Bullet Casting Questions

[Coal Creek Griff]

There isn't really a specific reloading section, but I bet my friends here can answer me.

I'm thinking of giving bullet casting a try, but I don't want to sink all kinds of money into the project at the beginning because I'm not sure I'll keep at it.  I'm willing to spend some, of course, but I'd like to try a "minimalist" approach at first.  If I find it very rewarding, I'll lay down more cash later, even if it means replacing some things I've bought.

Here are my questions:

What do I need to get started?

What can I buy down at the hardware store and use in my trial run--e.g. will a cast iron pot on my camp stove work as a lead pot for now?

Does Lee Liquid Alox lube work well enough to get me going, or should I pan lube or use another method?  (I'll probably load both black powder and the other kind [sorry to you purists]).

If I use Alox, do I have to use Lee's special tumble lube bullet molds?

I have a couple of cans full of fired bullets.  Can I use those at first for my lead?

What is a good source of casting alloy (it must cost a fortune to ship)?  Where I live may not be the middle of nowhere, but maybe it is on the edge of nowhere, so I do most of my shopping by mail.

What is a good manual to get me started?

My challenge is to try out bullet casting with the lowest startup cost.  I look at it as a kind of game to see how much I can keep the cost down.  Any suggestions would be a great help!

CC Griff

[panhead pete]

Howdy Pard,

Goatlips has a great site on casting and pan-lubing.  If you Google "Goatlips" you will find him. 

I started out with a used Lee bottom drop pot I paid $20.00 for.  If you buy lead ingots for casting (Midway USA sells them, perhaps they will ship USPS bulk flat rate) you can forego the whole smelting process which gets the dirt and impurities out of the bulk/scrap lead. 

The fired bullets can be melted and reused but you may want to use another pot so the casting pot does not get fouled.  If you are using a pot on your stove keep some wax handy and drop it in to flux out the dirt.  If you flux the pot you can probably use the ladle and pot method for sure.
I chose to smelt used lead to try to keep the costs down.  It likely cost another $60.00 but with Spencer bullets costing 36 cents each, (two years ago), I figure it will pay for itself.  I have also found trying to find bullets very frustrating.  I waited 3-4 months for some 45 LC bullets.  I now have a mold for those as well.
For smelting I bought a cast iron pot at an antique store, I think I paid $16.00 dollars for.  I was given some wheel weight lead and bullet trap lead from friends.  I tried the side burner on my gas grill, but it did not get hot enough.  I found a turkey frying outfit never used at a yard sale for $40.00.  The turkey pot burner really gets good and hot.   So far I have only cast bullets for my 56-50 Armi-Sport Spencer. 

You will also need a steel or cast iron ladle for pouring.  I have never tried using a ladle to pour into the mold, but that would be cheaper than buying a pot. (In my case, I bought the pot first since it was a fair deal).  The key is to have the lead hot enough to completely fill the mold. 

If you  use over powder cards, (with a dollop of BP lube under the bullet for BP), you can use the bullets for either Smokeless or BP.  DIck Dastadly makes some real good molds for BP that will work just as well with smokeless.  I am sure you will hear some good info here.

Good luck, Amigo,

Panhead Pete

[Angel_Eyes]

Hi CCG, a camping stove and cast iron pot are exactly the way I started 25+ years ago!
I graduated to a bottom pour furnace when I started getting more moulds and more calibres to feed but have gone back to the original method since us Brits lost our cartridge pistols.
Used bullets are easily the best way because they normally retain a certain amount of lube and are self-fluxing to remove dirt etc to the surface of the molten lead.
One last tip; find someone who already casts to give you some pointers about temperature of lead and moulds.

Any questions, please ask, UKshooter.

[Fairshake]

I've been casting since around 1972 and you can invest thousands or a few dollars. My first suggestion would be to buy or borrow the Lyman bullet casting book. It will answer alot of questions and will be a valuable guide later on. Alox is a no-no for bp but works great in the other stuff, I forgot what its called. Lee molds are sometimes tricky for new casters but can be mastered. They don't offer a BP mold however you can buy those from DD. For the simple way of lubing you can also use Lee $13 kits or wrap up over $300 in a star. This site is filled wiyh people who are willing to steer you in the right direction. I'm an old time caster and reloader as I said but new to the Frontier Cartridge in SASS and myself have received valuable info from it. See Ya Down the Trail Fairshake

[Goatlips]

Thanks to Pete for the kind words, but the definitive site for neophytes AND hoary old moss covered casters is right here:

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/forumdisplay.php?f=8

The cast boolit folks are the Mensa-grade overseers of casting and without doubt the friendliest. Lotsa Cowboys there too. 

Goatlips

[Springfield Slim]

I have tried most all ways to cast, so here is my take on it. Buy a new or used LEE 10 lb pot and a 2 cavity mould and some LEE Alox. This will be only slightly more expensive then buying the cast iron pot, camp stove and ladle, but will be easier to sell if you don't like casting. And you won't have to upgrade so soon if you do like it. As long as there isn't lots of dirt on them the used bullets shold do fine in the pot as long as you flux well. This way you don't have the pot and stove and ladle laying around your garage for years after you upgrade to the better and bigger pots and moulds. And go to www.castboolits.gunloads.com, they know everything.

[Noz]

Make friends with telephone repairmen plumbers, roofers and tire shops. Repairmen for the lead sheathing around telephone cables, plumbers and roofers for discarded lead pipe and roofing and tire shops for wheel weights. Watch for hospital remodeling, old x-ray rooms are a wonderful source.
I started with an iron pot and a propane campstove. Still is an effective way to pour bullets.

