Learning to Cast my own
 

After I found out that Bullshop Dan was at least temporarily getting out of the bullet selling business I decided to take the plunge and try my hand at casting. I have had a lot of help from some online friends esp Ed Mehlig, Batchief, and Woodgoat.
I have done the casting four times now and it is going a little better every time. I have two molds, a UC short and a used Mountain Mold that makes a 495 grain bullet that looks a lot like the chief's trashcan. This morning I casted with the Mountain Mold.

After getting the mold up to temp it went really quite well. I made 120 of them that seemed worth keeping

I lubed and sized some of them for a future shooting session with my ultra mag

I don't have a scale yet but they seem pretty consistent. Within a week I will get a chance to do some shooting and see how they do. This casting seems to be another really fun thing to do and hopefully this fall I'll be able to take a deer with a bullet I made myself.

How do you lube them so nicely?

I do the lubing the way Ed showed me. I melt the lube in a little crock pot and then i dip the bullet in the lube. For me it worked to warm up the bullets a little so not so much lube stuck to them. Then I ran them through a sizing die on a real basic Lee press. Then I cleaned up some of the extra lube on the top and bottom with a rag.

ahhh okay that seems easy enough. Thanks

The scale Semi pointed me towards came today so I had to play with it. I took 100 of the last conicals I had cast with the Mountain Mold and weighed them. I put them in groups.

The lightest one I had was 496.8 and the heaviest one was 500.2
I was happy that they were pretty consistent.
The scale worked great. I went back and weighed some of the same bullets over and over and kept getting the same readings.

Very nice job. I like the looks of that bullet. They should shoot great out of a White.

I sure like the looks of that big old missile Flounder. Can't wait to see a shooting report.

Agree with the others - the bullets look great. The lubing technique is really good.

Damn it was nice out today and the Warden was gone to a funeral so I decided I better get that Ultra Mag out and try shooting a few of my cast bullets.
Ed told me that the rifle was getting mad at me cuz I hadn't shot it yet. On the third shot trying to get it sighted in it let me have it on the nose.
After I got the bleeding to quit I went back out there and moved the scope about an inch forward. I got it sighted in close and then set the target out to 70 yards. I was using 80 grains of 2f Goex. I got this five shot group:

I am really pretty darn happy with the rifle and the bullet. The flounder needs to get a lot better and practice more, then the groups will tighten up. I might have been a little shaky after getting kissed by that scope.
After that I filled 3 plastic coffee cans up with water and set a hardcover lab safety catalog that I had in the shop behind them.
I got really similar results to Ron. It went through the three plastic coffee cans and dented the hardcover and ripped 180 pages. The bullet was found on the ground in front of the book.

It looked kind of like a chef's hat. It started out at 499.3 grains and ended up at 497.9.
I like it.