My Path to Casting: Missing Anything?

[RDW]

Hello, everyone. Best wishes for the new year to you and your families.

I live in California, and we have a new law starting in February 2011 that apparently makes it illegal for us to buy ammunition online. With that in mind, I started reloading in early 2010, and I’d like to move from buying bullets to casting my own. I’m an NRA and a CRPA member, so I’m working things from the vigilance and lobbying side, but my concern is that at some point California will move from legislating ammunition purchases to legislating reloading.

I'm shooting a Taurus revolver in .357 mag; a Winchester 94 lever gun and Ruger Super Blackhawk in .44 mag; and a Ruger P-90 in 45 ACP. I also shoot 38 special in the 357 and 44 special in the 44's. I'm not a high-volume shooter, but I'm trying to practice more, so I probably use 200-300 cartridges a month total for all the guns. I also have a .223 (Kel-Tec SU-16CA), but I wasn’t planning to cast for that.

I've read the books and done the research, but I think I need some hands-on experience with cast bullets before I take the next step.My plan is below, and I welcome your comments and suggestions.

My first step will be to buy some cast bullets to get a better idea of how cast bullets shoot and what weights and shapes work well in my guns. I'm leaning toward Missouri Bullet’s 240 gr TCFP for the 44 mag, 158 gr SWC for the 357, and 230 gr RN for the .45. I’m also thinking of getting a couple of "sample packs" in lighter weights and different shapes (200 gr RNFP for the 44 and 125 gr for the 357).

I’m hoping that shooting Missouri's bullets will point me to a good weight and shape, so my next step would be to get the casting equipment and accessories. I'm leaning toward the Lee molds (2-cavity) and a 10# furnace, and so far, I'm liking Lee’s tumble-lube bullet designs. My local tire store, where I happen to buy my tires, seems willing to part with some wheel weights, so that'll be my source for lead.

And then I’ll start casting, using Lyman (I have the 4th edition of the casting book), Lee, and the information from the castboolits site for casting and my regular reloading manuals for the cast bullet loads. I'm hoping that the move from Missouri bullets to a slightly different design (like the tumble lube bullets, for example) won't have much effect on how the bullets perform in my guns, but I don’t know if that’s true, so I’ll probably just cast for one gun at first (probably the 44) and then move to the others if all goes well.

I know this isn't rocket science, but does my approach make sense in terms of your experiences? And am I missing anything critical that'll make the move to casting a lot more difficult than it needs to be (like should I plan on resizing, for example)? Thanks.

 

[Skip_a_roo]

Sounds good, welcome to the forum.

Cast bullets for the 223 may not be a good idea. If it is a gas operated firearm, it isn't recommended.

In California, it may be hard to find lead wheel weights. Make sure they are by melting below 700*F. One zinc wheel weight will ruin a bunch of lead.

Just one thought on mould selection. Personally, I think the Lee 2 cavity are too cheap to spend my money on. The alignment system is terrible and needs constant attention. Will they work? Sure.

If it were me, I would buy the same profile in the 6 cavity version. You will be much happier. Also, you can tumble lube any bullet. They don't have to be the "TL" design.

From experience with Lee moulds: Buy a design with a 2R, TC or SWC design. All of the ones that are 1R cast too big to be used as cast and then won't fit in the chamber of most 1911, M625 guns.

I have bought a bunch of moulds off of ebay. They are H&G and while the price has been kind of high, I got just what I wanted and the quality is the difference between a Pinto and Rolls Royce.

There is a forum dedicated to cast bullets: www.castboolits.gunloads.com

Lots of good info there. Check out their classifieds too!

Best to you!

 

[kelbro]

I use a few Lee molds with no problems. Thousands cast. 1-cavity, 2-cavity, and 6-cavity. The 6-cavity molds make a lot of bullets fast. I also like the Lyman 2-cavity and 4-cavity iron molds.

I would get the 20# Lee pot rather than the 10#. Easier to maintain alloy temperature with more mass.

