I gave up serious casting for years until all this craziness started with ammo prices. I was still acquiring lead when the price was right.

Then I broke out the molds and started again I had and have hundreds of lbs of wheel weights and other lead around.

Not considering my time I am casting bullets for very cheap. I am retired now so my time isn't worth as much I guess.

When I was able to work over time and buy more bullets for hour worked then I could make them per hour I brought them.

Last fall I cast around 10 thousand bullets and looking at the price of bullets it was well worth it. Mostly 230 gr 240 gr and 158gr.

Then if one starts looking at the bigger cast bullets it is very well worth it.

I drop mine right out of the mold into a five gallon bucket of water after a day they are a lot harder to push through the sizer then when less then a day old.

I don't temper heat treat or do any other thing to them.

The simpler the better for me as I stated I have had no trouble killing things with them.

Would I carry them on a very high price expensive hunt no but then I would be carrying a rifle instead.

But I do trust them to kill critters in my every day hunts and for some defensive situations.

OK . Thanks. I swung by 1 local tire shop today . But someone already get their used wheel weights. Shipping costs is the bane of the Alaskan. Everything up here has to be shipped in in one way or other .

P=dog knows this alloy stuff too.
I pretty much learned how to paper patch by reading his posts.

water quenching an alloy hardens it up all the way through.
but the heat has to be all the way through the bullet too.

you have to wait for it to take affect.
your turning a 3% antimony alloy into a hardness that rivals a 12% antimony alloy.

it takes a little while for the final hardness to settle down and become steady.
then it maintains that hardness for a long time.
20 years or more.
[20 is about the longest I know of anyone testing them after water quenching]

on the other hand Tin only alloys soften over time.

tin also has a negative effect on water hardening an alloy, it retards the movement of the antimony crystals within the alloy, because the two elements form a longer chain within the alloy matrix and stay locked together.
[antimony precipitation it's called]
you will see some benefits from dropping or oven quenching a 5/5 alloy but it's lower melt point and tin content will lower the amount of hardening available.

OK, I don't want to get in trouble with the mods soI dont know that I should continue this here. But, it seems there is alot more to this bullet casting than one originally thinks.
One other quick question tho, is it best to size Before heat/water hardening or after? It seems the greater the bullet diameter the harder it would be to push a tough bullet thru a lubrasizer??

I have no problems with this discussion so far.

I water drop from the mold, but then I do more luring than sizing, in that I choose my sizing die to be a little larger than the bullet my moods are casting.

Molds cast bullets at different diameters depending on the alloy used for casting. So if a bullet casts at 0.358" with the alloy you are using, a 0.359" sizing die will be easier to use than a 0.358" die and significantly easier than a 0.357" die.

Some Ruger revolvers I've seen won't shoot a bullet smaller than 0.432" accurately. So there is no use in sizing to 0.429".

You need to know the particulars for your firearm to get the optimum performance from it.

I went to Alox and lee push through sizers I have no trouble sizing 460gr 458s.

I do it in three steps a lite coat of lube size then a heavier coat of lube.

I am temped to try the powder coating routine for my 460 bullets.

I have a friend that does it so maybe I well have him do a dozen or so for me and try them.

Ok.

I see Beartooth offers bullets in a few different sizes per each bullet offered. I have a couple good friends that are pretty serious revolver men . One has a bunch of custom wheel guns that he customized and buth have Linebaugh Bisleys. As one is a retired gunsmith he will know how to and have the stuff to measure throats.

quote:

Originally posted by Cold Trigger Finger:
Ok.

I see Beartooth offers bullets in a few different sizes per each bullet offered. I have a couple good friends that are pretty serious revolver men . One has a bunch of custom wheel guns that he customized and buth have Linebaugh Bisleys. As one is a retired gunsmith he will know how to and have the stuff to measure throats.

If you can find a copy of Veral Smith's book on cast bullets, that would be a great resource for you. Also, Lyman's load manual for cast bullets would a very good book to have in your library.

