How many cast their own?

[grine_22]

Been doing a little research and thinking about getting into casting my own pistol rounds. Is there a manual to get first that I can read? What's the pros and con's?

[res45]

This one is free you can download the PDF to your computer for future reference.

http://www.lasc.us/Fryxell_Book_Contents.htm

As far as manuals go on cast bullets the Lyman Cast Bullet Handbook #4 is the way to go.

https://www.midwayusa.com/product/86...h-edition-book

I cast for 9mm,38/357,45 ACP,9 X 18 Mak. as well as bullets for my brothers 7.62 x 25 and a friends 45 LC. I use Lee,Lyman and NOE molds,some are plain base and some are gas check versions. I tumble lube using Lee Alox/JPW lube I make myself or I powder coat and also runs some through the RCBS Lube A Matic.

[condor bravo]

A couple of quick cons: Getting equipment can be quite costly, especially if you are after an electric bottom feed furnace like the RCBS with a 22 lb capacity. And besides bullet molds, a sizer/lubricator is needed along with bullet sizing dies and nose punches for each bullet are needed. Of course you can go more basic for less cost.

Secondly, relying on wheel weights for quick and inexpensive lead is pretty much a thing of the past. Many tire shops will no longer sell them because of regulations.

[mikld]

The Lyman Cast Bullet Handbook is a good text/manual, and the LASC site is excellent for info., but one old feller told me many years ago; "The only way to earn to cast bullets, is to cast bullets". You can start with the big $$$ equipment or use yer brain and find inexpensive ways to start. I started in '87 with a SS pot, a Coleman single burner stove, a Lee mold, a Lee ladle, and a bunch of wheel weights. I used paraffin for fluxing and stirred with a paint stick/stirrer. I swiped one of Ma's slotted spoons for skimming (and no I didn't give it back). The most difficult part of this simple outfit is temperature control, but you can make shootable bullets. I lubed with an old Lee Lube/Size Kit (a small alum. pan, a stick of red lube (?), a cookie cutter a size die and punch). I made .44 cal bullets for over a year with this set up and got some pretty accurate bullets. I later went with a Lee pot and added some molds (12) of various manufacturers.

Or you can go the other way; Lyman has a bottom pour pot for $250.00+, or an RCBS pot for $387.00. You will find a lot of molds running over $100 each and you can get a lubersizer for $195.00 (Lyman) or $144.00 (RCBS) and you'll need dies, nose punches and stick lube. (Midway prices) Roto Metals has a lot of bullet alloys for sale and the purity is very good; $14-$20 per lb.

Look around here for just about anything related to casting bullets you can think of; http://castboolits.gunloads.com/forum.php

[Don Fischer]

It is relatively inexpensive to get into casting. You don't need a sizer like a Lyman 450. I have a 450 and I like using it, use it for 38 and 32 cl bullet's. I also do 9mm and 30 cal bullets. For them I use Lee dies and Lee sizing. Use Lee liquid and tumble lube the 9mm and 30 cal. About $20 for a Lee die, About the same for the Lee sizer and come's with liquid lube. You'll need a dipper but you don't need the expensive one's, all it does is move lead from the pot to the mold. I smelter lead in a heavy aluminum pot, been warned it won't work but it's been working for years. It would be very easy to use the same pot for pouring. But I do have a Lyman melting pot with the bottom feed. I've tried the bottom feed but don't do well with it at all. I'd bet Lee pot's are a whole lot less expensive especially with out that bottom pour.

[Beagle333]

I like casting and enjoy the sizing/lubing part as well. If you shoot more than a thousand bullets a year, you can save some money by casting your own. If not, the commercial guys sell bullets from 7-9 cents each, so that is also a very economical option. Both are way cheaper than complete factory rounds and even half (or less) the price of jacketed bullets that you would load yourself.

I guess it would depend on whether you look at it as a hobby or a money saver. If you're small time shooter and want to do it for fun (as I do)... go for it!
If you want to do it to save money on bullets, be prepared for some production work. Saving 2 or 3 cents a bullet as compared to commercial ones will take a while to get your investment back onto the profit side of the sheet.

(unless....... you have access to lots of free lead. Then your savings would be the entire 7-9 cents per bullet.)

[Mike / Tx]

Like the others have mentioned you can go cheap or hog wild just like with your loading equipment.

Myself, I had purchased a Lee bottom pour years before I started to make my own bullets. I modified it and used it to pour some REALLY heavy surf weights for shark fishing.

