A co-worker recently inherited a bunch of reloading stuff, which I took much of it off his hands. One of the things I pick up was about 2000 .224 bullets that were labeled MEL. Does anyone know what type of bullets these are? This guy did a bunch of bench rest shooting, but I've never heard of MEL bullets.

Could they be by a custom bullet maker whose initials are MEL?

muck

MEL was a bullet and barrel maker back in the early 50's and 60's. They made very fine barrels of .224 caliber for the shooting enthusiast. They also made custom weight bullets for their barrels.
Many of the early barrels were for the .220 Swift in a 1:16" twist.
MEL also made barrels for Melvin Johnson and his new conversion of the M1 Carbine, the 5.7 MMJ ( a necked down .30 Carbine too .224)
I* have one of these little carbines and it shoots well.
MEL barrels were considered as good as an average barrel maker such as Iver Johnson.
Their bullets were well made and would take the pressures associated with 4,000 feet per second velocities.
I do not believe that MEL and Melvin Johnson are the same same. I could be wrong.

That could be him. Judging from some of the other reloading components I picked up, I figured they were 30+ years old. Thanks for the information.