Making Your Own Round Ball And Bullets

[BADUNAME47]

Don't Forget: After Casting; Wash Your Hands!

(1) Only cast in a WELL VENTILATED AREA, remember that some strange fumes can come off of molten lead. You don't want to breathe in those fumes!

(2) Whenever you handle lead, either when loading your gun or casting bullets be sure to wash your hands before eating, drinking or smoking to remove the minute amounts of "lead dust" from your hands.

(3) Keep water well away from molten lead. Back in 1986 I had a 25 pound pot of lead literally blow up on me because one drop of water got in the pot! My clothes were ruined, I had burns on my face, neck and hands. Fortunately I was wearing safety glasses.

While there was no permanent damage to me-I gained a healthy respect for following ALL the Safety Rules regarding casting after that!

Now, Casting is FUN plus you SAVE A LOT OF MONEY and of course, there is a lot of satisfaction making your own bullets!

 

[Dellbert]

My New Molds

My two new molds came in. Sat down Friday night cast one hundred .450/200gr .44 revolver bullets for my Walker. I hope these are the right ones. They seem to fit the Walker just fine, and the other five .44s ok. All I did was sit a couple of them in the opening of the cylinder and turn them to see if there was going to be any trouble getting them to go under the loading lever so you can ram them down on the powder charge. No problems with that. One of those .44s is the brass frame 51 that people seem to not like. I like it a lot, but will not be shooting these bullets out of it. I find these easier to cast than round ball. I'm thinking that with all that hot lead in a hot mold helps keep the heat up better than those smaller round balls do. Not a bit of trouble to cast those 100. With all the tips you folks sent in anybody could do it, with a little time. I like the idea about the hot plate settin on the side, to help keep the mold hot. Tonight I set down and tried out my second new mold. It's a Lee real bullet mold for .50 cal 320gr bullets, only made 50 of those befour the pot needed more lead, so I just stopped after the first pot. I can see right now, I'm going to need a new supply of lead. Maybe I should have ordered the 250gr mold first. This 320grer will more likely be over kill on deer, we'll see. We have bear hear but people in this part of North Carolina won't see one but every once in a while, and those are just passin through. or a cub caught up a tree by dogs. Fellow over in the next county had one of those cameras you put on a tree over feed, that guy got a picture of a bear that's almost in the 400 pound range hanging in one of the shops out here. Those kind don't come through here that often. To the east near the coast, those folks have some pretty good size brown bears running round there. I'm not so sure I would go hunting them with black powder less it was .54 cal or bigger. Me I probable would want my little .35 Remington, or bigger with me for that. Never been bear hunting before, so I'm a little green in that area.

 

[Captain*kirk]

The 320gr REAL is NOT overkill on deer.
It works very well in my Lyman Trade Rifle in front of 80-90gr. Pyrodex and packs a wallop!

 

[Noz]

Another reason for obsessive fluxing. Grit in the lead will erode the holes in the top of the aluminum portion of the molds. You'll soon have egg shaped and then ragged holes which make really ugly bullets.
Flux, flux, flux, flux.