Rossi Rifleman

It was a comfortable day to be in long sleeves etc and I had this new mold that just wanted to be heated up and I needed some more boolits for the 45-70. Fired up the pot with a mix that is 10 parts cable sheath lead and 1 part used linotype. The new Lee 452-300RF took some breaking in but once it got hot and I got the pot up a little over 700 it started throwing nicely filled boolits. The other mold is a Lee 457-405F and so far has proved to be one of my reliable mold, a quick preheat, 3 or 4 fills and it's throwing good boolits. I found that with this mix both seem to throw better if they are coming out slightly frosty. Now to size lube, load and shoot .

Make smoke,

I know i sound like a broken record, but i do envy those whom are set up to do their own casting. Glad it worked out for you.

Doc, if you have a propane turkey fryer you're at least half way there. Goodwill etc for a cast iron pot maybe 2 or 3 quarts. Lee molds and sizers are an inexpensive way to start. What stumps a lot of beginners is a source of lead. Some tire stores will give or sell used wheel weight (need to sort, some aren't lead, then rendered into usable alloy. You can buy new certified alloys and as I use up my hoard I'm looking at that option.

I wont tell you it's fun but there is a sense of accomplishment when you can use your own homemade boolits in you shooting pursuits.

Make smoke,

I use a propane cooker base and an iron Dutch oven for smelting and I have an unused new Lee bottom pour in the box. What's kept me from casting is alloy bullies. I've rendered two batches of WW to the tune of nearly 100 pounds so I'm not shy of molten lead.

I wonder how many are stuck in the middle like me?

Probably many.

Gas, not sure what you mean by alloy bullies, unless you mean the guys who claim their mix is the one true mix. Ignore 'em, I shot straight wheel weight metal for a lot of years including in my 6.5TCU for IHMSA competition.

It was after I got into BPCR that I started with other alloys in the pot, started with 30 to 1 lead/tin finally wound up at 20 to 1 since that's what the Sharps likes best with BP and the Wizard 45-70 does okay with it with BP also.

I'm using this new mix for white powder loads and well wait and see how it goes. I did some with a 6 to 1 mix of cable sheath and linotype that seemed just a bit to hard hence the jump to 10 to 1.

Not sure anyone has the perfect alloy for your guns and you style of shooting something only you and time can determine.

Cast lead,
Make smoke

Alloy bullies can tell you (maybe made up) the percentages of the mix to about six or seven ingredients to the 0.000-th of a unit of measure.

GasGuzzler wrote:Alloy bullies can tell you (maybe made up) the percentages of the mix to about six or seven ingredients to the 0.000-th of a unit of measure.

Only if they have access to one heck of a metallurgy lab .

When the wife worked in a local environmental lab I could occasionally sneak a sample in. All i wanted was lead, tin and antimony and verify no zinc.

Some junk yards around here had spark spectrometers but they got a little stingy on doing outside tests. haven't visited one in several years. They were starting to get freaky about lead.

Make smoke,

just buy all my casting alloy from either MBC or Roto these days. I'm tired of all the sludge from scrap lead and the constant unknown quality. I would swear the last batch of scrap I bought was more dirt and crud than lead. And there's no such thing as wheel weights anywhere around me anymore. The MBC alloy isn't a Lyman #2 clone so it's not as hard but it seems to work with everything and the harder bullets get Roto's Lyman #2 mix.

I'm just frugal and want to use up what I have on hand, most of it is pretty clean as it was reduced to muffins a long time back. All I've got left to clean is some sheet that came of x-ray room dry wall. Between the paper and the glue it's a bit noxious to work with.

I know who Roto is but MBC I didn't recognize among my book marks for metals.

Make smoke,

Hope WW will work forever as that's my only source. I'm not gonna buy alloy because the only reason I want to start casting is free bullets (sort of).

I'll probably bring home 6# (gross) tomorrow. It's what I do every third Saturday. Once per year when I'm iced in I'll render it to corn shapes.