casting bullets questions???

[sisiphunter]

Hello all,

I have been reloading for a while now and love it, now I may be interested in casting bullets but I have a few questions. Your help would be much appriciated.

Will it work for me?? I use 44mag/sp in a Marlin lever rifle, 303 brit in enfields, 30-30 in an old rechambered Schmit ruben. Or is this more reserved for revolvers/old singles (45-70, etc)??

Is it cheaper than buying my normal Hornady bullets for $25-$35 per 100??

At my range, which is very private (more of a work range), there are hundreds of pounds of bullets in the burms, can I just use this to cast with instead of buying lead?? Mostly fired into these burms is FMJ 40 S&W(Win, CCI, Speer) and 12ga slug(Fed). Also, the other odd rifle calibers (but few and far between)...I was looking at the burms the other day and saw mostly bare lead laying around with the odd jacket laying there. Wouldn't be overly hard to seperate. Can I use this lead????????

Sorry for all of the questions, this is just a new concept to me and I am looking for ways to cut more costs and further refine/get personal with my reloading and shooting if ya know what I mean.

Thanks for any input. Matt

 

[hunter64]

Will it work for me?? I use 44mag/sp in a Marlin lever rifle.
If you are using a marlin lever then most of them love .434 bullets, not saying that .430 won't work but they will give you leading like you wouldn't believe. You will need to find an appropriate sized bullet mold.

303 Brit in enfields.
Very easy to just buy a Lee C312-185-1R Double mold, a .314 Lube and size kit, some gas checks and away you go.

30-30 in an old rechambered Schmit ruben.One of the most forgiving and easiest rifle bullets to cast for, Lyman 311041 is made for the 30-30 as is the same bullet for your .303 Brit only size it to .311 with a different lube and size kit.

Or is this more reserved for revolvers/old singles (45-70, etc)??
Not at all, I have cast for my rifles for about 30 years.

Is it cheaper than buying my normal Hornady bullets for $25-$35 per 100??
Once you have all the equipment (cheap or expensive) as long as you have a source of lead, the bullets cost about 2-6 cents depending if you need a gas check or not.

At my range, which is very private (more of a work range), there are hundreds of pounds of bullets in the berms, can I just use this to cast with instead of buying lead?? Mostly fired into these berms is FMJ 40 S&W(Win, CCI, Speer) and 12ga slug(Fed). Also, the other odd rifle calibers (but few and far between)...I was looking at the berms the other day and saw mostly bare lead laying around with the odd jacket laying there. Wouldn't be overly hard to separate. Can I use this lead????????

Yes you can use this lead but I would be very careful because what can happen is water can get between the copper jacket and the lead that is inside the jacket and if you add this water to an already hot pot full of molten lead then you will be visited by the tinsel fairy. Hot lead will be showed everywhere and it is not a good thing. Most of this lead that you will find in a berm is soft so you might have to alloy it with other Wheel Weight lead, it would need to be hardness tested to see. If you mine your berm for this lead, make sure you fill a bucket full of it then slowly increase the temp so that the water will evaporate first before the lead melts.

I have just scratched the surface of making your own bullets but for more info and more than enough reading and info, jump over to http://castboolits.gunloads.com/ and the whole site is on how to make cast bullets.

Happy Bullet making

 

[commonman]

Hunter64 has pretty much covered it well there, only thing I will add is in regard to the Schmidt Rubin 30-30. I have one of those too and use lead loads. I have found that mine has a very tight barrel (shoots very well) and seems to work best when I size to .309 with hard lead.

 

[sisiphunter]

Thank you very much for all of this info.....

One more question though are these bullets fouling much harder to deal with in my bores??? all of what I load now is jacketed and I have to deal with the copper fouling, not much for lead...I would assume the pure lead (lead alloy i guess) would be much of the same only possibly a different cleaning product...

Thanks again. Matt

 

[hunter64]

If the bullets are sized correctly and you use the correct lube then all you have is powder fouling to clean out. I would buy some commercial lube at first like Lar's Red or some other high speed lube to get your feet wet and not produce fouling. Do lots of reading on the cast boolits site and you will have lots of enjoyment in making your own and saving money. Well you really don't save much money, you just shoot way more, LOL.