Bullets, sinkers etc, what are the best bang for the buck products to get me started. Assuming I have nothing but time and money to start with and practically no experience.

Thanks

camping stove, lead pot and a ladle

I use a lead pot over a Coleman gas stove.

Be sure to be in a well venelated area.

This is a good place to start-

https://www.rotometals.com/bullet-casting-alloys/

castboolits.gunloads.com is a great site for all interested in casting their own, whether your a beginner or a master caster.
k2nd

1) Get on Cast Boolits forum. Ask your questions there. These guys are the real deal.
2) I started with a Lee 20# bottom pour furnace for casting. I use a hotplate and an old saucepan for smelting (melting down scrap lead)
3) Lee aluminum molds are inexpensive, and they get the job done. Start with them if you can.
4) My accessories are fairly sparse. Most of it is dollar store stuff. I have a soup spoon for removing dross, a couple pairs of pliers, a pair of leather gloves and a hatchet handle for whanging the sprue off.

I churn bullets out by the hundreds when I have a mind to.

highcountry;
Good morning to you my cyber friend, I hope the weekend was decent for you.

While you surely can start out with a cast iron pan and a Coleman stove - like the one we bought at White Elephant years ago, they're not as easy or safe to use as something like this.



If you're going to get into processing old wheel weights, an ingot mold is a logical thing to have as it makes for easy and compact storage of the lead.



There's many, many roads to Mecca with this as with most things I suppose, but folks like Digital Dan come to mind that would make this collection of bullet molds looks like a starter pack.



That said, I do fool with it a wee bit and would be happy to answer any questions and am still not afraid to say when that's beyond my scope of experience.

Hopefully that was useful to you or someone out there this morning sir.

All the best regardless of which direction you go.

Dwayne

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

I'd be willing to part with my whole casting setup. Depending on how far north you live, I'd meet you halfway and turn it all over. Lee pot, lead, moulds, lube, sizers, the whole shooting match. Haggle when you see it all.

PM me.

Thanks for the replies all. Dwayne.....that's exactly what I had in mind. Thank you.

Coming at you Rocky.

Moulds for casting 1# ingots after smelting dirty/scrap lead to clean and flux it. I have a Lyman ingot mould.
Moulds for what you wish to cast.
A cast iron lead pot. A 10# pot is about the size of a 12-14oz coffee cup.
A pouring ladle. I recommend the Lyman because the handle screws in from either side for left & right-handed pours.
A propane or liquid fuel stove (ideally). I have done melts on my kitchen stove. But I don't make a habit of it.
A thermometer.

The above items will get you started. Bullet moulds and handles are going to be the biggest expenses. Everything else is relatively cheap. You could even skip the thermometer for a bit and control the temperature by eyeballing the melt. Basically once it melts, reduce the heat and watch it to ensure it stays melted. If you see visible vapor coming off it, it's too hot. Lead melts at about 620* F. Slightly higher if you are adding antimony or melting wheel weights. Fluxing to clean the melt can be done with saw dust, paraffin wax or a dedicated fluxing compound. Absolutely DO NOT allow any liquids or moisture around the area where you're going to be smelting. The only exception would be 5gal bucket of water on the floor, shielded from the melt if you are going to water quench your bullets.

A copy of the current Lyman Bullet Casting Manual would be helpful or you can you read this:

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

Or you can download this:

http://www.lasc.us/Fryxell_Book_textonly2.pdf

You will not want to use a bottom pour with anything but clean alloy, unless you want to fight it dripping forever

high country;
Good stuff sir!

About half of the newer weights up here are some non-toxic mess that smokes a lot but doesn't really melt, but there's still literal tons out there that are still good for casting.

Last spring I went through my shop and found all the 5 gallon pails and partial bags of wheel weights, diving weights and roof flashing that I'd squirreled away for decades and melted most of it into ingots.

There's still some roof flashing that will need an outside fire and pan because of the roofing tar.

It's fun on a number of levels for sure though or at least I enjoy it.

If you can find someone like Rocky and get all the gear that's absolutely the way to fly.

Again give me a shout if you run into a snag and good luck.

Dwayne

I inherited a bunch of casting stuff when my dad died.
He did it for fun, up to about age 79.
As a kid I did a fair bit, but never really enjoyed it. Was just something to do on a rainy day.

My dad would shoot multiple times a week at the local club so sent quite a bit downrange.

