Bullet Casting Questions

[wisem2540]

First of all, forgive me if this all runs together, but I want to try casting my own bullets (9mm) and I have a few questions.

1. I have a source for range lead. So my thoughts are, I could melt it down, seperate the copper, make the lead into ingots for storage, keep the copper seperate and then send it to the scrap yard. My source is charging me 55c per pound of range lead, I figure up to 25% could be copper. It appears I could scrap the copper for about 2.50 per pound and get most of my "invesment" back. Am i going about this the right way?

2. Can I use the same melting pot for making ingots as well as casting the bullets? I have read several people say that they use a different pot for seperating copper vs actual casting of the bullets. Why is this?

 

[Engineer1911]

Cast Boolits

All your answers, even to questions you don't know yet. You are started down the slippery slope. Reloading ammo saves money, casting your own bullets saves even more money faster.

I'm an expert at saving money.

 

[sourdough44]

I have done a fair amount of melting range bullets & re-casting them, no problems there. I can't see you getting a whole lot of copper, but maybe it will add up.

I use the same pot for everything. I guess my system is rather simple.

Just for grins I recently bought a little more pure lead on ebay. It was about $23 for 15 lbs, shipped. I have had some wheel weights in the recent past, but the amount of non-lead weights keeps getting higher.

I usually cast in the warmer months, when I can do it outside.

 

[longranger]

Visit castboolits.com and research and read what others are doing. The Lee electric 20lb casting pot is cheap and works good,you need an
appropriate sized ladle for the mold,ie. 2 cavity or 8 cavity. It gets tiresome to use a big ladle for ingots while trying to cast little 9mm bullets. There is an art to casting good accurate bullets.Then you have to lube/size them,several different ways to do that depending how much you want to spend and shoot.I cast for several rifles and only a few handguns (.41,45) I find the smaller bullets .38 Special/9mm are not worth my time to cast little bullets as they are not expensive and readily available from folks that can do it better and faster than me.

 

[Skip Sackett]

Answers in blue:

First of all, forgive me if this all runs together, but I want to try casting my own bullets (9mm) and I have a few questions.

1. I have a source for range lead. So my thoughts are, I could melt it down, seperate the copper, make the lead into ingots for storage, keep the copper seperate and then send it to the scrap yard. My source is charging me 55c per pound of range lead, I figure up to 25% could be copper. It appears I could scrap the copper for about 2.50 per pound and get most of my "invesment" back. Am i going about this the right way?
Yes, us bullet casters are some of the GREATEST recyclers out there! That price is a bit high but, with the reclamation of the jackets, you can come out okay. I can get a bucket of indoor range brass for nothing, as long as I don't try to go to the well too often!

2. Can I use the same melting pot for making ingots as well as casting the bullets? I have read several people say that they use a different pot for seperating copper vs actual casting of the bullets. Why is this?
Yes, you CAN use the same pot BUT, most of them are bottom pour ones and the debris from "smelting" ends up clogging the spout up. It isn't something easily cleaned out either as you have to melt the lead again, pour all of the hot lead into something and then clean the pot. Not fun and yes I have done it before! Now, check out my videos below. This is how I do it.

There are videos in these. You will have to click on them to watch them.

 

[Skip Sackett]

And, I love castboolits.gunloads.com but for good information, for free on the web, there is none better than here: From Ingot to Target: A Cast Bullet Guide For Handgunners, Table of Contents - Fryxell/Applegate

Check that out. Lots of good information there.

Have fun, be safe.

In MY opinion: Every shooter should be a reloader, and every reloader should be a boolit caster!

 

[Ridge Runner]

Where are good places to buy lead bullets online?

Where can I purchase handgun lead bullets at a reasonable price online?

Where can I purchase reloading lead in bulk online?

Thanks for your help.

 

[mikld]

Where can I purchase handgun lead bullets at a reasonable price online?

Where can I purchase reloading lead in bulk online?

Thanks for your help.

My favorite cast bullet manufacturer is Beartooth Bullets Beartooth Bullets > Home. They sell a quality bullet with a good lube and they are available in a few different diameters per caliber (important when shooting lead bullets, bullet to gun fit). Google "cast bullets" and you'll get a few more cast bullet manufacturers. Bullet lead can be purchased new from Roto Metals and Nuclead. Check ebay and Castboolis.com (vendor sales) for cheaper lead...

 

[358156hp]

For casting metals, try Rotometals, they offer just about any alloy you might want. Or, you can go to one of the bullet casting websites, and check out what the members are selling back and forth. Normal wheelweight metal can get down to around $1.00/lb, already cast into ingots if you shop hard enough. Rotometals is about twice that for virgin alloys. If you go the range scrap route, expect to only net about a 50% return by weight of usable lead. So 100 lbs of scrap, which is about what a 5 gal bucket weighs, will net you about 50 lbs of alloy. At that price, I'll buy online and save myself the hassles of smelting it, and pouring ingots. Sometimes you can buy lead or linotype from a local scrap dealer, but it hasn't worked out for me the last several times I tried it.

Be careful when buying no-name cast bullets on line, sometimes they just don't seem to work out qualitywise. This is why so many of us cast our own. Imagine the freedom of being able to fine tune your bullets for particular tasks. Need more? Go out to the garage and get busy, like I'm fixing to do in a minute here.

 

[Cerberus62]

If you are smelting range lead make every reasonable effort to get all the rubber pieces from the backstop out of the mix before you start processing the metal.

That stuff just doesn't want to burn off and it stinks.

SkipSackett's vids are the way do do it, that's how I do my range scrap and wheel weights.

 

[ricks1]

your range stuff is great for the 9mm the "jackets are not all copper" run magnet over them . scrap dealer will give you brass price once heated in lead they are brass then

 

[Forrest r]

Skip has a good setup with the cast iron Dutch oven/propane turkey fryer combo. You want something that size or bigger, it’s just easier to smelt/clean the lead when you use a bigger pot that you can get different tools in to help clean, stir & pour the lead into ingots. It also goes faster if you are able to put a lid on the range lead being smelted.

I like to process 50# of range lead at a time. I use a turkey cooker base (like Skips) & an old propane tank that I cut (around the weld with a 4 ½” angle grinder/1/8” cutting wheel) in 2 for a lead pot. I also use a slotted spoon & a deep fryer basket & a ladle as tools to clean/pour the lead. I use the slotted spoon to put the copper jackets into the deep fryer basket & to skim off the dirt/junk from the surface of the melted lead. I use the turkey fryer basket to shake the molten lead out of the copper jackets. And I use the ladle to pour the melted lead into the ingot molds or into my bullet pouring pot. Its extremely easy to use a 4 or 6 cavity mold & empty a lot of lead in a hurry. So I keep 30# to 50# of clean lead melted beside where I cast in the propane turkey cooker base/propane tank (big lead pot) combo & simply ladle in lead until the lead pouring pot I use to cast bullets is full. It takes about 20 seconds to refill the small bullet making pot so it’s easy to cast for hours straight after I get my mold up to temperature.

The propane tank that I cut in 2 pieces to make a large lead smelting pot.

The tools I use to skim, pour & clean the lead.

I get 2 of these a year from the range lead that I melt/process. A 5-gallon buck with copper jackets in it.

A local scrap yard pays #2 copper prices for the scrap copper jackets. This is what I got ($126 & change) for that bucket of copper jackets pictured above.

I use that money to buy powder, primers, propane, reloading equipment, ect. There has been years that I’ll process extra lead & sell it. This year I only sold the copper jackets ($320) & bought wolf primers with the $$$ @ a local gunshow for $99 for 5,000.