hard day of Melting and Casting.

[anothernewb]

Spent the weekend rendering range scrap.
had about 1100# of scrap. yielded about 800# of actual lead.
Buddy scrounged up an old cast iron wood stove, and we had a 20# lee pot going as well.

Guess I'm going to be a convert to casting my own bullets. The process was hot work, but less messy and faster than I expected. We dropped a few bullets later on, and they started to turn out decent once I got things figured out.

 

[Reloadron]

Nice stove and setup. Got things done and done well so now you have some nice ingots ready to go.

Ron

 

[anothernewb]

Was truly surprised at how small a stack 800# of rendered lead was, considering how many buckets and boxes of lead scrap we started with.

buddy tested a few of the ingots and they were about 10-11 hardness, plenty hard for the target rounds I intend to make out of them.

 

[1KPerDay]

very cool.

 

[LeonCarr]

Does your wife know that you borrowed her Banana Nut Bread Pans?

That is a nice stove.

Just my .02,
LeonCarr

 

[anothernewb]

Does your wife know that you borrowed her Banana Nut Bread Pans?

Shhhh!

She thinks the kids lost them.

 

[Reefinmike]

Good job, that is a lot of work to do in one day! ingots look nice and clean. I do have a couple of suggestions, if your intent casting is high volume pistol bullets, I would recommend getting a lee 20 pound bottom pour pot and the cheap lee six cavity bullet molds(handles not included, be sure to buy those too). I always recommend getting started with a 2 cavity mold to figure out the process and getting your temps right. A six cavity mold IMO has a steeper learning curve but once you figure it out, you can easily produce 600+ bullets an hour. When casting your ingots, generally smaller is better so you dont freeze up your 20 pound pot(which is another fun setback) with a big hunk of cold lead. You can however preheat your ingots on a hot plate. I prefer 1-1.5lb ingots.

Your bullet hardness of 10-11bhn is right where I like mine to be for everything from 380acp to 357 magnum. Look into powdercoating your bullets, It is the newest, latest and greatest way to do your bullets. Very durable without leading ever.

 

[anothernewb]

the 20# bottom pour and 2 6 cavity TL molds are exactly what I have!
Spent a little time practicing. takes a bit to get the mold to temp but they were filling out well by the time I had a hundred or so done. Found a rhythm I got into where I would pour 2 and dump a 1# ingot in there and so forth, kept the melt at a good temp. the 5# blocks did tend to cool it off a bit.

I may recast them into smaller units after a time, but we were after production that day, Once we got that stove socked full of ash coals right to the 50# pot, we could cook off lead PDQ. so we were making ingots in everything we could find! At our peak I think we were getting about 125# an hour done.

 

[gonoles_1980]

I would like to get into casting. But right now my wife frowns on it. Are you going to powder coat any you make? How much do you think you are saving by casting your own?

 

[anothernewb]

how much am I saving? lol. none really. I got the lead for free, but by the time I figure in gas, fuel, messing around, it's cheaper to buy them already made. This was mostly because I had a half ton of lead sitting around, just to see if I could do it, and to learn a new skill.

As far as your wife frowning on it. I thought it was going to be far more messy and problematic with fumes. Doing this part outside was actually very easy and not that dirty at all. gloves were about all we needed for protection, and don't stick your face in the smoke, lol. The casting part leaves some smoke too, but we did that in his shed that's got a decent exhaust fan and windows. He's got an old range hood above the casting bench. Gloves again proved to be all we really needed to keep the lead off us. Certainly something I wouldn't want to do in my basement without an exhaust fan and an enclosed area too. I really don't see how it lives up to the nasty hype I've heard. We had a pretty darn clean operation going. Ive been at the range and come home with a lot more dirty feel to my lungs. and residue on my skin.

I thought about coating. may still try, but then need to buy more stuff. I borrowed some gear from by buddy to to the tumble lube thing. which I'll try first.

Casting is one of those things where you really need to set aside some time to make it worth your effort. getting going is slow, but once your in the groove, you get lots done. It's not a pick it up and set it down thing. At this point I would say set yourself aside 2 hours minimum uninterrupted time to cast a bunch of bullets, and probably that much again to lube and size (or coat) them.