IMHO its definitely a hobby for retired folks, or guys that shoot way more than I do.

This!

Local scrap yard near me WILL SELL TO THE PUBLIC (most do not). Everything from wheel weights, to old gill or seine net weight (instant fishing weights)... to #4,000 boat keels (obviously discounted big time because of the cut down need).

We fabricated a shot dripper (bird shot... we shoot a lot of sporting clays)... it was a failure (couldn't get the coolant/drop distance right)... tear drops only. Gave it away to a guy that said he would futz with it until perfect... drip what he needed and give back running... he lied and never did. He is from Maryland... and he is with the FBI... I had my doubts from the get go... so be it.

A good friend (guy I am trying to help find land in eastern TN) bought a prefabricated dripped and followed a lot of videos and had tremendous success... and has quite literally dropped tons of shot. He has a source for free lead. Glad for him/them... we have since moved and shoot far less... so I do not partake in his free shot any longer.

Anyway... In the learning process of smelting (outside with a cast iron stockpot over a turkey cooker)... I discovered things such as:

1) A long Harbor Freight magnet strip is fantastic for pulling out the steel clips on wheel weights that float in the molten lead.

2) Presorting zinc and steel wheel weights out from the lead ones is worth the trouble.

3) Muffin tins make reasonable ingots for reuse later.

4) Wind is a PITA, but inside smelting can be very dangerous (in theory)... tin and antimony... I am NOT an expert for details.

5) Casting large round disks in old Teflon frying fans is the BEST MONEY for lead resale. Guys bought these for Wake Boats as fast as I could make them. I made a small fortune with these... and simply bought the bullets I needed with that money instead of casting.

6) Casting is super fun for some folks... and I respect those that do it.

Great link, Dan.
Thanks for posting that up.

Lee bottom pour melting pot.

RCBS mold and handles of your choice.

RCBS lube/sizer

Magnaflux

Circular cup wire brush that fits into a power drill to clean the pot.

The book, "The Art of Bullet Casting"

You need to go to smelting college

😃

The lead doesn't make a guy retarded?

Only if your wife knocks you up side the noggin with a 10# ingot.

FWIW, I pursue the craft in old school fashion. Ladle pour, brass or iron moulds, a lead thermometer. I pan lube for BP loads and use ALOX for HV/smokeless cartridges. Lee push through sizers work fine.

Note to me, come back later.

If you can find boat yard or a marina that's scrapping out an old sailboat, the keel weight is usually a huge piece of lead. You can haggle off chunks for smelting with a sawzall. As was mentioned above, lots of wheel weights are zinc alloy, and if you ever manage to get one to melt it can ruin a whole pot of smelted-down lead. I test wheel weights with a sharp pocketknife- - - -a smooth curl of metal is lead- - - -zinc alloy is hard to cut and chunks off in jagged chips. A pretty good mix for general purpose bullet casting is a 20:1 lead/tin mix, 19 lbs, of wheel weights and 1 lb. of 50/50 lead/tin solder. Dropping that mix into a pan of ice and water from the mold makes it as hard as woodpecker lips- - - -with a gas check I can push those bullets to 2K FPS without leading the rifling.

I run these thru a .30-30 at ~2,200 fps. They are fair close to WW alloy with about 60:1 tin. No cold quench, ALOX lube. NO LEADING.



50 yards during initial load development:

Like was posted above, I've read most wheel weights these days arent lead. It's a mix...

I've got casting tools, probably flip them on ebay. Just more stuff I don't use.

Nice looking bullets Dan!

I bought a good casting thermometer to help eliminate the zinc in the ww's I use.

Lead has a melting point of 621, alloyed may go higher, but not close to zincs melting point of 786.

So I feel I can go 700 or a bit more & still be safe. Anything in the pot not melted at that point goes in the trash.

Are tire weights still lead alloy?

"A guy wanted to start casting lead"😎

I use scrap from many sources. The problem is making a uniform batch from several batches.

As mentioned earlier, a muffin tin will make nice ingots. About 2.5 lb for the one I use. Also, bread loaf pans work well if filled to about the ten lb mark.

I use a 5 qt cast iron Dutch Oven on a Camp Chef propane stove for blending alloy. Fill the pan full, ladle melt into ingot molds. Then set all the ingots in a pile. Repeat into separate piles until scrap is all consumed.