You will need a way to smelt the wheelweights down. Don't use your casting pot for the nasty stuff.

As recommended above, make your way over to the castboolits forum. Lots of good folks over there willing to help. Lots of info from safety to precision casting.

 

[evan price]

I cast myself. I use the Lee 6-cavity molds. When compared to the Lee 2-cavity molds, the 6-cavity molds are much better in terms of alignment and sprue cutter. They don't cost a lot more, either, and if you really want to you can just buy one set of handles and swap them out between molds. Or just buy a couple handles. I've got 9 or 10 6-cavity molds and 4 sets of handles. I don't see myself casting more than 4 molds at a time so that's OK with me.

The Lee 2-cav molds align using sideways dowels that fit in troughs. The 6-cavity molds align by dowel pins that go into hardened locator bushings. Much better, IMO, and longer lasting.

Second: Buy the 20 pound pot. It's not that much more expensive than a 10-pound pot but BELIEVE ME it is worth it. When you get your molds and lead going perfect you'll have to add more lead a lot faster with a 10# pot and wait for it to get up to temp or freeze the spout. The difference in price is what, $30 or so between the 4-20 20# bottom pour and the Lee Production Pot 10# bottom pour? Take it from me- bigger is worth the money, especially if you decide on 6-cavity molds. Lee's capacity is exaggerated, too. The 20# pot really only holds about 17# of molten lead, the 10# holds about 8 pounds.

You never want to run the pot too low on lead so in honesty of a 20# pot's capacity you will only be using 10# of it before you refill with more lead. This keeps the lead temperature up.

I personally went with the RCBS Pro-Melt bottom pour furnace, it holds an advertised 22# of lead, but the reason I went with it over Lee was the RCBS pot is a bit bigger diameter and my 4# mini-pie-tin ingots will just fit inside the pot, and won't fit the Lee pot.

When I am casting 240-SWC's for my 44 Magnum in the 6-cavity mold, each mold I throw is going to be a quarter-pound of lead including sprues. 4 throws is a pound. Calculate how many mold casts you will make before the lead level in the pot gets low. Then you add ingots and wait for them to melt and go up to temp. With a two-cavity mold it's not bad using a 10# pot but I strongly recommend the 6-cavity molds and 20# pot. It's more efficient and the molds are better.

With regard to lead- you are in the People's Republic of California. Just because you can get lead weight now, they will be gone very soon. Have a backup supply! Even here in the free states we are having trouble finding lead wheel weights because the California regs are making the tire companies start stocking all non-lead weights to not have to keep two different types in their inventory for Cali and non-Cali states.

Your three bullet types are all good and simple to make work in those guns you have. The 240-SWC tumble lube works great for me in my 44, and the 158-SWC tumble lube works great in all my 38 and 357 revolvers.

The 230-round nose tumble lube for my 45's I have had problems with and will probably replace it with the Truncated Cone design. There is a large step at the edge of the driving band of Tumble Lube 230 round nose that causes FTE's when the extracting brass hits it. It looks actually more like a SWC with a rounded tip than a true "ball" profile. The truncated cone is smoother here and hopefully won't cause the problem.

You don't need Tumble-Lube bullets to use the ALOX lube- I use a 32 caliber 6-cavity that is not TL and just tumble lube them anyway to good result- but the TL design uses a very wide driving band which I believe is pretty darn accurate and seals the bore well.

I'll invite you over to the Cast Boolits forum where there is all the discussion you could ever want about casting.

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/

 

[USSR]

Some good advice so far. Get yourself a cast iron pot and a turkey fryer to melt the wheel weights down and pour into ingots. Then, when you are ready to cast, feed the ingots into your bottom pour electric pot. As far as bullet design, all my moulds are for SWC bullets in caliber appropriate weights. I highly recommend the RCBS and Lyman moulds. Take a look at getting a Lyman or RCBS Lubrisizer, as you will need to size your cast bullets to fit your throat/bore. The castboolits website previously mention has a wealth of knowledge about what you want to do.

