Casting a lot of bullets fast

[SGD]

I have heard of a couple of people here that used to or have cast thousands of bullets in a realitivly short time.  What's the secert?  I have two 20 lb Lee pots and a small fan.  My casting rate still doesn't seem to be as high as what I think it could be from reading what some people are capable of here.  I am thinking that the Lee pot is my weak link.  I think if i got a pot with a larger orifice that might help, something like a 40 lb Magma pot.  What do you guys think?

[Black Jaque Janaviac]

Are you using Lee six-cavity molds?

That's one big secret.

Another biggee is to get the molds smoked so well that the bullets drop out the instant you open the blocks.  If not they should fall out with one tap of the mallet.  I always find that hammering on the mold to shake the bullets out wastes lots of time.

Also, if your melt and mold get hot enough that there is a several second pause for the lead to freeze in the mold - you can run two, even three molds.  Empty and refill one while the other one is cooling.

[SGD]

I've got a couple of four cavity Balisti-Cast moulds that drop the bullets just fine without any smoke or release.

[Castaway]

Another trick to speed production is to use two 6 cavities at the same time. Fill one, let it cool, fill the next, dump first, fill first, dump second and continue until pot is empty.  When my partner and I do a session, we have one pot melting and one dispensing lead. We cast different calibers and sort out the bullets in the end.

[flintman]

I agree with the ideal of alternating moulds,but use very different designs or calibers so as they are easier to seperate!I noticed on another list that someone tumbled the bullets to help on inspection of wrinkles,which seemed to help several people.I do not have a tumbler at present,and some wrinkles do get past me.On round balls I always put my good balls in a jug on back of my pickup truck I had at the time-sealed container you know,and left them for a couple months or until I needed them.This would kinda knock down the sprue that was left from casting and left the balls good and smooth.We Wednecks are strange ones,huh?But it worked for the purpose!I hope this helps,Jeff.

[Leftoverdj]

Two drop boxes are a must when casting for speed with two moulds. No point in losing the time you saved casting in sorting. The old wooden flats for beer or soda w/o dividers are about ideal. With nicely tuned moulds, you can just bring the hinge pin down smartly on the edge of the box and never need to reach for a mallet.

Another time saver with the Lee 20 pound pots is to never run the pot much lower than half full. Get to half or just below, return your sprues and switch to the other pot. That keeps your flow rate up and gets the pot back to temp much faster.

[Kenneth L. Walters]

The best rate I've ever hit was about 1200 bullets in two hours using two SAECO 8-cavity moulds.

[FAsmus]

SGD,

You ask: I have heard of a couple of people here that used to or have cast thousands of bullets in a realitivly short time.  What's the secert?

Forrest:  As you see above there are some different soloutions to the need for high production.

My personal version is to feed a 10 pound Lee bottom pour pot hot alloy from a 100 pound pot heated on my fish-cooker burner.

This allows me to feed the Lee and use it as a large always full ladle to fill the four or six cavity molds needed for high production of cast bullets.

If a fellow is active and works right at it large numbers of pistol design bullets may be cast in a short time.

Good afternoon,
Forrest