OK, I'll try to get a copy of both.

quote:

Originally posted by Cold Trigger Finger:
Ok.

I see Beartooth offers bullets in a few different sizes per each bullet offered. I have a couple good friends that are pretty serious revolver men . One has a bunch of custom wheel guns that he customized and buth have Linebaugh Bisleys. As one is a retired gunsmith he will know how to and have the stuff to measure throats.

I watched a friend recently (last October) shoot a large bovine (about 1,600 lbs or thereabouts) with Beartooth .44 Mag bullets and they were uniformly soft. I was a bit disappointed that they wouldn't hold their shape well at all.

quote:

I'm mainly trying to decide if it would be better and more cost effective to buy bullets as opposed to casting my own

All depends on how much you are going to shoot a few hundred rounds buy them.
Thousands of rounds and you have time to cast your own.

I have shot 10 plus thousand 240gr 44 rounds all of them my own cast bullet reloads.

That's around 1500.00 worth of bullets if I brought them. A guessimate of 5000.00 if I would have brought factory loaded ones.


I most likely would not have shot that many if I had to have paid that kind of money.

I have another 3000 or so ready to load.

Casting pays for me.

Ive been studying up on it all. Spending time in the Cast Bullets forum here and on Cast Boolits. I dont want to start out by making lots of mistakes. And I will need to lay in supplies. I do get tired of running out of bullets to reload.

Is there an advantage to a electric bottom pour pot over just a lead pot and ladle?

quote:

Originally posted by Cold Trigger Finger:
Is there an advantage to a electric bottom pour pot over just a lead pot and ladle?

The electric bottom pours are a lot faster and easier.

When I get to casting I use 2 20 twenty pound lee production pots. With several 6 cavity molds I can mold a lot of bullets in a day.

If I casting specialty bigger bullets I use one pot.

Now that I built a new shop I have room to leave the casting table up all the time.
I might put it away as I went on a casting spree last fall and did many thousands.

But then every time I pull the trigger a bullet goes away.

Wow, thats goin ahead oner for sure.
I think I would be safe with a 10 lb pot to get started. Might as well make smaller batches of good metal.
When you are getting your mold up to temp, do you drop the first few batches , on the bench and put them back in the pot ?

Carpetman,
I take exception that jacketed bullets are far superior to cast bullets...A "hard" cast Keith simi wadcuter can't be stopped, it will out penetrate most big game rifles..and its deadly in a hot loaded .45 colt..Ive seen 3 elk killed with that bullet, 2 in 44 and 1 in 45 Colt..Impressive kills at under 50 yards in all three instances...

I asure you it would not have come apart on Cold Trigger fingers head shot moose..The one elk shot with the 45 was a tad below between the eyes, wrecked the brain, then the spinal cord for about 6 inches and the nose was ever so slightly expanded or mis-shapened is a better term, That bullet could have been reloaded again..Im no Elmer Keith fan but he did know his pistols and what worked best..

Some of the time I drop them back into the pot as well as the spruces as they come off the mold.

I use to use a 10 and 20 then I came into another 20 and gave my 10 away to a beginner.

Using a 6 cavity mold for 230s and 240s one goes though a lot of lead fast.

Around 4 mold drops per pound counting spruces maybe fewer if your spruces are big.

So about 480 240gr bullets per pot but that can very a lot depending on how much one spills how much one feeds back in, how big your spruces are ect..

With bullets that I don't shoot a lot of I tend to be careful and pickier. Like casting 460 gr 458s for my 45-70 or 300gr and 315s for my 44s and 460S@W

quote:

Originally posted by carpetman1:
I cast bullets and shoot them, but I'm curious as to why you would want to take a chance shooting moose with them when jacketed are far superior. You can read by candlelight, but nowadays, why?

I've taken Moose, Asian Buffalo, Grizzly, Carribou, all with hard cast bullets and complete penetration as in exits. I fail to see the superiority with "jacketed revolver bullets.

