Need help choosing my first mold

To make things easier you can use the lee alox as is but I went straight to using 45/45/10. It's a mix of lee alox(45%), johnsons pastewax (I used minwax from the flooring section at Home Depot) (45%) and 10% mineral spirits.

Here is a much better description should you decide to try it. http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?67654-Tumble-Lubing-Made-Easy-amp-Mess-Free
I copied and pasted that in the bullet lube recipe sticky at the top of this forum.
BLL (Ben's Liqiud Lube) is even better but you have to order the SC Johnson One Step No Buff floor wax from the US as they don't export it to Canada and I've not been able to find a suitable substitute up here. Got mine off of Amazon.com. Dries way faster and just as tack free. There's a huge thread on it stickied in the lube forum on cast boolits.
 
First mold? Buy a Lee, at least if you screw it up learning it is not expensive to replace

I have never cast a bullet yet but am just wondering how you could screw up a mold? Getting bullet stuck or something?
(in that case cant you just melt it out)
 
I have never cast a bullet yet but am just wondering how you could screw up a mold? Getting bullet stuck or something?
(in that case cant you just melt it out)

Brass ones can warp if you dont watch how you heat them. Aluminum ones can gall if you dont watch your heat. Can damage them by not properly lubricating them etc etc etc
 
Is this a good style to start with?

I think it is a tumble lube style... But can I step up my lubing practices in the future with this style bullet?



Itching to start casting :D

Hope you have better luck than I did with that mold. Tumbling bullets, poor accuracy, very sensitive to seating depth. I switched to the Lee 124 gr. round nose non-tumble lube bullet and the problems went away. Maybe it was the gun but I could never get this style of bullet to shoot worth a crap no matter what I tried. BTW I still tumble lube the 124 gr. non-tumble lube bullet and they work fine.
 
After shooting many thousands of Alox (Alox/JPW) bullets I'm getting tired of the smoke and dirty cylinder. Smelting/casting was fun for a while but now slowly switching to plated.

How is the smoke and cleanup for powder coated bullet? Find with alox after 100rnds my 686 is all yucky, cylinder is tightning up to point of affecting my Double Action trigger pull. 300 rnds of plated still clean and smooth. Titegroup powder.
 
After shooting many thousands of Alox (Alox/JPW) bullets I'm getting tired of the smoke and dirty cylinder. Smelting/casting was fun for a while but now slowly switching to plated.

How is the smoke and cleanup for powder coated bullet? Find with alox after 100rnds my 686 is all yucky, cylinder is tightning up to point of affecting my Double Action trigger pull. 300 rnds of plated still clean and smooth. Titegroup powder.

Properly powder coated and loaded, only powder / carbon residue. It's like shooting jacketed only without copper fouling.

To the original poster, ChromeArty, I personally would not recommend alcohol consumption and molten metal... Might want to look up the phrase "tinsel fairy" and also look up some pictures of burns caused by said phrase and also just plain old lead burns. Anything that can impair your senses / judgement / reflexes, etc. has no place around molten lead. Way too dangerous IMHO. Ingots look good though.
 
After shooting many thousands of Alox (Alox/JPW) bullets I'm getting tired of the smoke and dirty cylinder. Smelting/casting was fun for a while but now slowly switching to plated.

How is the smoke and cleanup for powder coated bullet? Find with alox after 100rnds my 686 is all yucky, cylinder is tightning up to point of affecting my Double Action trigger pull. 300 rnds of plated still clean and smooth. Titegroup powder.

from my experience if done right it's on par with plated. there is a bit of a burnt plastic smell to it but not bad at all. i shoot them in my glock with the stock barrel and don't have any leading. I mostly use a NOE 135gr bullet for 9mm but now that i have some time I'm hoping to cast up a bunch of 147gr HP (same bullets as the picture on page 3) and the 155gr solid version from the same mold. the couple hundred that I've already shot seem to work just as good.
 
I think I'll be moving into powder coating pretty quickly... so six one half dozen :)

Powder coating is quite good if you don't shoot large quantities. It is somewhat labor intensive and I only use it for high velocity cast rifle bullets for that reason. For my pistol bullets the regular lubesizing works good and I can easily lubesize about 600 bullets an hour, compared to about 50 bullets/hour for powder coating.
 
Hope you have better luck than I did with that mold. Tumbling bullets, poor accuracy, very sensitive to seating depth. I switched to the Lee 124 gr. round nose non-tumble lube bullet and the problems went away. Maybe it was the gun but I could never get this style of bullet to shoot worth a crap no matter what I tried. BTW I still tumble lube the 124 gr. non-tumble lube bullet and they work fine.

I ended up ordering a different mould due to a warning about this particular moulds short comings.

Thank you for your 2 cents though! ... I am definitely glad I didn't buy that mould!
 
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