No one has mentioned that this initial melting of the base metal is very smoky and stinky. For the initial melt, I put about a half an inch of clay based kitty litter on top of the metal. This will absorb a lot of the smoke and stink. You will need a ingot mold of some sort. Teflon coated muffin tins work well.

[john boy]

http://www.expertvillage.com/video-series/500_bullet-casting.htm
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0BQY/is_4_49/ai_98124194/pg_1?tag=artBody;col1

[bear tooth billy]

for lead you can use old wheel weights from your local tire shop, I melt them in a big pot over a
turkey fryer, all the steel clips come to the top and are dipped off. then use a bit of parafin for flux
and stir it in good the junk will float to the top, keep doing this until you have good clean lead. I dip it into
1lb bars This works fine for cowboy shooting distances and if you get the right connections will be
cheap or free.


                         BTB

[Coal Creek Griff]

Well, I plunged in.  I bought the very basic equipment (mostly Lee due to my efforts to keep the cost down).  I acquired some alloy (from eBay and other sources) and tried casting over the weekend.  I was surprized at how well things went; Almost all of the bullets look good.  Of course, the proof is in the shooting, but I think I'm hooked now.

Thanks again for the pointers--more questions are sure to follow.

CC Griff

[Coal Creek Griff]

I've always said that I'm not sure which I enjoy more: shooting or reloading.  Now I have another aspect of reloading to enjoy.  I just have to figure out this whole pan-lubing business.

Griff

[Sir Charles deMouton-Black]

Pan lubing is a widely used option, and there is plenty of advice out there. 

I don't bother.  I pick a pea-sized glob off a lube stick and apply it to the grooves by hand.  It doesn't make much of a mess either, and I can do it while watching the magic-lantern show.

[Howdy Doody]

These days if you can get a bucket of wheelweights you will find that a lot of them are stick ons. Stick on weights are near pure lead. Melt all of them down and the mix will be plenty soft. Less than 20-1, that is for sure.

I started with Lee pot. I still use it alongside my RCBS. The Lee pot that works well is called a Pro 4. You can get started with Lee molds too, they are the cheapest out there, but they still drop a nice bullet. You don't need a thermometer. If your melt is coming from the down pour Lee, it is at least warm enough to get started. If the bullets are wrinkled add more heat and if the get to just frosty you are good to go. Mark the dial for referrence. You are now casting at about 700 degrees. Flux? Just use a bit of bullet lube. Scoop the crud off with a ladle of dedicated large spoon. Gonna make ingots? Get a metal muffin tin and pour into it. Level muffins of lead in my 6 hole tin weigh right at 5 lbs each. Learn to smoke your molds. They make a spray on but that stuff fills in the mold and you loose definition on your bullets. Of course you need gloves and leather welding gloves are ideal, but they have cheaper leather gloves at places like garden centers, Lowes, etc. Anything else just ask.

BTW, I learned a huge amount about casting when I got started on the websites  Graybeards Outdoors and Cast Boolits. There is a world of info there and you can do searches for answers.
It is fun once you get to makin' yer own.

I got most of my first purchases from Midway USA

[Singing Bear]

I been using a Lee 10 pounder for years along with Lee moulds, 2 and 6 cavity.  Wheel weights are my norm for cartridge bullets as I got the stuff for free.  Hard to beat that price.    I save the really soft lead for my round balls.  This stuff is harder to come by, but through the years I've built up a stash that'll out last me. 

[Bristow Kid]

Please explain smoking my molds?

[Frenchie]

Please explain smoking my molds?

It's to keep the lead from sticking, acts like a mold release. Get a nice beeswax & tallow candle and let the wick get long enough to make smoke. Coat the inside of the mold by holding it over the candle, then cast. Like everything else about casting, it's an art that takes patience and practice to get good at. Maybe one day I'll get the chance to do it instead of just reading about it. 

[Howdy Doody]

Frenchie has that smoking the molds down pat. I made the referral, because I had bought a can of the spray on release, it is like primer and then found that the stuff fills in the mold where you don't want it to. It is a bear to clean out too. So, new molds, you clean with brake clean, alcohol or thinner. Then before using you smoke the inside of the cavities and the bullets drop right out. 

[Delmonico]

Myself I grab 3-4 kitchen matches and light and use them, have never tried the candle because I read/was told one time candles can sometimes leave a bit of waxy soot on the mould.  don't know if this is true, but why I always have used kitchen matches.

Also use the same type match when I want to smoke a seegar.

[Ranch 13]

 Start with the Lee 1-lb production pot and a lee mold or two. Then when you get things down pat,you can move on to the better quality molds such as RCBS Lyman etc.
You can use straight wheelweights for 99% of the cast bullet shooting you'll ever do. If you can't get them local, there's plenty of folks selling them already rendered and put into ingots on Ebay.
For high quality certified alloy at reasonable prices I like these folks www.rotometals.com

[Dick Dastardly]

The Big Lube™ bullet molds I sell are made by LEE Precision.  If you are using these molds you will find the best practices in the free pamphlet included with each mold.

For smoking the cavities I prefer a good hardwood splint.  Get it burning well and smoke the mold above the wood flame.  I've found that some candle flames will deposit a dimensionally measurable thickness of soot inside the cavities.  This soot would cause the molds to drop undersize bullets.  The flame from a clean hardwood splint will not deposit this much thickness.

Spray on mold release agents have caused problems for casters.  I think that they are being applied too liberally.  I don't recommend them because of this.  If too much of the spray release gets into the cavities, it will have to be cleaned out.  Cleaning the stuff out isn't an easy job and it has to be completely done before the mold will drop correct size cast bullets.  The problem is compounded with Six cavity molds because the bullets may not be uniform from one cavity to the next.

So, if you are using new molds that come in Red and White LEE boxes, pull out that instruction sheet and read it.

DD-DLoS