It takes some searching to find the manufacturers of .476 bullet molds.
To get started casting I'm planning on the 400 gr Lee 2 gang mold. And the 310 gr. 430 mold for my friends Redhawk. The 480 mold is plain base and the 44 mold is gas check so I can get started on learning to gc.
Eventually I would like to get a 3 gang LBT 440 gr gc mold for my 480. But with getting everything started I think the Lee will be fine. For my 10mm eventually I'de like a 220 gr mold but will start with one of the Lee 175 gr bb tc molds.

Not that it was part of the original question but became a topic within the discussion I'm going to have to be in the "I don't think jacketed bullets are superior to cast" and especially so in a revolver. I haven't killed a head of game with a jacketed bullet in over 20 years, having gone completely over to cast in rifles and revolvers. From my experience cast words every bit as good as jacketed and maybe a bit better in some instances.

Cold, check in with Accurate Molds, if you haven't already. Tom should have something that will work for you and they're good molds.

I'll use the bottom pour feature for handgun bullets from multi-cavity molds. For rifle bullets, no sir, my "Teutonic Sense of Order" and "anal retentiveness" won't allow for the variation. They all get hand dipped.

quote:

But with getting everything started I think the Lee will be fine.

I don't cast many rifle bullets only for my 45-70 now.

I have a lot of steel molds I have not used in years. I now if given the choice I use lee alum.

I have some lee molds that have cast many thousands of bullets if not tens of thousands.

If one wears out and needed to be replaced the cost per bullet would be really cheap.

I would be way more afraid of a steel mold being ruin by rusting then I would be about a Alum. mold wearing out.

I checked out Accurate Molds. They have about a million mold options. They do have a design that has a .4" meplet and drops a 420 gr bullet when cast from wheey weights.
So, it seems a good option is not too much tin, 3% antimony then bake the bullets for an hour on 450º and dump them into water for a week. Lube, size, load and shoot. .

That Lee .476 mold is a good bullet. I cast that one for my Linebaugh revolvers. It is a bit long in the nose for the Freedom Arms revolvers, but that can be overcome with trimming brass if necessary. I also have a Ballisticast four cavity mold with two 350 LFN and 2 400 LFN.

Hitman; beins the Lee molds are real affordable. I've thot about getting both the 325 GC and the 400 PB mold. Should be able to space out the time of the pours by using 2 molds once they get up to temp.
The only thing I dont know about is if the 325s and 400s will print dramically different when target shooting.

When I got this 480 , I was thinking 1 bullet would do all I need. Now I'm thinking about 3 molds and who knows what else.
Good thing I don't let my wife know this.

quote:

Originally posted by Cold Trigger Finger:

Good thing I don't let my wife know this.

Haha! I get it!

quote:

Originally posted by Cold Trigger Finger:
Hitman; beins the Lee molds are real affordable. I've thot about getting both the 325 GC and the 400 PB mold. Should be able to space out the time of the pours by using 2 molds once they get up to temp.
The only thing I dont know about is if the 325s and 400s will print dramically different when target shooting.

When I got this 480 , I was thinking 1 bullet would do all I need. Now I'm thinking about 3 molds and who knows what else.
Good thing I don't let my wife know this.

These two bullet weights do print differently in my Freedom Arms revolver. In fact, I have two different front sight blades I use, depending on the weight of bullet being fired.

I'll probably stay with the heavy weights then . In the past I stuck with 400 and 410 gr bullets in my 480s. I just found them more generally comfortable to shoot . And of course the 325 gr XTP wasnt a great penetrator.