I mainly started casting bullets in order to feed a newly acquired Raging Bull in .454 Casull. I just couldn't see buying bullets for it for what they wanted for them. I picked up a Lee 6 cavity mold and after about a year or so of research started using it to produce my own bullets. That was only the start to a MAJOR addiction. Heck I have close to three dozen or more molds now and pour for every caliber handgun I own and a couple of rifles.

The main things you need to consider are the caliber your loading for and price of purchasing commercial cast or even coated or plated bullets. Getting lead is the biggest hurdle most face and networking works great just as in anything else. Find a couple of reliably sources and stick with them making friends and keeping in touch.

Around my area thee was little to no lead to be had that wasn't already spoken for. I started out buying from a couple of folks and once I got a minimal supply started to pick up a medium flat rate box here and there as I could afford to, mainly from the vendors on Castboolits. I can now touch base with a few people and within about a week have right at 70# of clean lead for around $75-80 sitting on my doorstep ready to be turned into ingots or to cast with. That may or may not sound like a high price, but I know the alloy I will be getting is what I paid for and I can usually get it any time I need more.

All that said, figuring in the cost for the lead at $80, a Lee mold for say $60 figuring on a 6 cavity version, handles for another $20'ish. You can usually come up with the SS pan, and some means of melting things for pretty cheap. Figure even a Lee pot at $60. You looking at basically around $250 for a decent ready to cast set up. Now depending on what your actually pouring for, say in my case the 454, and I was paying $35 per 100 for commercial cast bullets before shipping. So figure $80 for 200 of them with shipping. Once I had my lead and mold, I was pouring close to 1500 for that amount.

If your doing a 9mm, 38/357 or 45ACP and only shoot a hundred rounds a month or so, I wouldn't bother. If your doing a 45 Colt, 10mm, 41 Mag, or similar you can re-coop your cost pretty quickly. I just purchased a 8 cavity custom mold from MP molds for about $120, and poured up just over 1.5k of bullets with it over the past couple of weekends. I shoot a LOT though and it will take me longer to size, lube, and load them probably than to shoot them.

Feel free to give me a shout and I will do my best to point you towards a couple of folks who might help you out with alloy if your serious about getting into it.

[Pathfinder45]

Minimally, all you really need is a lead melting pot, a ladle of sorts, a bullet mold, lead of some kind, fuel for a fire or other heat source, and some bullet lube. The American Buffalo were nearly brought to extinction with minimal equipment. Often the fuel was Buffalo chips and the lube was frequently tallow from the same source.
I'm still somewhat of a minimalist in that I don't size my bullets and I pan-lube them, cutting the bullets out of the cooled lube with a fired, drilled-out case, like a cookie-cutter. For years I used a dipper-ladle until one day at a large gun-show I found a 2nd-hand Lee bottom-pour electric pot. That definitely increased production, but I still use double-cavity molds.

[muzzleblast...]

A lot of folks start casting with the intent of saving money. Lee equipment serves as a good entry point. But, once it becomes a hobby; the hobby demands more equipment, and more expensive equipment, and different molds, and then the search for vintage out-of-production molds, and then...

[jaguarxk120]

It becomes a down hill run quickly. First pistols then revolvers (they do not throw brass all
over), then rifles.

I shoot rifle as practice, a cast bullet vs a jacketed bullet.

If you really want to try loading the big ones try shotgun, rifled barrels and 1 1/4 ounce
slugs.
It never ends.

[grine_22]

Well as far as acquiring lead goes, I own a scrap yard so I kinda have the inside on wheel weights, and I pick through alotta brass when it shows up. Just looking at maybe getting into it this winter when I slow down

[Beagle333]

Well if you got free lead, you're golden. Just start out as big or small as your pocketbook and interest will take you. You can get a Pro Melt and a couple of Lee 6-cav molds and be making piles of em fast; or just get a dipper pot with a ladle and a couple of double cav molds and learn how many bullets you'll need and how fast you'll need em.

[Mike / Tx]

Well since you have the alloy end covered, here are a couple of options for getting it into ingots ready to cast with.

A LOT of us use a propane type fish cooker or something similar to smelt down the bulk of our raw materials. This gives you a good heat source and allows a bit of control over the temp.

