Update......
I scored a TC 50cal 370gn Maxi-Ball mold on the EE for a very good price.
$20 for handles at the local gun show.
Life is good!
Now to find soft lead????
M
I'm a little late to this post, but perhaps this will still interest you.
I have owned both the TC .50 and .54 aluminum maxi molds since the 80's. Fine precision molds that fit Lyman or Ohaus handles.
Recently I bought some rooftop chimney pipe lead flashing advertised on Kijiji for about $1.25 per pound.
It is very soft, almost pure lead, and quite suitable for any muzzleloader projectile.
Roofers sell it for beer money, so I am told. Anyway, after casting an entire sheet into balls, I made some calculations, after weighing the balls and all of the debris and trace metals that I skimmed off. I made no attempt to flux any of the trace metals back into the melt, because I wanted them gone, and they floated on top. All of the sprues went back into the melt until the bitter end.
The skimmed off debris and trace metals worked out to about 20% of the weight of the whole, meaning that the actual metal used in the bullets worked out to about $1.50 a pound.
My .490" rifle balls are around 39 to the pound, so that's around $3.85 a hundred.
Pretty cheap compared to swaged lead balls from a store.