Do most home bullet makers use lead wire for their bullet cores or cast their cores from a core mold?

I always did the core mold thing for two reasons. 1. I could vary precisely the weight of my cores to create exactly the bullet weight desired. 2. I could also vary the ALLOY of my bullet core.

Thoughts?

lead wire is easy for semi mass product custom maker who mostly make target bullet with soft core

but

if you make some different caliber without big quantity of bullet , if you make hunting , silhouette , long range bullet with sevral weight that easy to make cast core with mold and use tin , lead antimony from scrap

by this way you can : adjust alloy density
alloy hardness and even use heat treating alloy

some match bullet maker use cast core with lot of sucess

good shooting

DAN TEC

Pecos
I never found much use for Lee molds for making cast bullets, but they do make right fair molds for making slugs for swaging.
I used the Lee tumble lube six cavity bullet mold for the 200 or 205 gr for swaging 195 or 200 grain 45s, using wheel weights as alloy.
With the completed bullet I could see the faint lines where the grooves og the Lee style bullet was but didn't appear to effect the accuracy.
I'll also save up the bullets from my bullet casting and use those for swaging once I have enough of them.
Jim

Dantec
Is there much bullet casting or swaging practiced in France? I'd love to exchange notes and such with a fellow lead smelter and squasher.
Jim

Arky, I have a core mold from Lyman that works like a charm. My style of bullet casting is to cast bullets for several styles/calibers at once. As a mold gets too hot, I just set it down and keep casting with mold #2 and so on. This way you are cranking out something all the time and it always gave me a thrill at the end to sort out my production and see just what I had actually created.

I never really felt casting cores was much more difficult than chopping lead wire. For sure it is cheaper and more precise than wire.

Pecos
I do basically the same thing, casting with several molds at the same time. I use two Saeco 45-250 SWC four cavities, with a 45-300 grain Saeco four cavity. My buddy, who shoots the same bullet and I set up shop in my back yard and cast all day using three pots. One of us uses the three 45 caliber molds, the other uses 44-240 45-200 and a 357, with one pot heating up.Or I'll cast 45-350 and 45-445s for the 45-70. With a buddy there the bullets pile up, there's plenty of lies told, dirty jokes exchanged, gallons of coffee drank and a good day was had by all. When it gets cold we'll retire to the reloading shed and size and lube.
After three or four sessions and quality control there will be a fair supply of rejects to become swaging slugs.
I'd like to try the Lyman system but never knew anybody who used it.
Jim

dear Arkypete

there is some company in France wich make hand gun bullet greased lead or TMJ on lead core but except some BR shooter any body make rifle bullet

I have start to make some long range bullet for my own use with thick jacquet make by lathe turninh and redraw after I use cast core because that easy to produce and make mold is not difficult

good shooting

DAN TEC

Dan Tec
Way back Nosler made his bullet jackets on a screw lathe using copper wire of the proper diameter. They would drill both ends of the copper rod to the correct depth from both ends leaving a web in between. Then swage the cores in place and bring the bullet to finished size and shape.
Some where I've got an old Nosler 243 bullet it looks like a piece of the machinists art.
Jim

make jacket by lathe turning allow lot of trials possible end for low production volume that save costly money for draw jacket from cup .

main problem is to kep tolerance tight and make batch big enought to doen t need restart production and get several too small lot

good shooting

DAN TEC