Bullet Casting

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I reload and usually use Berry's plated bullets for pistol. I reload for 9mm, 10mm, & 44mag. I recently purchased a Ruger 1911 so now I'm gonna add 45 acp to that. I was a little surprised at how pricey the 45 plated bullets were so I'm thinking of taking up casting. I'd have to start from scratch and I would have to buy ingots as I have no source for lead.
My question is this: Do you think it worth it if you have to buy your lead/alloy?
 
Definitely, but if you want to keep casting cheap I'd go with Lee tumble lube 6 cavity molds, and buy wheel weight ingots. And in 45ACP you can actually go softer in alloy, too.
IMO, you will need to learn quite a bit, and get quite a few factors in the casting/reloading process down using technique and careful adjustment. However once you're there you can roll em out in the thousands.
I cant help you with 45 cast specifics, I cast mainly for 38/9mm
but there's a great website: cast boolits where you should register and do lots of reading.
Biggest things: Size (.001 over bore size) and lube!

And yes, I buy ingots pretty much exclusively and I still save a TON of cash for my practice/plinking ammo.
Honestly, smelting your own is a bit of work, requires quite a bit more time and investment into more materials, and the savings above buying straight ingots is marginal. The only real plus is quality control
 
I'd have to start from scratch and I would have to buy ingots as I have no source for lead.
My question is this: Do you think it worth it if you have to buy your lead/alloy?
Click to expand...

There HAS to be a scrap yard somewhere near you that you just don't know about. If you do buy ingots, buy COWW (clip on wheel weights) ingots and some pure lead ingots and mix them 50/50 with each other. You don't need a really hard alloy for the .45 ACP. Yes, definitely worth it - Go for it.

Don
 
Spend a lot of time at the Cast Boolits board

If you are running a 6-cavity .45 mold, you will need a 20-pound pot to feed it.

Give some thought as to how you want to lube your bullets. There are the traditional grease or wax type lubes which are applied by a bench top machine to grooves in the bullet. More recently the dip-type lubes have appeared, such as Lee Liquid Alox, which will work with traditional grooved designs, but designs made for use with it have very shallow grooves. The former are much more capital intensive. Setting up for lubing with Lee Liquid Alox is messy, but cheap.

I find it hard to believe that you can not find any Lead scrap. Most scrap yards will have cable sheathing and other Lead materials. Beware of wheelwrights, which used to be the primary source of Lead for most bullet casters, as most wheelwrights are now Zinc, and a small amount of Zinc will turn a large quantity of Lead into something the consistency of sand mixed with syrup. Leave car batteries alone: melting them can produce extremely poisonous gasses.

Bullets don't fill out well with just Lead. I add something like 2% Tin. Scrounging to find cheap sources of Tin will be difficult.

Pay a lot of attention to not poisoning yourself with Lead. Don't eat or smoke while casting, and after casting put your clothes in the wash and shower.

Before you buy a mold, slug your bore to see what your groove diameter is. Using a too small bullet will result in extensive Leading. I try to be .001" over groove diameter. Do not trust the book groove diameter, as they are frequently wrong. The book diameter for 9mm barrels is .356", yet I have a lot of Beretta and Walther 9mm barrels that are almost .358". My Colt Series 80 is right at .451", but an acquaintance measured his Taurus and says he found it to be .457"! To add just a bit more complication, some pistols have big groove diameters, but the chamber is cut so tight that it will not chamber a cartridge assembled with a big enough bullet: for these, you are stuck with jacketed.
 
I would still do it so long as I can get away with just using the lee tumble lube molds. adding in fancy lubrisizers, gas checks etc significantly increases your costs. you can get away with as little as a $20 camping stove, old cast iron pot, $5 lead dipper and a $20 mold. With the right rhythm, temp, alloy, mold ive gotten upwards of 500 bullets an hour using a 2 cavity.

I used to get about 50 pounds of wheel weights each month but that connection came to an abrupt end. After that I spent an afternoon visiting 20+ tire shops in a previously mapped out area. 4 hours, $15 in gas and a $20 bill later, cleaned up with about 110 pounds of lead. Now I just fill up a 30 cal can each range trip with range "ore" scooped off the top of the berm. I usually clean out with 15 or so pounds of free lead each week. I havent tried straight 100% range scrap but I do add about 10-15% of some strange alloy I ran across earlier in the year. So far the 45's are working out really well and I expect the same when I get around to casting up several thousand 38's.

After several weeks of collecting like this im up to over a hundred pounds. I don't think the price of lead is ever going back down nor is the availability going up. Stack it deep when you can.
 

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My question is this: Do you think it worth it if you have to buy your lead/alloy?
Click to expand...

Absolutely! I buy quite a bit of lead on eBay.
The problem is, you don't know the exact composition.
Some lead is REALLY clean, and some is REALLY dirty.

I try to get the stuff that's already fluxed & about $1.50/lb.

Now figure, 7,000 gr to lb - at say 230 gr/bullet.
That's about 30 bullets per pound.

Can you buy 30 bullets for $1.50?????

I just bought a 29lb ingot for $40 shipped ($1.38/lb)

Do you think its worth it if you have to buy your lead/alloy?
 
Hondo is correct, and now with the powder coating coming on so strong, more people will be taking up casting as it eliminates the lube and one can run them near FMC velocity.
And they are pretty:)
 
I also recommend the cast boolit site. Same handle there for me. Depending on where you live, clip on wheel weights may be worth your time. If not, rotometals is a popular place to get lead as well as on the for sale section of the CB site.

