bullet casting questions

For the new casters, realize that if you put 10 pounds of ready to cast alloy in your pot, you will not be able to cast all 10 pounds of it. There will always be some left you can't get to with the ladle or won't go through the spout.

I have a 20lb Lee electric pot and I I find when I get below about an inch from the bottom, my alloy get weird. Like it's not as hot any longer. My thermometer says I'm still hot but the bullets just don't seem right. So I stop and load up more alloy at that point.

My point is don't count on exactly a certain number of bullets from a certain amount of alloy ingots.

Reading back that sounds negative. Wasn't meant to be though. Carry on.
 
Rigmarol - you mentioned something that probably all of us should have mentioned! :D

Personally, and I'm sure others are the same way . . . I don't even pay attention to the exact weight of what I'm putting in my pot - sometimes it's scrap of various forms . . sometimes it's ingots of various forms - might be from muffin tins or a regular ingot mold. I cast in a 10 pound pot over gas burner and use one of the old Ideal ladles that has the spout and is bottom pour.

For the new caster - as Rigmarol mentioned - you can't expect to get a pound's worth of bullets out of a pound's worth of lead. When you flux, you may loose a little . . . when you pour . . . you may loose a little . . especially when removing the sprue before opening the mold. I know that because of the way I mold, I sometimes drop a cut-off sprue or two. I try to recover and put them back in the pot but may miss one once in a while.

I use lead from whatever source I can get it from. I know in my cartridge reloading, it has saved me a bundle to cast my own. I haven't been shooting much rifled musket in the last few years so the last time I cast (for my 9mm cartridges), I melted down a bunch of .58 Minie Balls that I had cast years ago.

In the long run, for me, casting has worked out well for 50 years. Yea, I could have purchased round balls and minies, etc. - but then there would be the hassle of trying to locate them - either by visiting a gun store or by maill order and paying postage on top of the retail price. To me, it's a lot simpler when I have time, to cast up a bunch of rounds ahead of time and just keep them on hand. I've always done that for RB and now that I'm reloading 38s and 9mm, I just set up and cast for several afternoons and build up a stock of 'em. Right now, I probably have a couple thousand 38 and 9 mm lead bullets on hand which will take me a while to put downrange.
 
I went ahead and picked up a .490 ball mold and a modern minie target mold. I know the .490 runs good out of my rifle with pillow ticking and I'm hoping the minie will be good for plinking.
Anyone tried the lee modern target minie?
 
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