I want to cast my own

Wendy. Casting is a great hobby and a great supplement to reloading. Ive been casting for about 3 years now so Im new school, but in that time Ive probably cast 10,000 bullets (Im able to cast at work sometimes, for hours). That statement leads me to this one, get multi cavity molds, they crank out bullets fast, and while you may not be worried about speed, casting for an hour and ending up with 40 bullets just sounds annoying to me.

Finding lead may be the biggest deciding factor, if you're a scrounger you can make it work. I once found a 15 pound diving weight.....at the top of a mountain, must have got mixed into the gravel they trucked up for the trail. I grabbed it and took it 3 miles back to the car. Do that and you'll have pert near free bullets, short of your effort put in.

As stated lymans cast bullet book will teach you all you want to know and more if you are so inclined. I've read it, made my eyes cross, I now just cast for good fill out, proper-ish hardnessand good fit. Casting is like so many other things, some folks will tell uou that if you aren't getting down to the microscopic level of intricacies you're doing it wrong, and others will tell you just do whats needed to make it work, Im in the latter group.

Ill also recommend powder coating, it negates alot of hardness issues. And buy in is quite low. $15 used toaster oven, $10 in powder $5 pony beads (optional) some non stick foil and a tuperware snagged from the kitchen and you're cookin.
 
Buy {used} clip-on-wheel weights. Found on Cast Boolits web site in the For Sale Form or from automotive junk yards. The lead material in automotive wheel weights is hardened enough so to not streak itself in a barrels bore yet easy to dip / pour and make bullets of.
 
"Some advice from a 35+ year caster: back away from the ladle and spend about $70 for a Lee bottom pour furnace. If you go the ladle route, it will be so time consuming and tedious that you will give up on casting in no time."

I'm inclined to disagree with you. Some molds will never cast a good bullet from a bottom pour pot. The only way to get a good cast is do the run with a ladle. It's also a decent learning process. I cast my first bullets with pot and ladle on 8/19/54 on my 16th birthday. The pot, ladle mold and a push through sizing die were birthday presents.
I will agree that it does get slow but it's never been tedious for me. Naturally, YMMV.
A good friend I used to shoot with several times a week only shoots cast bullets He's probably been casting almost as long as I have and to this day it's pot and mold. He shoots his cast bullets in competition against people shooting jacketed bullets usually places in the top three or four.

There are a few guns I shoot cast in more for the nostalgia than anything else, one a 1911 M94 30-30, the other a 1981 issue M94 30-30. Once I get the mold and proper sizing die I'll be doing the same thing with a 1951 M94 in .32 Win. Spl. I'll do all the reloading with the old Lyman 310 tong tools.
Most of my shooting has been with cast and for a while I was probably shooting 90 to 100+ rounds of cast loads for every jacketed. All my handguns get cast bullets exclusively.
Paul B.
 
I started reloading back about 1955. Then a few years later got into casting bullets. We used plumbers lead, and wheel weights. Then the local news paper decided to quit using lead in the printing process and they were selling off their printer's lead. I got a truck load of that stuff. Still have some left. Reloading and casting bullets have been good hobbies to go along with the shooting.
 
"Some advice from a 35+ year caster: back away from the ladle and spend about $70 for a Lee bottom pour furnace. If you go the ladle route, it will be so time consuming and tedious that you will give up on casting in no time."

I'm inclined to disagree with you. Some molds will never cast a good bullet from a bottom pour pot. The only way to get a good cast is do the run with a ladle.
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Well, Paul, thousands of guys with bottom pour furnaces will disagree with you. In fact, most of the guys who shoot in Bullseye Competition, which involves shooting one handed at 50 yards with a 1911, use a bottom pour furnace. Personally, I've got more than a dozen moulds, including moulds that cast hollow point and hollow base bullets, and none of them are crying for a ladle. If you stop and think about it, a mould doesn't know where the lead is coming from when it enters the mould. Just MHO.

Don
 
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