I have been shooting .22's into a bullet trap now for six years, occasionally emptying the dust and fragments into a coffee can. Coffee can is now full, probably ten pounds of lead or more. Anyone use .22 lead for bullet casting?

I cast .44 Magnum, .38 Special, 9MM and .32 S&W Long. I'm thinking of throwing some .22 lead into the pot while casting up some low velocity bullets....

Absolutely. Melt it, cast it, choot it!

If it did lead, which it shouldn't, leading is easily removed by dragging a wad of copper Chore Boy through the bore with a length of weed eater line. No problem.

I've never used pure .22 rimfire backstop bullets, but a variety of bullets collected from berms that include rimfire bullets. As cast, this mix is usually very soft; maybe too soft for most uses. I harden it a little with linotype or wheelweight equivalent metal. It's still fairly soft, about 11-13 BHN, good for most handgun cartridge bullets and even moderate velocity rifle bullets.

However, there are no absolute rules with cast bullets. You might experiment with .22 rimfire bullets only without adding anything else to the mix. They might work well as is if you don't shoot them very fast.

I too say yep, use it. If you feel you "need" a harder alloy, then just add some tin or linotype. FWIW, I have used 16-1 alloy (approx) and range scrap with mostly rimfire bullets (BHN about 8) for my 357 and 44 Magnum cast bullets upwards of 1,300+ fps with no leading to speak of because they fit the guns...

I know what my molds drop. I load my pot with 12 pound of what ever and dip the slag an add tin or linotype to make the boolits weigh what I want. If you put a live 22 in it will blow 1/2 the pot.

Just pure 22 bullets will make fine target ammo. I don’t really know if the factory lead bullets in CF cartridges are same alloy as 22s. I suppose most all these bullets are swaged, not cast. You can’t get softer than pure lead and I can shoot pure lead WC 750fps with no problems. Any random berm pick ups would most likely be someone’s home cast that would be alloy and harder than lead.

You say you are going to throw these 22's "into the pot" and you already cast. I am no expert on this, or anything else for that matter but just mix it in with your current cast as you go, attempting to be somewhat consistent and shoot them.

You don't say how you are lubing them. I PC everything now so that pretty much takes care of worrying about lead hardness. Just melt, cast, coat and shoot. You will be fine.

Most 22 lr bullets are pretty soft stuff, as several have mentioned. Just add some linotype to raise the BHN to what you like.

BTW our shotgun range was mined a couple of years ago. We got right at 60 tons of shot from the three trap ranges. It hadn't been mined since the range was new - about 1968! The miner sold the lot to CCI for making 22 lr bullets.

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Jim Sebring

General backstop lead runs 8-10 BHN depending on who's shooting what!

I'd consider casting your 22 scrap into 1 pound ingots. At your next bullet casting session add 1 ingot to 9 ingots of whatever you already have. See how they cast and shoot. I'm betting they'll be fine!

Smiles,

Casting into 1 lb ingots: I like that idea! I'll use the .22 lead for low velocity stuff like .38 Special Cowboy loads.

I have been using up wheel weight lead I got in a lead scrounge in 2006. Got hundreds of pounds of wheel weights over a six month period, filled several five gallon buckets. I'm getting close to the end of that stuff, so want to stretch it. I have some other lead of unknown origin that was given to me in big pie shaped ingots, had to cut them up with a chop saw to fit in my melter. Haven't used any of that yet, but will soon.

I have a small amount of linotype, but will have to find some more to mix with my unknown stuff.....

50-50 pure and ww is a good malleable mix. I would treat the 22 lr as pure.

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Front sight and squeeze

Having lots of soft 22lr lead is a perfect excuse to get into BP guns and cast round balls with it. That's what I recently decided to do and have my first revolver on its way, an 1858 Remington.