillet from a flea market on a camping stove and a dipper. For a couple hundred balls or a thousand balls a year, I don't think it is worth buying a melter. An old cast iron pan will do just as well and the Lyman dipper, and a pair of $6.00 welding gloves from Harbor Freight.

[JamesKelly]

BigBad I suppose you already do this, but take it from one who doesn't read directions. Do lube the thing like Lee says, graphite being good. Makes it much easier to get the mold halves to line up. Much easier.

There are good Official Mold Lubes such as Rapine, $ whatever + shipping. And then there is a fine spray bottle of dry film graphite lube waiting for you on the shelf at your local NAPA dealer. Spray the cavity, the sprue, those little steel rods--everything.

[doubleh]

I used a cut down 4" bullplug with a flat end to melt my lead on a one burner Coleman stove and a ladle to cast bullets and balls for many, many years. Slow but effective. I finally upgraded to a Lee electric pot a couple of years ago. Speeds things up considerably. I have no idea why I messed around so long before I got the electric rig.

[Ginormous]

And about half of the balls I cast were under-weight, indicating a void in the ball

Smoke your molds, including the sprue cutter and you can kiss that problem goodbye for the most part.

[fyrfyter43]

Smoke your molds, including the sprue cutter and you can kiss that problem goodbye for the most part.
I had smoked the mould before starting. As soon as I started casting with a ladle, the problem stopped.

What was happening was that the bottom-pour spout started clogging up gradually after the first pour. After 2-3 pours the flow was too slow, causing the voids in the balls. I get the same thing with the dipper if I let the dipper cool off and start to clog.

Believe me, there is nothing that will ever convince me to go back to a bottom pour pot. Depending on the caliber, I can cast between 100-200 balls an hour with a dipper, with less than a dozen having to be culled. And I have NO hassle with the spout clogging or dripping. Those bottom pour pots are just way too problematic for me.

[bonza]

I cast mainly heavy (600+gns) Minies, & I found I couldn't get a sufficiently high enough temperature out of the Lee electric pots to get a well filled out bullet. I have now been using a cast iron Dutch Oven over a propane ring & a ladle for the last few years & have found I get a much better bullet with that method. For round balls & smaller caliber bullets I think the electric pots are fine.

[Ginormous]

My Lee 500 watt bottom pour pot is as fast during the last pour as it is during the first pour. I generally flux my pot once every few pounds of lead added with Marvelux flux from Brownell's, scrape the pot real good, skim the dross, and whatever forms after that I leave in place to slow down the formation of more dross. I use pure dead soft lead with no tin, smoke the bejeezus out of my molds inside and out with a piece of fat lighter pine, lube the sprue cutter pivot with beeswax, preheat my molds on the edge of the pot, pour hot, pour fast, and get great bullets up to 252 grains from my dual cavity molds.

I haven't drained the pot since I first filled it early last spring. The spout sometimes dribbles during warm up, but as I mentioned, that's easily fixed. No LPG to worry about, it's light and easy to transport to the porch, and it works for me. I tried ladling lead from the pot to my molds, but my production went way down, and keeping dross out of the lead was a bit more troublesome. While I can do it, I truly prefer the speed and ease of the bottom pour. No muss, no fuss. For me anyway.

[husker]

what kind of $$$$ are you talking about. with these kind of set ups. I just paid 17.99
for 100 round balls at Cabelas. its not so cheap any more. & where do you get your lead.

[messerist]

Try http://rotometals.com. Or you can go to most sheet metal shops/roofing companies. They can order sheet lead which is easy to cut for fast melting. Good Luck.

[Ginormous]

Bullet casting can be as cheap as a reliable heat source, a cast iron pot, and a steel ladle. Or as expensive as you care to make it.

My electric Lee Production Pot IV was about $50 at Midway USA, my molds are all Lee aluminum molds are about $20 each with dual bullet cavities. I bought lead ingots from a forum user here for about $1lb. in 50 pound lots shipped, but a little enterprising scrounging can net lead locally for even less from tire shops, scrap yards, and recycling centers. Ebay is another source for cheapish lead ingots in moderate quantities.

Once you have your melting pot, molds, and peripheral goodies, the savings add up fast! I also hand load .45 LC cartridges with cast bullets. Savings hand loading cartridges are even greater.

[bigbadgun]

Now here is a good question. How many .454 balls should I be able to get out of 5lbs of lead?

[Ginormous]

Let's see. 7000 grains in a pound. The average .454 RB weighs around 143 grains. 5 pounds of lead.

7000 X 5 = 35000 grains of lead.

35000 / 143 = 244.76 balls if you are good.

Works out to roughly 59 balls per pound of lead.

Hows that for savings when lead runs around US $1 a pound? :D

Ebay link for lead: http://shop.ebay.com/i.html?_nkw=pure+lead+ingots&_sacat=0&_trksid=p3286.m270.l1313&_odkw=pure+lead+casting&_osacat=0

[husker]

so it coast about $2.00 or less to make a 100 balls & they are charging $ 18.00 for a 100 balls. i know what i want from SANTA this year.

[swoter]

The savings really add up when you start casting Minies. Track of the Wolf sells them for $11.50/25. I've cast about 500 over the last month or so, I figure casting has saved me about $200 recently. I very rarely buy bullets anymore. Try to cast everything I need if I have time.

[NobleSniper]

I just sent the cash off today for a lyman 474213 minie mould for my 1855......... I got enough lead for it and my Walkers and Lemat to keep me busy pouring for awhile :cool:

[Ginormous]

There's just something very enjoyable about casting your own bullets. Not only is the money savings great, but when your first projectiles perform just as well or better than the expensive store bought variety, there's a real sense of satisfaction.

BTW, I just received notification from MidwayUSA that a particular mold I've been waiting for is in stock. The Lyman 180 Grain Devastator Hollow Point #452374 (http://www.midwayusa.com/viewproduct/?productnumber=670333):

http://www.thehighroad.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=105446&stc=1&d=1253060840

Über Splat!

It's intended primarily as a 45 ACP bullet, but I imagine it'll split water filled milk jugs just fine when fired from a 45 LC cartridge. :D

[Das Jaeger]

Heck , break out the belt sander and touch the base around the edges and it will make a nice Walker Bullet too :)

Jaeger

[Ginormous]

Ahaha, I didn't think anyone else did that, but I sure do! Actually, it doesn't take much of a bevel to allow these to be loaded straight into a percussion revolver. My SWC bullets get ample time in the smokers too. It's kind of nice to cut a neat round hole in a target with the replicas. I'll get some pics of the Walker loaded up with these and the results once I receive the mold.

[Ratdog68]

Should perform nicely... fps isn't that far different I'd suspect.

[Ginormous]

Since all my bullets are pure lead, it doesn't take much to flatten even a round ball. I keep the smokeless loads reasonable in the 45 LC cartridges to prevent barrel leading, roughly matching BP speeds and energies. Lead fouling is not my favorite thing to scour from a pistol barrel, so low fps is the name of the game.

[sltm1]

BigBadGun, First, nice leather for the Walker and LeMat, on the other thread!!! About a melting setup, I use a small cast iron pot suspended above an inverted weedburner. Works great all day long and if you want a smoke break, you can reheat your molds in the exposed flame.