new to casting, please advise

[scmcadam]

I have decided to cast my own handgun bullets.  I have melted some wheel weights in an old cast iron pot I had on a turkey cooker, fluxed it, and poured it into a small bread pan, I guess that is what u call it, and I have brick sized ingots.  I want to cast for 380 acp, 9mm, 45 acp and possibly 40 s+w.  I would like to know what equipment I need next, I have decided on Lee brand due to cost.  I have looked in forum for advantage of a bottom pour pot, is there any other than ease of operation?  Also someone has told me the 2 cavity molds work better than the 6, please give some input?  Do I need to size these bullets,if so to what size, and will these bullets lead my bore?  Will I need gas checks or could I just load some jacked bullets to clean or use a filler such as grits?  I am going to be using these for plinking so there is alot of le-way for mistakes.  I am doing this so I can afford to shoot more with my kids, any help would greatly be appreciated along with some hands on help if anyone lives near me, I am in the middle Georgia area.

Thanks

[Thomas Krupinski]

To start off with a Lee bottom pour furnace is the way to go.  Faster and easier to pour with than dipping, I have tried both.  Get the 20 pound capacity furnace, just a little more but I like them better than the 10's.  I also like the one with the 4" clearance as it has a mould shelf to lay your mould on while you pour.

I have both the 2 and 6 cavity Lee pistol moulds.  Get the 6 cavity!  Faster, stabiler, easier to control mould tempature, and you cut the sprue with the handle rather than knocking the sprue cutter with a mallet.

For the cartridges and use you listed, get the Lee tumble lube design bullets and lube those with the Lee Liquid Alox.  Fast and easy and just adjust your powder charge to get the speed not too low nor too high to prevent leading.  For cleaning out lead use a Tornado spiral brush, Hoppes Lead Remover or just a plain dry bore brush.  Stay away from trying to shoot it out with jacketed bullets.  Also make sure you have all of the jacket fouling out of the bore before using lead bullets.  If you have jacket fouling in there when you start it will contribute towards leading.

For plinking and fun loads you will not need a gas check nor will you need to size these bullets.

The only potential problem that I see with what you have done now is maybe cast your ingots a bit too large.  You will want them to easily fit into the furnace to keep replenishing your lead level.  Try melting them down and pouring them into an old disgarded muffin tin or better yet use a Lee ingot mould that will cast 1/2 and 1 pound ingots.

[Haywire Haywood]

Welcome to the Forum  :grin:  I grew up in Dublin, altho I am calling Kentucky home now.

TK isn't steering you wrong.  I started out with tumble lube and the 10lb bottom pour pot and wish now that I had bought the 20lb instead.  The valve mechanism in the 10lb pot angles across the middle of the pot and makes stirring a bit of a pain.  It's straight up the front wall in the 20lb. There's also less time wasted waiting for the lead to come up to temp when you add an ingot to the pot.  For high volume pistol boolits that's the way to go. Lee's 6 cavity molds are better made than their 1 or 2 cavity and are considerably faster too.

What he didn't mention tho is safety equipment.. make darn sure you have your safety glasses on, a sturdy denim apron, pants made of a natural non-melting material (no polyester or nylon) and leather gloves.  6-800 deg lead is not forgiving at all.  Molten lead and any kind of water make for an explosive combination.. watch that dripping sweat or condensation off your ice tea glass (or beer bottle as the case may be).  The resulting splatter of lead when that drop hits the surface will make you really happy that you have those glasses, apron and gloves on.

good luck and be safe,
Ian

[calvon]

Get Veral Smith's book "Jacketed Performance with Cast Bullets". You can learn how to cast bullets by reading it. Also log on to the "Ask Veral" forum next door and read the posts there.

After you get disgusted with the Lee molds, get some of Smith's LBT molds. They are a bit spendy but worth their weight in gold if you really get serious about shooting cast.

[Leftoverdj]

I can't improve of what Thomas and Haywire had to say, but I can amplify a little. With Lee equipment, bigger is better. The 20 pot is far superior to the 10, and the six cavity moulds are far superior to the ones and twos.

