casting your own bullets

[340wby]

I have seldom used any bullets other than hard cast designs in my revolvers for many years. when I started reloading about 40 years ago, just finding supplys was difficult and even after they became readily available thru mail order Ive found hard cast ,not jacketed bullets seem both more accurate and deeper penetrating than most if not all jacketed bullets Ive tried.

I usually make the rounds to the local tire stores and buy several 5 gallon buckets of scrap wheel weights about every 6-9 months, melt clean flux and remove the clips ETC, and pour into aluminum muffin pans that serve as ingot moulds, after mixing in 4%-6% tin to the mix by weight to get the alloy correct for casting well formed and hard bullets suitable for mag handgun velocitys

depending on weight and if they are gascheck designs ETC. of course , you can save a huge amount of money,you get several thousand bullets from a 5 gallon bucket of wheel weights and I seldom need to pay more than 15 cents a lb


you may find this info worth reading and links useful

www.lasc.us/CastBulletNotes.htm

www.castbulletassoc.org/links.shtml

www.sixguns.com/crew/obturation.htm

www.lasc.us/FryxellCommentsCBAlloys.htm

www.recguns.com/Sources/VIIB5.html

www.alchemycastings.com/pdf/bullet.pdf

www.theoutdoorwriter.com/shooting/cast_bullets.htm

www.lasc.us/FryxellFluxing.htm



how about you gentelmen???

[klsm54]

That is something I never ventured into, casting my own that is. Bought some from I believe LazerCast, but I don't shoot enough to need to cast my own. If I was a little younger, and a lot healthier, I might like to look at some black powder cartidge rifle shootin', then it might be fun to start casting my own.

[Jack]

I used to cast all my lead bullets, but, as I've gotten older/lazier, and time is more at a premium, I often buy wadcutters. For the 45 and 38's, commercial cast wadcutters do fine, and if you watch for a sale, you can get some pretty good deals.
There are a few situations where I prefer the soft swaged stuff that Hornady and Speer sell- like 38 wadcutters, and 44/240's in a 3 inch 44 Special. At the low speed of that short barreled 44 Special, I find that soft swaged bullets obturate to the bore nicely, and work well- at 600 or 700 fps.

[340wby]

I have never found commercial bullets of the quality I can produce,
most are sized wrong or too soft for best performance ,
if I can compare to the many examples Ive purchased and tried

[Bill]

I use to cast all my bullets for my handguns and some of my rifles. Never thought of using sawdust for fluxing or even heard of it. I always used candle wax. Always had better luck using my own hard cast bullets than I did using factory cast as I always weighed out the bullets and sorted them by weight and the really off weight bullets I recast.
I have been looking for another .45-70 in a sharps repro and havn't found one yet that I like. One day though.

[340wby]

just as info
IVE used my glock 10mm with a custom 6" barrel with hard cast 200 grain bullets on a few deer and hogs and the results were darn near impossiable to distinguish from factory jacketed in that both kill very effectively.....true the jacketed bullets tended to penetrate less and expand more, than the cast but the differance was minor as far as one shot resulting in a very dead target quickly with hard cast....so don,t think for a second the autoloaders cant use cast also