Have you ever wondered what it is like to cast bullets (first person vids)?

[Tyler Durden]

Hi there,

Pardon the plug... but I reckon since a lot of folks are anxious over the primer and ammo shortages, I would post a video to YouTube of me casting boolits.

I also made my own birdshot maker, so there are a couple of videos of that.

I wear a camera on my hat.

I used to post my competition shooting videos to video google, but I had heard that video google is going away.  So in the future look for me to add my competition videos to my YouTube "channel" also.

Anywhooo... onwards... to the casting boolits vid:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTrD8buyIHY

Probably within the next week, I will have another video posted of me sizing boolits through my Star lube-sizer.

Enjoy folks!

[Bidah]

Thank you.  Yes, I have always wondered, and thought about doing it myself.

-Bidah

[PegLeg45]

Very nice video, thanks for posting.
What is your lead recipe?

[Tyler Durden]

Wheelweights, straight  up.  Mostly.

I have a deal with a shooting buddy who is a mechanic at a dealership.  He scrounges up all the wheelweights for me.  Then we meet  up at a local club for the steel and USPSA matches.  He and his girlfriend shoot trap and skeet, so he would rather get the lead back as birdshot.  I reckon that the steel clips on the wheelweights account for about 10% of the weight, so what he get's back is not quite 50% of what he gives me in wheelweights.

So the other 50% plus I get to keep and do whatever with...make more birdshot or make boolits... or just keep around as ingots.  You can see the ingots I have made off to the left of my RCBS Pro Melt furnace in that video.

There is another local club I am a member of that has a bowling pin "pit".  It is almost like an indoor range.  There is a steel backstop which is angled to deflect the bullets down into some sand.

Every now and then, when I know I am going to be in the vicinity of that club I will throw a shovel and about 6, 5 gallon buckets into the back of my truck.

I will shovel the mixture of sand and lead and copper bullet fragments into the buckets, only filling them about half way.  Then when I get back home I screen the sand and the wooden bowling pin splinters from the lead.

And just like with the wheelweights, I will stick the recovered bullets in a cast iron dutch oven on top of a propane fired turkey fryer.

It's a quick way to render the wheelweights and bullets into clean ingots.

It's quite the rigamorale/drawn out process... I know.     But, hey, I am cheap.

I think I figured I shot 7,300 rounds in matches just last year.  That's just matches, NOT practice, NOT sighting in, NOT load development.  Just matches.

My favorite cheap bullets used to be the Berry's plated from Cabela's.  In the fall of 2007, I could get them for right around $72 a thousand.  In January or February 2008, they had doubled.  Seriously!   

So that's why I started casting.

And bought .22 conversion kits for my Beretta 92 and 1911. 

Now if Wally World could keep their ammo case stocked with bulk .22LR that ran worth a darn, I'd be happy.  I am shooting the .22's in the steel matches which are twice a month.  So that right there eats up one brick, a month.

And now that it has gotten warmer, my girlfriend wants to get into competition shooting too.

[PegLeg45]

Thanks for the info.
I figured you used wheel weights (most do). I was wondering about the hardness of the bullets and leading problems in your guns also. An older guy from a club I used to be in used a mixture of around 90% wheel weights to 10% linotype. He said the linotype was a little harder and worked better for him. He had buckets of the stuff that he got from an old newspaper printer office. He also stirred in a tablespoon of bacon grease as a fluxing agent and lube.
I've always been interested in bullet casting (I used to work for an aluminum company and we cast out own logs), but never jumped off the cliff into it.
Might be time to invest.

Again, thanks for the info.

[Sponsor]

[Tyler Durden]

This is just my own personal opinion... so take it with a grain or block of salt... Methinks that barrel leading has more to do with how closely the projectile's outside diameter mates up with the bore's diameter.

That said... my bullets seem hard enough... my thumbnail can't scratch them, with my very scientific push as hard as I can with my thumb test.

There are a few... I don't know what you would call them... ideas I guess would be the best word... or maybe theories...

One theory is that a softer lead bullet obturates.... that's right obturates... the rear end of the bullet swells up  and keeps gases from jetting past the bullet as it travels down the bore.

Another theory I have heard is that the wax lube in the groove around the bullet is upset by the inertia of the bullet as it starts to take off.  Some even say that the bullet scrunches down momentarily and squishes out the lube and that's what keeps the hot gases from shooting past the bullet and depositing lead onto the bore.

Now, just from my own practical experience, I have seen and recovered a lot of cast lead boolits out of berms before, and I am quite amazed at how well the lube sticks in the lube grooves.  100% intact a lot of the time. 

Part of me wants to think that bullet casting (like knife making, or sword making or blacksmithing) is part science and part superstition or voodoo.

So as far as fluxing goes, I skip the bacon fat, and use 1 part frog lips, 2 parts bat's wings, and 3 parts chicken feet.

Just kidding.

For the rendering part in the dutch oven, I just stir with a wooden stick.  If I am using the recovered bullets from the bowling pin pit, then there are plenty of splinters left over from the bowling pins, so that stuff just self-fluxes.

Later on though, it is kind of a drag to seperate out all the wood ash on top of the lead from all the jackets.  But I think I have a new strainer for that.   

For the wheelweights, I just use a large magnet to get the steel clips off the top of the melt.

[m25operator]

Very timely and appreciated TD, I started casting ingots 3 weeks ago, and just doing it on Sunday afternoons, up to 140 with 2, 5 gallon buckets to go, and of course still scrounging. I bought my casting equipment from some old timers that were retiring from shooting and reloading. That was 10 years ago and I just let the stuff sit for a rainy day, 2009, seems like it's raining a lot. I look forward to the luber sizer part, as I have helped cast bullets, but have not done the resizing yet, any tips would be appreciated.

What do you consider the ideal casting temperature?

I could not read the lubricating agent you were using on the molds, I got 2 cans of silicone spray with the deal, and did not know if it was used during the casting or just for mold protection afterward?

Do you do any gas checks?

Your casting room looks like my home shop I have a lathe, a knee mill, 2 tool boxes, an air compressor and 3 work benches in a 2 car garage. Room for 2 people working together and that's it.


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[philw]

that is very cool Tyler

thanks for posting that.


I have passed it on to a couple of mates over here that do a bit of casting as they shoot black powder rifles and pistols and can not always buy the projectiles for the rifles they have

[Green Mountain Gringo]

This was a cool vid. The repetition made us feel like we were all there...


I want to feel the sting of a bit of lead on my skin.........ok...not really but I do want
to know the feel of casting a few of my own.

-Darren

[Big Frank]

   I never saw bullet casting done before. I thought it would take longer for the bullets to solidify.