April 12, 2008, 12:24 AM | #1 |
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Priceless
Lee Pro-IV Casting Furnace from Midsouth, $65
Lee .358 148gr Wadcutter 2-cavity mould from Midsouth, $19 Lee .358 Lube & Size die package from Midsouth, $12 100 pounds of wheelweights given to me by a friend, $0 Several hours on a day off spent casting my own boolits to get this kind of group with my first six shots of my first-ever attempt at casting . . . Priceless. For around $150, you can get started in casting your own boolits. Worst case scenario with finding lead is that you go to a scrap metal dealer and pay fifty/sixty cents a pound. My favorite bullets to shoot are .38 Special 148 WC, 158 SWC, 44 Special 249 SWC, and 45 ACP 200 SWC. In the 148 gr boolits, I can get around 40 per pound of lead. I have a metal dealer that will sell me scrap, unsmelted lead for forty cents per pound. This makes the cost of shooting riduculously cheap. I also have several decent sources of free wheelweights and pure lead. It's a whole nother facet to reloading. I'm now wondering why it took me so long to finally get into it. Jeff
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April 12, 2008, 01:02 AM | #2 |
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nice job man feels good dont it
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April 12, 2008, 06:51 AM | #3 |
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That Truly Is Priceless !!!
JEFF ;
That is truly special ! In 15 years of loading for some appx. 15 calibres I have only had 1 sweatheart load show up on the first try . Dont suppose you would mind telling us which firearm you shot that ragged hole with ??? Thanks, 10 Spot |
April 12, 2008, 07:04 AM | #4 |
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Great Shooting
Welcome to the club TexasSeaRay.
Great shooting! Bullet casting is almost as much fun as shooting. I did my first casting almost 70 years ago making toy solders. Kept melting them just to cast more. Started bullet casting bullets with a Lyman bottom pour pot. It worked great. Got most of my lead free and could shoot my 38 Special for the same price as 22 rim fire. Fun! Fun! Fun! |
April 12, 2008, 09:41 AM | #5 |
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Looks good TSR, but I have seen some of your targets before so I already know you are an excellent shot. Did you use the tumble lube mold and the Lee LA and if so how did you like it. I am in the process of finding WW's to see if it would be worth it for me to start casting. I checked the scrap yards around here and they all want 80 cents a pound for WW's. I got lucky and found a tire business yesterday that will give me the WW's but I have to be able to beat somebody else to them. I have a friend that might be able to get me some free WW's and am waiting to see how that works out.
Rusty
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April 12, 2008, 11:24 AM | #6 |
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Jeff, I can see you are having a blast in your new hobby.
I want to help-- you'll need space for your new tools and supply of raw lead, so I'll take all your stock of purchased cast bullets off your hands! You don't want all that manufactured stuff eating up real estate that you can fill with your own handiwork, so I'll give it a good home! ;
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April 12, 2008, 12:25 PM | #7 |
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Terminator, the gun I used for "trial" on all my .38/.357 loads is my trustworthy S&W Model 686 with a 6" barrel. It's probably the best and most consistent shooting firearm in my safe.
Rusty, everything I used on this batch was from Lee. The melting furnace (bottom pour Pro-IV 20--which takes some adjusting, but once set it operates flawlessly), the mould and the size/lube die kit. And yep, I used the Lee Liquid Alox. I was a bit skeptical even though I read nothing but good things on it from the master casters over at castboolits.com. I used a mixture of wheelweights and pure plumbers lead (lead pipe). I added about ten inches of lead free solder to the pot to increase the tin content a bit (helps flow and fillout). I fluxed with a mixture of Ivory soap (stearic acid) and pine saw dust/shavings from my drill press, and a very small drop of candle wax (that I cut off from an old Christmas candle). Stirred with a 1/2"x1/2" stick of pine that I cut myself on the table saw. After the boolits were cast, I whacked the sprue plate and then dropped the boolits directly into a five-gallon bucket of cold water. This helps raise the BHN number (hardness). I'm still experimenting with hardness. I had cast a LOT of boolits and thrown them back in the pot to get my "technique" down. I cast boolits and water qwenched them, heat treated them, etc to see how the BHN varied. For these 148 gr WC boolits, I put around fifty to seventy-five of them in a ziploc bag with the sliding zipper lock, squirted a very small amount of the Lee Liquid Alox in, shut the bag and put it in my tumbler and tumbled for about five minutes. Poured them out onto a sheet of wax paper, put a fan on them and let them dry. Ran them through the sizer, then relubed, let dry, and loaded. Even if you pay up to $1/pound for WW, for me, ten pounds gets me almost 500 158 SWCs--and of the quality I want. You'd still pay three times that much for commercially cast bullets, and then add shipping. This $65 (furnace) + $20 (mould) + $12 (size and lube die kit) investment will pay for itself in one afternoon. Plus, it's damn fun! Jeff
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If every single gun owner belonged to the NRA as well as their respective state rifle/gun association, we wouldn't be in the mess we're in today. So to those of you who are members of neither, thanks for nothing. |
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