Don

 

[RDW]

Thanks, everyone. Just the kind of information I was looking for.

The Missouri bullets are on their way, and I'm keeping track of the rest of the stuff in a Wish List. Interesting comments about the 6-cavity molds, by the way: I'd read that come people thought the larger molds might be more difficult to use for someone new to casting.

I'm guessing I'm good to go with the 44 and the 38/357, and I'll see if I have any extraction problems with the RN 45's before I start making those (I ordered those in a sample pack of 100 from Missouri). The TC design has gotten a lot of good comments, so I may head in that direction (same weight) when the time comes.

Thanks again. I'm a reader of the castboolits site also (in hindsight, maybe I should have posted there, rather than here), so I think I have enough information to start heading in the right direction.

 

[snuffy]

I'd read that come people thought the larger molds might be more difficult to use for someone new to casting.

That could have been me. The 6 cavity lee has a learning curve longer than a 2 cav. For one, if you don't have the mold up to casting temp, it's nearly impossible to shear 6 sprues with the cam operated sprue plate. If you horse on it to shear them, this happens;

Yeah, it was mine, but I didn't do it. Borrowed it to a guy I got started in casting, forgot to tell him to pre-heat the mold. I sent lee an email with that pic, they sent me 2 new cams.

What some guys do is; start at the front, cast one, then shear the sprue, 2 then 3, then 4, usually is enough to get the mold hot enough to fill-er-up. Myself, I use a hot-plate to pre-heat molds. And ingots getting ready to re-fill the pot.

There's nothing wrong with a 2 cav lee, or a 1 cav for that matter. They have to be handled carefully, just like a steel or brass mold. For one thing, you can try a bullet style, weight, and caliber for around 20 bucks. By the time you pay for a 6 cav, and the handles, you'll have 50 bucks invested. If you don't like the mold, you're faced with keeping it or trying to sell it used.

+1 or is that +4 on the lee pro 20. The 10# production pot is rightfully called the drip-o-matic, because the valve ALWAYS leaks.

+1 on the separate smelter for your scrap lead. You want the ingots clean, no dirt, BEFORE they go in the casting pot. Flux well and pour clean lead for your ingots.



16 quart cast iron dutch oven.



Ready to cast ingots, all fluxed and clean.



I used the lyman ingot molds for these. You can use just about anything for ingot molds, one that I also use is muffin tins. There' about 100# there, all pure lead. JT

 

[GP100man]

1 Lee boolit design that shoots in all my 38 calibers is the 158 rnfp , it drops heavy at 162grs. but it shoots good from mild to wild .

My shooting is limited due to RA in my hands from wrenchin too long & I`ve found the 2 holers suffice , but if I was cramped for time or needed production A 6 banger will fill the bill , just more prep needed to get it up to temp & a bigger pot !!!

How`s your lead supply in California ??? If I kept a tally of costs it would probably be cheaper to buy ready to cast alloy from Rotometals !!

But I`m a scrounger & like the idea of recycling , see I do the green thang !!!

 

[GP100man]

Hey snuufy , the 1#ers if ya drop em in a 20#er at 725f do they freeze the spout ???

I have ingot molds from angle iron & they drop at 3-31/2# & drop the temp enuff to freeze the spout especially in this weather , even if I let em ride the rim to dry & warm !!

 

[evan price]

RDW: The problem with the RN 45's is ONLY with the Lee Tumble-Lube design. Commercial cast RNs won't have the problem because they don't have the step in the side at the driving band. Like I said, the Lee TL-452-230-2R mold throws what looks to me to be a SWC with a rounded nose, NOT a true ball-profile bullet. It's the same with the 9mm mold- TL-356-124-2R has a step too, and it won't work in a couple of guns I've loaded it for. I plan on changing over to the T/C profile from the 2R profile for those molds soon.

I smelt my lead in a 3-gallon stainless stockpot rescued from the scrap yard over a propane turkey fryer burner. Keep the crud and dirt out of your casting pot.