For the pot, well that is open for discussion, but you really want something pretty sturdy, actually the same could be said for the cooker as well. It needs to be able to easily support a hundred pounds or so with no chance of collapse, as you can probably understand why. I use a big cast iron dutch oven, I think its a 10qt but honestly I'm not really sure. I know it will hold 80# of alloy with room to go but I don't usually make up more than that at one time.

This said, and since the nature of your business, there are some who use the bottom half of the 20# propane bottles as well. You do have to be a bit careful in cutting them in half. Most remove the valve assembly, then fill with water and allow to sit for a few days to purge the remnant fumes before draining and using a saw or grinding disk to cut them in half. The weld around the center is a good place to cut as you get a pot with plenty of capacity.

Then you can use some 1.5"x1.5" or 2x2 angle to fab up some ingot molds. Length is your option, but I like mine about 6-8" long. If you look around on the net you can find plenty of pictures of how they are put together. The ends do need a bit of taper though to allow the lead to release once it cools. You only need a good fit on the inside it doesn't need to be welded there. I had a friend put me one together and he used the wire feed on the inside and the lead sticks to it like glue.

To be honest, as much as you hear about them being a POS, the Lee bottom pour pots are pretty handy, and will give you a good chance to get into this without breaking the bank. I have looked at the others, and while they appear to work just as well, I'm hard pressed to cut loose the added funds just to have one.

One thing that WILL make life great is a PID controller for what ever type pot or heat source you get. This has a thermocouple which sits in the lead, and will usually keep the temp steady to about a 5 degree or less swing once you get it set. You can build one for pretty cheap if your halfway handy with electronics and can read a simple diagram.

Other than those, well you need a ladle of sorts to pour your ingots into the ingot molds, a big spoon to skim off the dross. Some use paraffin as their only flux others use only sawdust, I use both. I use the sawdust on my initial flux while in the smelting pot, and the paraffin in my pour pot. I used the Marvel stuff once and it rusted everything up so never again.

Like mentioned depending on what your looking to cast for, the molds can be as cheap as $25 for a Lee two cavity or upwards of $150 for one of the customs. I admit I have poured up a ton of bullets out of the Lee molds and have a drawer full, but once you DO get one of the customs, you understand why they garner the price, I can honestly say I have always gotten what I paid for in mold quality and the quality of the bullets cast.

Hope this helps

[pete2]

I cast my own for many years. I Quit about 20 years ago. It was a hassle even then to come up with lead for bullets. I ended up casting straight lino. It was .50 a pound at the time. If I was to start casting again I would use the lino to alloy what other lead I could come up with. I actually quit casting when I found that I could get 1000 GOOD cast 200gr SWC for 28.00. They are higher now but I don't have to do anything, just load up and shoot. The straight lino bullets were great in .44 mag. and .357 full power loads. I don't shoot .44 any more and very few .357. Mostly .38, 9 mm and .45 acp.
You will need a bottom pour pot, molds(I'd buy 4 holers now, I liked Lyman better than RCBS or Lee) a lubrisizer. You can get by cheaper but it'll be a slow go.

[dahermit]

What's the pros and con's?

One big "con" of going into bullet casting is that inasmuch as the very last primary lead smelter (ore to lead), has shut down. That means the supply of scrap lead will begin peter out and the price will logically climb. Compounding the problem is that objects made of lead (cable sheathing, flashing, drain and water pipes, wheel weights, etc.), have been phasing out for years. One of the more common sources for lead, nuclear medicine, will likely become a closed system where hospitals will have to send those containers back to be recycled instead of allowing the lead to "disappear" into private citizen's (casters), hands.

In short, as lead supplies disappear, what lead that is still needed by industry, will have to be imported...at a higher price than what we are accustomed to paying.

Unfortunately, the hayday of casting has past, due to the ever diminishing lead supply and its ever increasing cost and eventually the only lead that will be available for casting is that which has been purloined from some industry.