Then take the same number of ingots from each pile and remelt them into the pot. Ladle this out into molds and save for casting. When all of your first batch is remelted and blended, you will have pretty homogenous alloy for casting.

I worked up 600 lbs of alloy last fall, and have already cast 300 lb of it into bullets for 38 Super, 10 mm, and 41 mag.

Damn that's a lot of casting. I usually only cast plinking/practice loads for pistols or fishing jigs. I have a couple buckets of WW but lost ingot molds in the move. Last couple times I thought to check on them they were sold out at the usual places. Smelting is a good chore to have in the spring when a fella wants to open the garage door up and get some fresh air after winter 😁.

Yes, wheel weights are an alloy. I have a fairly small stash of pure lead that I use only for casting round balls for my flintlocks. I use a separate electric melting pot for the pure lead. Alloy balls simply don't obdurate well enough to get consistent groups when shooting patched round balls from a smokepole.

starting to mess with powder coat on my 338 whisper and ,458 bullets,
the trick is dont get to much on 'em



this is the next project, ,730 diameter propelled by a 50 BMG case,

Magma Engineering of Cave Creek Arizona I believe makes automated casting.pots and machines (where most bevel base designs come from) bought out Littleton manufacturing. Last I knew they market the Littleton Shotmaker still.. I bought one 20 years a go. The model I have has 6 drippers they are replaced with a dripper with different orfice size for different size shot #8 to 5 availible.
Once the molten lead reaches the level of the drippers it heats them enough to melt the lead in them and they drip on to a angled splash plate dropping into a container of coolant dropping to the shot to the bottom it retains its spherecity. The height of the drop is crucial to well formed lead shot. The way things are going anyone really interested in maintaining his wings hooting habits should immediately procure a Littleton Shoemaker. Questions????...mb

NICE!

Couple guys I know used .45acp brass for jacketed .458s... at least I think I have that right.

Big stuff in lead makes the most sense IMHO. I run .458s up to 730 grain.

Been am pondering stacked disks (thin as possible in .458 WM... as a quasi shot load... been in the back of my mind). Possibly even 3D printed perforated pizza disks if the metals could weigh enough... I admit that I do not know that tech at all.

That's 19:1.

I've bought lead at the local scrap yard.

Lead is a fairly difficult thing to start with. I 'd go with aspersions.

Surprised that no one has mentioned the most important accessory of all, Safety glasses and/or faceshield, don't want to get hot lead in your eyes !

It is anyway. I usually buy metal in some bulk, nothing crazy, but often times I'm trying to achieve a particular mix / alloy that I can't just buy, so I mix 3 bars of that and 5 bars of the other thing and some of something else in a kettle on the camp stove (dedicated for alloying metals, I do not eat off of it), and stir up about 50-60 pounds of the same thing so that it is consistent, then pour it into ingot molds, let it cool, and put that in cardboard, marked, so I know what I've got and what the recipe was.

Tom

I smelt my stuff on a campchef with an old iron Dutch oven dedicated to just this. From there I pour 1# ingots for use in my old 20# Lyman bottom pour furnace. I have a variety of metals I use, but I try to arrive at 2% tin, 6% antimony, and 92% lead. Tin gives flowability Antimony gives hardness, and lead gives weight. Ive made lots of HP pistol bullets through the years

Go on over to castboolits. Far too much stuff to try and type up here.

Do not every use the lead pot for anything else.

High country,

When you get some equipment put together to begin casting, you might want to try getting yourself a bar of this lead from Rotometals and starting with that: https://www.rotometals.com/lyman-2-bullet-metal-5-pound-ingot-90-lead-5-tin-5-antimony/

A lot of the casting primers suggest using this type of mix foe the majority of their bullets. Rotometals have always treated me well and usually have the stuff you need, I like to save money but time is worth something too.

Good luck and have fun!

Thanks all I'm digging the info.

Rest assured, safety isn't going to be a problem. I passed my first D1.1 and 1.5 test 25 years ago this month....been spending time in the leathers ever since.

I use an old Coleman camp stove and a stainless pot I got from good will. A fork to pick out we clips and the schit off the top. Use an old cupcake pan to make ingots.

A ladle and mold are the only new items I’ve bought.