The 6-cavity molds are not that heavy really; the RCBS mold guide lets you rest the mold on a bar to carry the weight. You do need to warm up the 6-cavs a bit before casting- I shattered a sprue cam last week myself. Just cast 2 alternating cavities at a time about three times and then it should be good & hot.

You can get Lee 6-cav molds for about $36 and you don't need a set of handles for every mold, although that's sure nice to have. I have 4 sets of handles and about 9-10 molds.

The tumble lube bullets theoretically drop to size and don't need a lube/sizer. So far mine have all been the right size from the TL mold as long as I do my part- I had to scrap out 50% production the last casting job because I got a bit of lead stuck between the blocks and the diameter was .010" oversize. That was my fault!

 

[snuffy]

Hey snuufy , the 1#ers if ya drop em in a 20#er at 725f do they freeze the spout ???

I dunno, I wait for the temp to recover before I continue casting. I really believe that the secret to consistent cast bullets is temperature control. I've been using a cheap hot plate to pre-heat molds and ingots destined for the pot. Getting a lee 6 cav. up to 350 degrees, lets you cast all six holes right off the bat, and the bullets are keepers.

WARNING, the following is advanced casting technique! I have a temperature control called a PID. From wikipedia; A proportional–integral–derivative controller (PID controller) is a generic control loop feedback mechanism (controller) widely used in industrial control systems.





This controls the temp of the melt to +-2 degrees, with a digital read-out and infinite settings with the push of the up-down buttons. Suppose the lead is being held at 325. If I drop a room temp 1# ingot into the melt, it'll drop the temp to 695, but it only takes 5 minutes to regain the set temp. If I were to pre-heat that ingot to 350 degrees, the temp drop would be only about 10 degrees if the pot was ¾ full.

I usually wait until the pot is half empty before adding lead and the sprues that have collected. The ingots come off the hot plate into the pot, the mold goes back on the hot plate until the melt is back up to temp. Adding 10 1# pre-heated ingots and sprues would drop the temp back to around 500 degrees. But the PID kicks the heating element into full-on mode until the melt is about 10 degrees under set temp. The stock lee thermostat would be cycling on-off, making the recovery time longer. If anybody wants to know how to build a PID, PM me, I'll round up some links to where to get the parts. Cost is around 85 bucks, less if you could find a box to house the components.

 

[RDW]

Evan: Thanks for the clarification about the RN's. I'm leaning toward the TC's after doing some more reading, and the Ruger can be finicky at times, so that sounds like the way to go. With the jacketed stuff I have on hand from general reloading and the cast stuff I ordered from Missouri, I have a fair amount of shooting to do before I start casting.

Snuffy: Appreciate the information on the molds. I may go with a 2-cavity for at least one caliber to start with (maybe the 38/357), since it's basically two 2-cavity molds for the price of one 6-cavity. I'll play that by ear once I shoot the Missouri bullets and see how it goes. I've been shooting 125 grain jacketed stuff for the most part up to this point, so I'll see how the slightly heavier cast bullets work. I haven't taken much time to shoot to evaluate things like bullet weight (not shooting with a rest, for example), but we have a nice range not too far from where I live (Oak Tree Gun Club), so I'll have an opportunity to practice more (up until now, I do most of my shooting on BLM land about an hour away).

GP100man: Lead is hit-or-miss these days in California, particularly for wheel weights, but there's still some to be found, at least until the non-lead weights start to become more prolific. I managed to get some from the place I buy my tires (Jeep tires ain't cheep, so they were more than happy to give me some buckets of lead last time I bought a set) and I got some from a dive shop that went out of business (although I don't know the composition of that lead is). I have access to a hardness tester at work, so I'll check that out as soon as I can). I also do some work for the port folks (I'm a technical writer by trade), so I'm hoping they have some stuff around I can use. However it works out, though, even scrap lead will probably be in short supply soon.

Thanks again, everyone.