Missouri Bullet Company shop photos

What the heck. I took a few snaps with my Android before coming in from the shop, if anyone's interested in seeing where their bullets are born.

The alert among you will note one of the pigs. We start the day with a ton each of 2/6 and 1.33/4 alloy and work through most of both of them by midnight. The pigs weigh 58 lbs. each and we manhandle them directly into the Magma Mark 7's, each of which will eat one every 38 minutes or so, figuring on a 200 grain bullet in production. We try not to drop the pigs on our feet very often, especially the 1.33/4 pigs, because they dent so easily

Sizers, casters, stock shelf, cart with 35 boxes of bullets (about a quarter of today's production), all captured in grainy, low resolution for your viewing excitement.

And Robert, my excellent night man, who managed to dodge out of all the other photos. I caught him when he wasn't looking.

Brad

Quoheleth said:

That's cool.

I've gotta ask. I see the fans; at least one was running. How warm does it get in the shop in the summer? Winter?

Jon

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Well, those are exhaust fans to get the fumes out. We keep it toasty or cool in there, depending upon the season with a 4-ton HVAC unit. Before we got that wonderful thing, we measured the temp near the casters in late June and it was 124 degrees there. Now on the hottest of sunny days, it's as cool as we want it to be.

That must be why my electric bill is $400.00 a month now?

For heating, we have a fine little Charmglow 30k BTU fireplace that runs off the propane tank outside that keeps us warm after the first 10 minutes or so. I try to get into the shop around 0700 and get the building warm and start heating up the casters and sizers before the day shift arrives at 0800 (in theory.)

tommyintx said:

can you describe/name the equipment you use?
I'm getting into casting.. not necessarily high quantities.. maybe 1000 per month of 45 200 or 230 grain swc/rns... my friend gave me a lubrasizer yesterday.. curious of what equipment i can get to expedite the process.. i see some collaters.. looks like the cam-dex and ammoload collaters i've seen.. for sizing? do you have a bullet feed setup on some sort of progressive sizer/swager/gas checker or something?

thanks
tommy

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The casting equipment is all Magma Engineering Bullet Master Mark 7's. We have a Mark 8 on order, should be here in 3 weeks. The sizers are all Magma Engineering Lube Masters. We have 5 M-A Systems collators and one Howell CNC collator, which is a much heavier-duty unit and which we use exclusively for the difficult .380 and Makarov bullets. We'll be replacing the M-A's with Howells over time, as they are better collators and require much less service and will handle more load.

Magma makes great stuff but man, talk about constant adjustments! A challenge to the mechanically impaired, like me. The Mark 7's do about 3200 bullets per hour (depending upon the bullet) and the Lube Masters run at about 4,000 per hour. What I enjoy doing is setting up 2 or 3 sizers to run a tub of 20,000 of the same bullets and watch that pile of bullets get finished in 2 hours or so.

We try to make 3 or 4 different bullets every day. With some of the very hot ones, we will routinely do a "stocking run" of 2 full days of production (day + night shift) and wind up with 70-80k of that bullet. The SmallBall 9mm is our most popular bullet and we do that one in that manner every 10 days or so.

Brad

Today's shipping

Don't you feel sorry for our maillady? That's 44,000 bullets.

m&pc9 said:

The last order I had of 2000 bullets. The mail lady wouldnt bring it to the house. She left a note it was too heavy and I had to pick up at post office.

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Actually, I believe that they are required to deliver the mail. They will attempt to evade that responsibility sometimes, depending upon the carrier.