After looking at them I would go with the lee 400 the 325 looks short. Drive the 400 any where around 1000fps or more it well shoot through a lot of things

Ya . I'm hard pressed to believe that velocity doesnt matter as far as body slaming a big animal on the ground. But I also dont want to be a guinea pig by wackin a bear in the ball and socket of a front leg at 25 ' with a 325 gr cast bullet @ 1400 fps only to find it blows up on the joint.
So a 400+ gr bullet at around 1200 fps will have to do.
I dont know, maybe that 380 gr Belt Mt bullet pushed faster would be better ???
One thing I do know is that system reliability is more important than max velocity. So max working pressure/velocity is just that. Max.!

quote:

So a 400+ gr bullet at around 1200 fps will have to do.

That combo well smash a lot of flesh and bone.

If you shot a bear between the eyes it most likely travel through the head and down the spinal column into the body some ways.

I know a 44 315gr WFN at 1300 well shoot through 4 feet of black bear front to back.

I've never been much on relying on hesd shots on bear. When things get happening fast , pinpoint accuracy is a myth, as has been proven beyond any doubt by a certain guide . Either that or his sig line is bs. Which it is btw.
Anyway, I agree that on a good noggin shot. Almost any half decent bullet and velocity will work very well. But, the besr I shot with my 44 Redhawk 320 gr CPB LFN @ 1200 fps took 2 good chest hits and was still high speed ambulatory. He had blood just pouring out his nose and mouth. And was hurt bad. But still had his wits and feet fully functioning . Even after 3 or 4 minutes . The time it took me to grab my 458 off my 4 wheeler and go dump him .
The ability to kill isnt all I'm after. But the ability to stop. At least as much so as a 480 Ruger can.

Phil Shoemaker recent stopped a killed a large bear with a 9mm loaded with 147 grain hard cast.

Actually, according to the story. The bear was by and large in one spot when the shootin started.
I give him high marks for that one. Rim Rock sells that bullet ( they are Buffalo Bore's supplier ) and they market it as a 148 gr. I'm planning on trying them in my wifes pistol. Those and the Lehigh Penetrators.
Anyway that situation proved the amount a hot loaded 9 will penetrate .

quote:

Originally posted by Cold Trigger Finger:
Actually, according to the story. The bear was by and large in one spot when the shootin started.
I give him high marks for that one. Rim Rock sells that bullet ( they are Buffalo Bore's supplier ) and they market it as a 148 gr. I'm planning on trying them in my wifes pistol. Those and the Lehigh Penetrators.
Anyway that situation proved the amount a hot loaded 9 will penetrate .

No the bear was not in the bear was not in one spot. The best came for them and appeared out of the brush between Phil and his clients. The clients hit the ground and Phil started shooting.

I read several web site where Phil posted about this.

quote:

I've never been much on relying on hesd shots on bear

The head shot illustration was an example of the type of penetration you can expect to get from that combo of bullet and velocity.

Stopping power with a handgun is a myth along with most rifles.

Unless you destroy the CNS hitting the brain or cutting the spinel column from the top of the shoulders to the brain.

One can expect the critter you are shooting to be mobile to some extent

I seen to many critters with a shoulder smashed and heart and lungs turn into mush keep moving.

It is amazing how even with both shoulders broken how some critters can keep moving.

I am a firm believer in keeping shooting until the animal is no longer is moving.

Then on large dangerous critters in paying the insurance shooting them again even if you think they are dead.

Ammo is cheap lost game or visits to the ER are very expensive.

quote:

Originally posted by p dog shooter:
I am a firm believer in keeping shooting until the animal is no longer is moving.

Then on large dangerous critters in paying the insurance shooting them again even if you think they are dead.

Ammo is cheap lost game or visits to the ER are very expensive.

I agree completely.