[deserted]

I started casting bullets in 1968, feeding a Navy Arms .58 Buffalo Hunter (a sawed off Zouave, cool little rifle) with hand-made sand molds...didn't work too well. In about '72, got my hands on a T/C Hawken, .50, and for many years that was my primary gun. Killed my first deer with it, and balls cast in the kitchen with the T/C mold that came with the gun. Had a little tin frying pan to melt lead over the gas stove. Got my lead from a guy a hour's horse ride away for $0.50/lb in five pound ingots. I'd chop off chunks with an axe to melt, hehehe (hadn't thought of that little bit in a long long time). Got my powder from him, too, a dollar a pound of what he claimed was reclaimed powder from surplus US 45/70 ammo. It was brown, soft, large-grained, and, to date, the cleanest and most accurate black powder I've ever used. These days, when I need bullets (for me, casting/reloading has always been about the having what your gun needs, and if you don't have it, make some, philosophy). These days, I use a bottom-pour pot and aluminum gang (five/six cavity) molds from Lee, NOE, and Arsenal ( I just got the Arsenal one last week, a .315 130gr Keith SWC for .327 Federal. Haven't tried it out yet, but it is gorgeous). Also have steel molds from RCBS, Lyman, some home-made ones (that turned out a lot better than those sand casts), round ball, Mini-ball, Maxi ball, .75 ball (for the Little Napoleon), 1.0" elongated ball (for the Columbiad), 1.68" (one pounder, for a future varmint gun, golf ball sized), and of course the two pounder mold, 2 1/8" for the Bigger Napoleon.
Should you dare to take the leap into casting, be aware...one day you will find yourself down range, scarfing up spent rounds muttering "Darn, the copper"; raiding your tackle box for lead; wondering if your home is old enough to have lead pipes; walking with your head down, sniping errant wheel weights in the streets (I have cans and buckets full of rendered wheel weights in ingots, disguised as holding-down-the-tarp-on-the-roof weights), pocketing them after a critical estimate of bullets, given any particular weight; you find their your math skills have improved immensely.
All in all, I think it's a pretty good deal.

[grine_22]

I know wheel weights are good, what about lead battery terminals? I've got quit a few, only thing will be fishing the copper and steel out of them if they are good for melting down

[Beagle333]

Battery terminals = good.
Batteries = bad.
Usually terminals are pure soft lead. You'll want to harden them up for some uses.
Great for black powder or .45 Colt cowboy loads as is.

[dahermit]

Battery terminals = good.
Batteries = bad.

The problem with modern "zero maintenance" automotive batteries is that they contain Calcium. Calcium will render a large amount of lead alloy all but useless for casting just as Zinc will do. The alloy will shrink away for the side of the mold as it is cooling and leave misshapen bullets...ask me how I know.

Years ago, I burned the Black cases off from batteries and collected the lead which turned out to be very usable as bullets. It is only modern batteries that cannot be used for casting. Nevertheless, the battery "plates" in the old, add-water-occasionally batteries did not contain all that much lead. They (the "plates"), were a "grid" of lead alloy with what appeared to be Manganese Dioxide pressed into the voids. Once the Manganese Dioxide was knocked out of the grid, what remained was lead alloy.

[armoredman]

I've been casting for a short time and I enjoy the heck out of it. I shoot maybe 300-500 a month, but I consider it a fun and productive hobby. I cast maybe 150 at a time, with a 6 cavity Lee or a 5 cavity NOE, very low volume caster, and then powder coat them in a $5 Goodwill toaster oven and hand made steel plate therein. I consider that I have three hobbies which work together - shooting, casting and reloading.
It also doesn't hurt that I have a Doe Run secondary smelter very close by and can pick up certified bullet metal which I can then cut and smelt into ingots. Very nice people there.

[Slamfire]

I prefer shooting to casting or reloading. Casting is hugely time consuming, the equipment cost is considerable. I prefer buying cast, or plated bullets, and shooting them up.

[grine_22]

OK I read alot about cast iron pots for melting down into ingots, would a cast aluminum canning pot be OK for the same? Melting point of aluminum is around 1200 and lead is lower.......

[Chainsaw.]

It will work for a little while, the problem with lead is at some point it will give up. Keep the heat low will make it last longer, at least till you find a cast iron pot/pan.

[Beagle333]

Definitely try to move to a cast iron pan as soon as possible. Although the melting point may be 1200°, the weakening point is much lower and it isn't nearly as strong at 750° as it is at the 212° range where it was intended to be used. Also, water doesn't place nearly as much strain (weight) on the overheated sides. (Water weighs about 8# a gallon and lead can weigh 95-113# a gallon)

[reloader28]

Go to the castboolits website and do some reading.

I definitely disagree with Slamfire. For the cost of a cheap Lee pot, Lee 6 cav mold and handles (maybe a little over $100)you can make around 1500-2000 bullets in about 3 hours. How in the world is that expensive or time consuming?
It dont take long to pay itself off.