Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Savage Collectors Bullets--F.S.

A Fellow told Me there are a few guys on this Savage Site looking for 220gr.-Flat Point-.375 Bullets
Got (2) boxes-Hornadys-(200) bullets total--$160 Shipped for all ! USPS M/O, Bank Check

$85 Shipped for (100) bullets

I saw those for sale but by Gawd that seems like a lot of dough.

200 bullets are a lot of bullets………

No?

that price isn't to bad tough to find anywhere in this cluster we are in I paid 100.00 plus shipping tax etc on gunbroker for 100 pcs

May be the reason God gave us bullet molds. Just saying....

Probably should make a separate thread for this or maybe a DM but I'll ask anyway. I'm starting to get into casting bullets and am curious about something. I have a few rifles that have what I believe to be a lot of lead in the bores. If you shoot a lot of lead bullets will it cause this situation? If so, what's a good way to clean it? Hoppes and a brush takes forever and doesn't do such a great job.

There are a lot of factors that contribute to leading, chief of which is improper bullet fit. Master that protocol and you will rarely if ever have to scrub lead from a bore. Another mistake made by newbies is to employ an alloy that is too hard. Counter intuitively a softer alloy will tend to be as accurate and lead less, if at all, as long as it's sized to fit the throat not the grooves. Start a lead bullet straight, and of a size to stopper up the hot gasses from the get-go and all will be ok.

As for removing lead from a bore, I don't really know of a "magic solution", not having had to do that chore since Christ was a Corporal. If I encountered it today I would probably just grit my teeth and employ the solvent du jour and a fresh new brush. Unless it's really egregious it's not that hard to remove.

A .375/.38-55 is one of those cartridges tailor made for cast bullet shooting because soft heavy bullets can be driven as fast as the jacketed stuff earmarked for it. .30-30, .303 Savage, .32-20, .32-40, and .30-40 Krag are a few others.

A couple hundred bucks for a couple hundred specialty jacketed bullets would buy the fixings to make your own for a lifetime of shooting it. (Depending how old you are!)

Thanks for all the info. I haven't shot enough lead to have leading. I was referring too rifles I bought that have been making me apprehensive about shooting cast bullets.

I got horrible leading with the 303 when I tried shooting cast out of it, and it still cleaned up without too much struggle with a tornado brush, some secret sauce, and a little elbow grease. Turns out a .315 throat and .308 bore don't make for good cast bullet results 😝

Got a lot of good info here helping me out with that issue. I may still try to track down another 303 one of these days to try to use as a cast plunker.

I buy all my bullets these days, though, cast or otherwise. I dabbled in casting a long time ago and found it to be not much fun spending 4 hours making enough bullets to shoot 1 hour.

You might try some foaming copper remover to see if copper or lead in there.

For severely leaded bores, such as when firing W-W .357 Metal Penetrating loads from a Ruger Blackhawk, mercury cleans it up slicker than a hound's tooth. Never had one as badly leaded and never had a leaded bore after that incident.

Aren't "Metal Penetrating loads" full metal jacket?

Weren't they lead bullets with a jacketed front half? I dimly recall something of that nature long ago.

Sure mercury will amalgamate with lead, but which is worse, "the cold or the cure"? Out of curiosity I searched for mercury and it seems to run $6 per gram. We have a jug of it at the school which we use in lab experiments, but it's closely guarded and protocols for using it are zealously enforced. A dumbass student spilled a bunch on a linoleum floor a couple years ago and you would have thought a nuclear power plant melted down, what with all the hazmat folks who showed up looking like the Ghostbuster team.

Humorous anecdote: when I was a little kid a thermometer got broken and my dad showed me how to make a copper penny silver colored - by rubbing mercury on it with our bare fingers. I thought it was very cool.....

I remember in grade school we had a science experiment where the teacher put mercury on the desk and demonstrated how to it travelled on a flat surface to reunite. We were able to touch it to split it into tiny balls and watch it travel across the desk to reunite into one large ball, just like in the terminator movies!

In the 19th centuries, mercury vapors were prescribed to cure the clap, but it probably only killed the clap when the mercury killed it's host. And even before that queen Elizabeth used a mercury based white face makeup remover to remove the lead based makeup she used to cover her smallpox scares. It is believed now that mercury and lead poisoning was a factor in her death.

I found a bit over a half gallon of it, in a big glass jug, in the shop when I moved into this place. I asked around and a couple guys said plumbers used to use it for something. I haven't really determined what they would use it for or why someone in the middle of nowhere would have half a jug in his garage.

LOL gnoahhh!!!!! As kids, my sisters and some cousins would play with mercury from broken large thermometers my Dad used in his chicken house. We'd form small pools of it and swish it around with our fingers until it was a large pool. Also take a fairly large 'glob' of it and let it run from hand to hand. We're all still 'kicking' in our 70's with no health problems. I wouldn't have any idea where to buy mercury being it a labeled hazardous element.

I believe the old metal piercing bullets from the day were a hard lead bullet with a front jacket. Recall seeing pictures of them. Said to be able to pierce engines and disable them.

As far as removing lead, if elbow grease, a good bronze brush, and solvent doesn't work, there are a few things I've picked up over the years. I usually use good Ol' Hoppe's as a solvent, but if lead (or copper) need removing and brushing with brush and Hoppe's doesn't work, saturating the bore with either Balistol or Kroil and letting it set for several days does wonders. After letting either solvent set for a few days and running a good bronze brush through the bore, the lead seems to come in flakes or pieces if really bad. If it is still stubborn, another socking for a few days will get it loose with brushing. I normally don't have that much of a problem with leading as I don't shoot soft lead at high fps velocity and size my cast bullets to match the barrel, but once in a while some leading will occur at the throat end of the barrel. Use lead fairly hard, a good lube, and use gas checks on most higher velocity revolver and rifle cast bullets.

My first British Enfield .303 as I received it was severely leaded and copper coated. After two soakings with Balistol and brushing it was as new. Don't use brushes that are past their retirement either, once they get used alot they lose their rated bore dimensions and are useless. Sometimes with a revolver, using a brush one caliber larger works good for removing lead/residue from the inside of the cylinders that seems to relish collecting on the insides before the bullet enters the forcing cone of the barrel or just inside of the barrel. I can't stand the smell of ammonia based solvents for lead/copper removal and haven't found one yet that out does Balistol or Kroil. If shooting alot of jacketed bullets and to clean out the copper residue, good Ol Balistol or Kroil will do the trick.

There was a lake up in N. B.C. that had a mercury mine and after it was closed down they left the hardened melting pot slag along the lake at certain places. They were half the size of a car. They said you shouldn't eat the fish because they all had mercury in them. We went there about 1962 with our new boat we built from plans and the 1956 5hp Evinrude outboard . After smoking and eating for days with trout full up to our gills we left there with 40 fish caught that day.

I bought them at a little country store, thinking they were a FMJ but, after the leading incident, I disassembled one. Just a gilding metal cap that only extended just past the crimp with a soft swaged slug that was easily scratched with my thumbnail. Not kidding, that Blackhawk looked like a smooth bore. Still have about half the box.

Kleenbore lead away cloth works if ya work it.
just cleaned a 303 that i thought someone had reamed to a smoothbore. actually has nice sharp lands.
that cloth works good on rust too.