Well , I 've killed several brown bear with 416s and several more with 458s . At close range . And a chest shot most of the time just flattens them. I mean just R.F.N. just a nice big heap of dead bear. Several of my friends have had identical results .
I dont expect identical results from a lot smaller cartridge , but.
Generally speaking a 338 will knock a bear down . A 375 will do it more often and gennerally hold the bear down a bit longer. Both of them are usually 3 shot bear killers . The 416 - 458 are pretty consistent 2 shot killers . But , the first shot if its a half decent chest shot just flattens them.
The results I got from my 44 were similar to what I've seen from the 06. Which is what John Limbaugh told me was normal. Reminded me of something Ross Seyfreid wrote that a 44 mag , even heavy loaded was kinda like sending a boy to do a man's job. Which is why I got a 480 as soon as I could.
I emailed Veral Smith about my quest for max meplat diameter. He replied , and explained to me that once a certain width ratio was exceeded the bullet has a tendency to tumble which stops straight penetration and generally doesnt kill as well as straight penetration. That makes sense to me. With his kind words, He got a customer for life.
So , lack of stability seems to be the reason for the 70-80% rule for meplat diameter.
Tho I may be bull headed and entrenched in my position. There are many things I'm very open to learn. Thats why I asked my questions here , where I KNOW there are many members that have skills,knowledge, experience and abilities that I dont . And they are gracious enough to share that .
I very much appreciate all the replies !!!
Most all my experience with brown bear is with big bore rifles. It wasnt until 94 that I considered a rifle smaller than a 375 HandH. That was after I worked with Waterrat and he explained to me about the success guys out west had with the 300gr Barnes Originals. 049" jacketed rnsp in the 338 Win. And Ruger came out with with the stainless M77 Mk ll RSP. course, as soon as winter came that year I had it rebarreled to 458 Winchester.
So, my experience doesn't exactly cross refrence. So in many ways I'm a greenhorn with heavy revolvers.

quote:

Originally posted by Whitworth:

quote:

Originally posted by p dog shooter:
I am a firm believer in keeping shooting until the animal is no longer is moving.

Then on large dangerous critters in paying the insurance shooting them again even if you think they are dead.

Ammo is cheap lost game or visits to the ER are very expensive.

I agree completely.

I agree completely . But, I want to see something substantial happening.

quote:

Originally posted by Lamar:
BHN only tells part of the story.
a 15 bhn bullet can be supple and malleable or it can be brittle it's all in how the alloy is made up.
22 bhn would indicate an alloy that is 4% tin and 12% antimony.
or it could be 3% antimony and about .75% tin but the alloy has been heat treated to about 430-F for an hour and dropped into water.

the other thing that will affect how the alloy reacts on impact is velocity and meplat diameter.
a higher velocity coupled with a smaller meplat and a balanced alloy will have much better penetrating capability's.
a larger meplat, high velocity, and high antimony alloy [not balanced with other constituents] will generally have a tendency to break up especially on hard bone.

if you knew someone that casts their own they could work up something nice like a
.3% zinc .5% copper 3% antimony and 1% tin alloy that would be malleable and tough enough to take higher pressures it could be heat treated at about 450-F for a full hour then water quenched for a bhn in the 24-25 area.

Lamar; Thank you for this. There is so much info in this thread that I have to read it all, think on it for a while and re-read it.
As I previously posted, I have shattered a cast bullet and got turned off to them because of that. Now with time and learning I'm seeing that there were probably a few factors working against me there.
In my head I knew there had to be other factors at play because people shoot cast out of rifles and have good success with rounds like the 45/70 .
Thank y'all
Glen.

I used some hard cast keith bullets that a friend made up for me. He used Keiths formula and said the were hard as hell..I shot two deer with those bullets using a 41 Magnum, one bullet hit the deer under the chin and ground up his backbone for about a foot, it made and awesome wound in those hard vertabres and bounced of the rocks and headed for town..The other deer took a shot thru both shoulders and it broke then and whistled off into the desert. I lent the pistol to another guy who shot some whitetail with it, including one a full length body shot that exited, and neither of us recovered a bullet..the guy that cast those Keith bullets has shot all mannor of big game with the 44 mag. and 45 colt..Sorry I can't recall the hardness but it was 1x? cooled in water. Keith recommended that bullet hardness in a number of is articles. The cold water treatment was new to all of us back then and I never heard of it again until just recently when I was discussing muzzle loading with a friend.