Don’t fire up your pot of lead when rain is a possibility. 😀

If one has ever been steelhead fishing in Orofino, ID, they may know of a former tackle shop there ran out of a guys house. His name was Jim Dodge. One morning, my buddy and I stopped by to buy some jigs before heading down to the river. His daughter, very obviously pregnant daughter, was melting lead on the kitchen stove to pour some jigs. Darndest thing to see...

FWIW...

Good luck you have been moved from camp stove a nd ladle to magma machines.

That's mercury

Avoid anything with LEE in the product title.

Nothing will work as half assed and make you NOT want continue casting quicker.

Their pots leak incessantly, they don't have any real temp or flow control, a household spoon is better then their ladles and their moulds and handles need forced, manual concentric operation on a flat surface to even begin to make a bullet with equal halves.

Total garbage on its best day.

If you want cheap, figure in time wasted with junk, which is expensive as hell....

Too bad all the deer I've killed with bullets and round balls from Lee molds didn't ask what brand equipment I was using- - - - - -they probably could have shrugged off the whole encounter and walked way. Ditto for the trophies I've won at flintlock shoots!

The Lee Magnum dipper pot is as good as you can buy for the money. I use mine with a PID controller and when my casting rhythm is on my 370-540 grain paper patched bullets are usually within a +OR - of .5 grains. That's as quality of a result as anyone could ask. ..mb

You guys throwing down on starting up the newbies with CVA kits too?

Avoid Lee products. Depending where you live atart hitting yard sales and such look for pewter, there's various forms of lead castings. (Door stops, etc. Go sight seeing at your local scrap yard. Have fun

Forget bullet lubes,

Coat you bullets in either Hi-Tek or powder coat.

Tsk tsk.

When learning to fly, avoid anything Cessna. Start with a Lear jet.

(That makes as much sense as the anti-Lee comments.)

Well Hawk1 I have 2 Rcbs Promelts that are of course bottom pour. Their hard to beat for pistol bullets in dbl and gang molds. But if a guy wants precision big bullets for black powder cartridge loads using a dipper is the way to go. When using a dipper a dipper pot is the way to go for smoothness and consistant delivery of melt in your Lyman ,rcbs or Rowell bottom pour dippers. The bottom pour mechanism on Lyman and rcbs pots just get in the way when dipping bullets. Sure you can spend a pile of cash on a waage or other high grade pots but for 70-75 bucks the Lee Magnum dipper pot is damned hard to beat. Sorry you had bad luck with the Lee stuff. MB

Anybody else make their own cast bullet lube?

yes a tumble lube that is alox, carnuba wax and minerial spirts

Mine is made from wax toilet seal rings, paraffin, and automotive general purpose chassis grease. It works well in a Lyman lubersizer, poured into the lube chamber while still liquid from being mixed together in a double boiler.

I used Lee Liquid Alox as well as Johnson Paste Wax. Both lightly dusted with mica. Both worked well even at .30-30 speeds.

Melt the Johnson's and heat the bullets just enough that they are too hot for fingers. Hold with pliers or similar and dip. Cold bullets get too thick a wax coat. Mica keeps them from being sticky.

If you want to melt larger quantities of scrap a turkey fryer and big cast iron pot are the ticket. While wheel weights are great, they are getting harder to find. The best place to find scrap is at the range at the base of the berm after a hard rain. They were bullets once...let them be bullets again. Even the jacketed scrap is usable and save the jackets for the scrap yard to make a little money back. The key to relatively consistent alloy is large batches and a Lee Hardness tester. I prefer RCBS molds but have also had good luck with older Lyman. I didn't care for Lee molds but some people do fine with them. When I was using lube, I liked White Label the best and used an RCBS Lubrisizer. I am shifting to powder coating with material from Powders by the Pound using the shake and bake method. I really like the results and use Lee Push Through Sizers. One advantage to the powder coating is the ability bump up your bullet size if your mold is a little undersized.

The first thing to do is get acquainted with some roofers who do flat roofs. When they tear off an old asphalt roof, the drains and scuppers are usually flashed with pure lead. It all ends up in the dumpsters. If you can get it, it'll take some cleaning up to get the hot tar off of it but it's good stuff and it's free. The lead from just a couple drains will make hundreds of bullets or ML balls.

