Repurposing lead bullets

[King Medallion]

So I'm scrounging around in my room of stuff while sizing and lubing a few different 45 and 50 caliber bullets. I'm finding boxes of 1, 2 , 4 odd cast bullets, leftovers. I'm wondering if I could peel the lube off of them and drop them into the melting pot and make new bullets from them. Also got a couple boxes of bullets that just didn't shoot well and/or don't have crimp grooves in them. No sense in wasting good primers and powder on them, might as well melt them down and use them for something useful. Anyone do this?

 

[Frulk]

I'm planning on the same...have a box of lubed lead bullets that I just don't like...lube dried out...messy to load...plan to next time I fire up the pot to drop them in lube and all and just let it burn off

 

[mdi]

Just remelt with the lube in place. It will smoke a bit, depending on how many bullets are being remelted, and the lube will act like a flux. BTDT many times. I once remelted 150 cast bullets I had purchased because poor quality and undersize and got a lot of smoke so I just placed a fan in front of the pot and blew the smoke out the shop door...

 

[jmorris]

I'm wondering if I could peel the lube off of them and drop them into the melting pot and make new bullets from them.

No need to remove the lube and they don’t even have to be unfired to make bullets out of the material again.

 

[41 Mag]

Like mentioned easy to repurpose. Just make sure you have a good fan and do it outside. Might help to light off the smoke to help keep it to a minimum.

 

[King Medallion]

Light off the smoke? What does that mean?

 

[.308 Norma]

Light off the smoke? What does that mean?

Nothing to it - you just hold a lit match over the smoking pot and the smoke will "light off" (ignite). The flame will fade away as the pot quits smoking.
I do that part outside (not in the house) on an old Coleman stove.

 

[King Medallion]

Ok, thank you for the explanation.

 

[AJC1]

No different than culling bullets from a new batch other than a free Flux.

 

[edwardware]

I'm wondering if I could peel the lube off of them and drop them into the melting pot. . .

Not sure how you imagine "peeling", but if you put them in by the pot, they'll melt. Grease lube is basically flux, PC is basically polyester, and everything* floats in lead.

Most of my ~3.5 ton stash is burm scrap.

*If you ever find something that doesn't. . . it's probably uranium or tungsten.

 

[Bcwitt]

The entire point of casting bullets is to recover & recast.