I find great enjoyment and (usually) stress relief with casting. My fiancé has learned that my shooting, reloading and casting is an important part to our relationship (same with her crafting and various projects I have no interest in) LOL!
 
Lead is for sale on the castboolits site often for just over $1/pound. That's wheel weight alloy. Every now and then I sell some myself. When I do I get $70 for 50 pounds and that's shipped. It is very much worth it.

I get my lead by either going to local tire shops or scrap yards. The tire shops charge me $30-$40 a 5 gallon bucket for wheel weights. The scrap yards charge .30-.35 cents a pound for lead.
I even lucked out the other day and got about 20 pounds of wire solder for .40 cents a pound. :)

If these aren't an option for you though, it is well worth $1 or a little more per pound.
 
Definitely worth it.
From my very first casts a few years ago:
firstcast1.gif LEE45ACP_loaded.jpg
Target.gif

The 4-20 bottom pour pot and a 6 cavity mold will produce a lot of nice bullets very quickly. Adding a PID (look it up on Castboolits) will improve your casting speed and consistency and is a nice addition, but not absolutely required.
 
I would suggest getting into casting, especially if you have specific loads you want. I also am a member of Castboolits and suggest that forum as well. Wonderful people ready to help. I cast a lot of my own, started doing cannon balls, sinkers and roundballs but now I cast my own shooters and they turn out well. You will be surprised to find lead resouces around you. I just scored another 100 lbs or so, 4 shower liners, some 50/50 gutter sticks, and some old water pipes. If you collect it when you can it builds up quickly.
 
Is it worth it yes. Castboolits is a great site.
One problem no one has said yet is it's ADDICTING.
I started casting for my 9mm one mold then 38 and 357 two molds along came the 44 mag two more molds now let's add rifle to the mix two more molds 30 cal and 7mm.
When you start playing with rifle you add gas checks and the Luber sizer.
I moved from the Colman stove to the Turkey fryer for my raw smelting and the Lee 4-20 for casting. Oh and one I almost forgot the Muzzle Loader another mold and making your own lube. Then mixing aloy to hunt with and the list goes on and on.
 
I too have found casting to be every much as addictive as handloading. Its stress relief at its finest for me. No thinking required, just pour and drop and repeat.
 
For 40 years I've used wheel weights for casting. As mentioned they are getting hard to get,and many are unsuitable. Lately I've been mixing wheel weights 50/50 with range lead.The bullets work very well,but weigh up heavy.The 230 gr. Lee tumble lube bullets average about 240 grs, and the 158 gr. bullets run around 165 gr. If I keep the .357 bullets,and the .45's under 800 FPS I get very little or no leading .When I'm out of these I'm going to try pure range lead. hdbiker
 
^ I have shot pure range lead in low velocity stuff like .38 Spcl and cowboy velocity .45 Colt loads. No leading and plenty accurate. Worked great.

I have not tried them in full throttle loads for .45 Colt or 9mm so I couldn't tell you how they are there. I guess we'd have to just work up and see where the problems start. If your bullet is a good fit in your barrel, it may surprise you how high you could go.
 
In the recent years I have used up all the salvaged Wheel Weights from my years working as a mechanic and all the lead flashings and Pipe joints from years in Demolition and Construction.
So now I buy 60 pound ingots from a Smelter down in Casa Grande Az. that is Lyman #2 alloy.
I drive down and pick it up so I don't have to pay Freight Charges.
And it is still cheaper then when I would have to buy the Tin and Antimony to make my own blend.
Wheel weights worked fine for pistol bullets up to 900 FPS but for anything Faster, you really should add some Tin if not some Antimony too.
But I can take the smelters ingots and add the right ratio of Tin and Antimony and make LinoType Lead for my rifles, and Magnums.
 
My question is this: Do you think it worth it if you have to buy your lead/alloy?
Click to expand...

It depends. I have machines that cast and size bullets I load in volume and have never paid a dime for casting lead and I still buy bullets.

A lot of times it is very well worth it and other times better for me to buy. Depends on needs and wants, like everything else.
 
I just got an offer from a scrap and core buying out fit to buy a 55 gal drum of un sorted wheel weights @ .55 cents a pound. I might do it if I can get a few friends and family to go in on it with me. Should be about 1200 lbs before smelting.
 
^ I wouldn't but I don't know what the situation is where you're at. If it was sorted with all zinc and steel removed, maybe.
0.55 a pound works out to about $90+ for a 5 gallon bucket. I routinely get buckets here for $40 or less. There's also a scrap yard I visit about once a month and get unsorted wheel weights for 0.35/lb and pure lead bars/pipe/blocks for 0.40. I figured I had it good here. I know some places they're getting mighty hard to find.
 
@ Arkansas Paul
I cant find the old invoice but I think it was about $1.90 per pound.
The name of the company is SeaFab Metals in Casa grande Arizona if you want to go on their site.
I buy the 92% lead, 6% Tin with 2% Antimony.
It is about a Brinell 15
A couple of years back I bought 16 pounds of Pure Tin from them and got some Antimony from an outfit in California, but I cant remember the price per pound at the time.
But I used that for adding to Wheel weights and for bumping the SeaFab to LinoType Lead
 
Just for general Info.
If I get some wheel weights or even pure lead that I am not going to use in the muzzle loaders, I can mix them with the SeaFab stuff, and make a BHN 10 to 12 blend for my .38's and .45's
It is all about knowing what you have , and what you can add to make a cheaper softer mix or a harder mix.
I like pure wheel weights, but unless I smelt up a ton of it at one time, I find that it isn't consistant in my batches of bullets.
Wheel weights actually come out to about BHN of 8 in a large smelted batch.
 
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