I'll never use bullet lube again. Here is 38 pages of guys posting pictures of their powder coating results.... some are even hand painted.... I'm thinking people only take the time to do that is in the dead of Winter though

https://castboolits.gunloads.com/sh...y&s=0041320e1eb9e9f396d846b50519bc5d



This guy stocks powders proven to work well also the plastic air soft BBs needed to get an even coat while shaking before baking. The 25.00 toaster oven I bought works fine.

https://castboolits.gunloads.com/forumdisplay.php?205-Smoke-4320-s-Corner

Thank you!

I don't powder coat for a number of reasons, but to each their own I reckon.

First airplane I ever flew was a DC10. First time I flew a plane upside down it was a Cessna. First time I flew upside down was in a chopper. You provide the chopper and I'll give free lessons on that.

If a fella was to say he was going squirrel hunting the question that comes to my mind, is what kinda squirrel? Little fuzzy varmints or liberals? I suspect the same load would work for either depending on circumstance, no? Maybe if a fella was hunting liberals a rainbow colored powder coat would be appropriate.

As for Lee pots leaking, it's because crud builds up in the spigot hole.

To fix that I'd chuck the steel "stick" that plugs the hold into the spigot and give it a good spin with a hand drill for a while. Doing so would lap the plug into the spigot hole and create a good seal.

Melting and fluxing lead is messy business. I don't care what brand of melting pot you buy, you're going to have to come up with a way to clean the crud out of it.

I started out with the Lee melting pot and Lee molds. I eventually went to Lyman and RCBS molds but I kept using the Lee bottom pour melting pots.

Also, the vast majority of bullets I cast were quench cast. I'd knock them out in a 5 gallon bucket half filled with water.

I found that straight wheel weight alloy casts dead on size, while adding 2% tin to the mix results in them coming out about .001" larger than straight wheel weights.

The RCBS molds cast very concentric bullets. The Lyman molds would cast very concentric bullets after I tapped the alignment pins in .005" farther than they arrived from the factory.

I didn't actually size my bullets. I would use a sizing die .001" larger than the diameter of the cast bullets and the lube/sizer would just seat the gas checks and apply lube to the grooves.

As for applying the gas checks, first, you have to learn when to cut the sprue so that it doesn't either A: tear a hole in the base of the bullet or B: leave a tit sticking up off the base of the bullet. It's all a matter of timing. Eventually it will become automatic. You'll learn to cut the sprue at the appropriate time to leave a flat base on the bullet.

THEN

When I would affix the gas checks, I would first lay a small, flat piece of steel over the die on the lube/sizer, set the bullet base down on it, and use the ram of the lube/sizer to push the bullet down into the gas check before I crimped it into place.

Doing so would result in a nice, flat bullet base.

It doesn't take much to cast up a blob of lead that will spit out the muzzle of a firearm. But if you want to get consistent results from your bullets, you've got to cast and prepare them in a consistent manner.

If you do it properly, it will become an OCD sickness.

If you haven't figured out exactly what diameter your firearms really prefer you might actually start upstream of casting and order various sized bullets from various cast bullet manufacturers and figure out what bullet diameters your guns like. If nothing else, figure out which diameter bullets leave the least amount of lead with the load you're going to shoot and this could potentially save you from buying one or several moulds that you can't/won't use or at least can't use without dumping a bunch of expensive alloy into the mix to get them to the right diameters. After you do this, order moulds that you are as close as possible to getting the right diameters for your particular firearms and get good at casting. After you have your technique hammered out, go to "Accurate Molds" on the internet and order the EXACT size moulds you want and designate the alloys you intend to shoot and buy a proper mold for each particular gun you intend to shoot cast bullets out of. It'll be pricey but make up a mold that drops 3 different bullets for 3 different guns and the savings can add up fast if you veer away from mixing in alloys and stick with wheel weight type lead and have the mold cut to work with this mix. Ended up buying two moulds. For me, one drops a 45/70 and a 454 Cassull bullet and the other drops a 45 ACP/K31/8mm bullet with every drop. This will get you the best long term results with the least amount of messing with stuff that ends up not meeting your needs.

Casting bullets resulted in a severe case of tendonitis in my left forearm from hours on end spent squeezing bullet molds in my left hand. After having to wear a brace on it and consuming anti inflammatories for 2 weeks, I decided that I had done enough.

It was fun while it lasted, however.

Im gonna sign up for that one just as soon as I graduate from chainsaw college!

Bristoe,

What happend man!?! I miss your witty responses that I read in southern drawl.....but now all I'm reading is,

Getting old is getting old.