Lee 356-120-TC or Lee 356-15-2R should work fine in both your .380 and 9mm, and with some luck  will work in .38 Special and .357 should they be in your future. More expensive moulds might make some sense for rifles or High Master pistol shooters, but not for the rest of us,

I go lighter on safety equipment than Haywire.  Eye protection is needed, but I wear glasses with safety lenses, anyway. Other than that, I wear jeans and a denim shirt with long sleeves and let it go at that. I can live with an occasional small burn on my hands easier than with gloves.

You are going to need some Liquid Alox and aLee pushthrough sizers. I'd suggest a .358 and a .452. .380s and 9 mm generally shoot much better with .357 or .358 bullets than smaller

[Cat Whisperer]

Eye protection is needed, but I wear glasses with safety lenses, anyway.

I can show you just about every pair of glasses I've owned - ruined because of molten steel or lead MELTED into the glass or plastic.  I can show you scars (from 40 years ago) on my forearms from molten lead.

Don't take safety lightly.  

"Ya gotta be TOUGH if you're stupid"

[Thomas Krupinski]

Eye protection is needed, but I wear glasses with safety lenses, anyway.

I can show you just about every pair of glasses I've owned - ruined because of molten steel or lead MELTED into the glass or plastic.  I can show you scars (from 40 years ago) on my forearms from molten lead.

Don't take safety lightly.  

"Ya gotta be TOUGH if you're stupid"

Safety is very serious stuff, but sometimes you can get overly confident in your precautions and you can get so bundled up with gloves and other stuff that you become careless and clumsy.

That spoken from some one who has on occasion cast wearing shorts, sandals and T-shirt, too hot here to get all dressed up.  If you splatter you really find out quickly, however you tend to be really, really carefully how you go about what you are doing.  Do I advise someone to do that, of course not.  You have to do what you feel comfortable doing.

[scmcadam]

thanks alot for all the useful info.  I was wondering from all i had read if I should try oversize my bullets some, should I use the 358 molds for my 9mm and 380 or will they naturally cast oversize a bit as the mold heats up.  I appreciate all the info and now I need to decide where the best place to order from is, Midway has best prices I have found, anybody know a better place.  Thanks again for the help

[Thomas Krupinski]

No, I think you should get the ones designed for the 9mm and 380 applications.  I believe the diameter is .356.  Try the tumble lube designs which do not use a gas check and do not require sizing.  

If they are a little bit oversize it will not matter with that design and may fit the bore a little better.  I don't think they will be oversize as the mould heats up (more likely have a variance in diameter due to differences in alloy), as that is the tempature they are designed to throw the correct size at.  They also hold the Lee Liquid Alox a little better.

Midway is a good place to order those from, however you can sometimes find better prices on sale, even at Midway.  Lee Precision also has a surplus page on their website that I have bought a few moulds from.  However they do not update that very often.

Be sure to also order a little stick of hard bullet lube to use to lub the hinge pins and sprue pin on your new moulds.

[haroldclark]

I agree with Krupenski on the bullet diameter.  I have spent more time trying to develop loads with cast bullets for the 9mm than most other cartridges and I have loaded a bunch of different cartridges.

I have a Hensley & Gibbs 6 cavity #115 mold that drops the bullets nearly .3565" and I size them to .356".  I have tried many 357 to 358 caliber bullets and loaded them one at a time to make them work and none beat out the regular 9mm bullet.

I have recorded data from testing the loads and the top 10 groups range from 1.88" to 2.5".  Out of the top 10 loads, only 3 jacketed bullets made their way into the group.  The others were cast #115 bullets.  I have tried a lot of different powders and IMR 7625 comes out on top every time.  

Years ago, I read an article in a magazine about a writers extensive testing of the 9mm with cast bullets.  His most accurate load was using 5.0 grains of IMR SR 7625.

If you would like, I can export my data to an Excel Spreadsheet and email it to you.  You will need to have Microsoft Excel program on your computer to read it.  Send me an email at the below address.

Harold

haroldclark@citlink.net

[scmcadam]

I want to thank everyone again for all your help, I will be letting you know how it goes when I get my first bullets cast