My first bullet casting experience...

[IN_Varmntr]

Went rather well today. I received my Lee 6-cavity .452" 230grain Tumble-Lube bullet mold, mold handles, Lee .452" sizing and lubricating die, Lee Liquid Alox lube and Frankford Arsenal Drop Free spray this past week.

I melted down a bunch of lead today and came out with just over 750 bullets. The lead I used was primarily once-fired Missouri Bullet Company lead that was previously molded into their "Softball" bullets. I used a home-made sifter that I made out of hardware screen and 1x1 boards with corner bracing.

I have some experience with lead molds as I mold my own jigheads for smallmouth fishing in the rocky shores of Lake Erie. Just a little different as this time it was for bullets.

My first thoughts of the Lee aluminum mold was disappointment. Out of the first 125ish bullets, I only had about a 4 out of 6 bullet success rate. But after giving the mold a little more time to break in and get really good and hot, all 6 bullet cavities began filling out quite nicely with 1 here and there that went back into the pot to be ran again. I am fully satisfied with this mold for the money.

I cleaned the mold prior using it then coated the mold with the Frankford Arsenal Drop Free spray and went to town.

It was a rather slow process as I used 1 melting pot to melt down the used lead and skim the top of impurities with a spoon, while using another pot to do the pouring. I filled a large coffee can with impurities skimmed from the top of the Hot Pot. I utilized this process to try to keep as much of the impurities out of the pouring pot as possible. The pouring pot is rather deep and is hard to skim impurities from the surface so skimming from the Hot Pot is much easier. So from the time it took me to fill up the Hot Pot to pouring either ingots in our homemade ingot mold or pouring the lead directly into the melting pot, I produced ~750 bullets in just less than 5 hours time.

Complete setup.

Hot Pot with lead ready to be melted down.

Hot Pot with melted and skimmed lead ready to go into the pouring pot.

Our Lee pouring pot.

Bullet drop tub with water.

Bullets fresh from the water.

Bullets all ready to be lubed, sized, relubed, then loaded.

I'm really excited about casting my own bullets from now on. I'm sort of kicking myself for not doing so awhile ago, but I haven't had the time to do so until now.

 

[TGUNTER]

I use to do it a long time ago and those good looking bullet make me want to start again. Congradulations on a job well done.

 

[parson]

Cast Boolits - Dedicated To The World Of Cast Bullets!

Those are some good lookin' projectiles. If you haven't already found the site above, I highly recommend it. It's by far the most informative site I've found on casting.
parson

 

[IN_Varmntr]

Thanks fellas.

I've already checked out Cast Boolits, but thanks for the link!

 

[Wabatuckian]

Yup, them's boolits, lightly frosted!

You might try skipping the sizing step. Those are made to work without sizing, and they do just fine in my pistol.

WRT your bottom pour furnace, have you ever tried skimming, then dumping kitty litter on top? I've seen this done and it keeps repeated oxidization away.

Can't do this with my small 5lb furnace as I use a ladle, but it seems to work for those who do use the method.

Josh <><

 

[IN_Varmntr]

No sir, have not used the kitty litter method. I've got enough bullets now to last me awhile. When I get some more lead, I'm going to pour it into ingots so I'll just throw them in the Lee pot and go to town pouring instead of melting, skimming, filling up the Lee pot then pouring. It should go faster that way.

I've got plenty of other ingots laying around, but those are for my father's lead jighead mold stash. I must stay away from them...

But on a better note, my grandfather is a mechanic who owns his own shop, so I'm going to see how much WW lead he has and go from there as well!

 

[IN_Varmntr]

From scrap lead, to ready to load...

Lubed up and ready to be sized. Not every bullet needed sizing. In fact, the majority of them didn't, but a few needed heavy resizing, so the 15 minutes it took to size all of them was no big deal.

Setting on the ram ready to be sized.

Sized bullet hopper almost full.

Sized and relubed. Once they dry, I'll start loading them up.