Looking for casting ideals

[harter66]

Has anyone casted "range scrap" talked to a couple of operaters they tell me to have at? Seems like that ought ot be as easy as trying to get wheel weights in Ca . A temp relocation.
Which 32 / 8mm 170-180 bullet mouldsdo you prefer ?
Which 30 cal 160-170 ?
Which 200-250 muzzle loader semi spitzer .500
I know that the 50s need to be pure/dead soft.

[whitetaildreamer]

For my ML castings i was able to get some scap lead pipe from a wrecker (real cheap). I like using the softer lead of the ML mini's. For the high power castings I was able to pick up some linotype lead (lead lettering used for the old printing presses). This lead is very hard and works well at higher velocities. Look around, you would be surprised what you can find.

[eldeguello]

ORIGINAL: harter66

Has anyone casted "range scrap" talked to a couple of operaters they tell me to have at? Seems like that ought ot be as easy as trying to get wheel weights in Ca . A temp relocation.
Which 32 / 8mm 170-180 bullet mouldsdo you prefer ?
Which 30 cal 160-170 ?
Which 200-250 muzzle loader semi spitzer .500
I know that the 50s need to be pure/dead soft.

At Fort Benjamin Harrison, Indianapolis, IN, there was a "police pistol range" on the military reservation, which was used by various police forces in the area. Most of their shooting back then was with .38 and .357-caliber revolvers which used lead bullets, mostly target 146-grain full wadcutters. A creek flowed by the location, and several of us used to "mine" the backstop hill for those lead bullets. We'd shovel the dirt into a screen stretched on a wooden frame placed in the creek and wash away the dirt, leaving the bullets. Of course the bullets were cruddy, so we'd let them sit a couple of weeks to dry off completely to prevent explosions when dumped into a pot of molten lead, then melt them down, flux, skim off the dross, and cast it into 1-lb ingots. Most of these bullets were swaged of a relativley soft lead/antimony alloy, but adding oneingotper potof wheelweight metal added enough tin and arsenic to the mix to permit the metal to flow easily when melted, and allowedheat-treating to any hardness one desired. This was real good bullet metal for most applications-a bit on the hard side for ML balls, however!

I just recently used the last ingot of this metal that I had kept for a number of years.

In short - range scrap lead bullets are an excellent source for metal for bullet casting purposes. You MAY have to add a little tin, maybe not. Just melt it down CAREFULLY (due to moisture) and skim off the crud before casting it into ingots.....