charlie brown

I am planning to start casting bullets for my .45 ACP and .30-06. I was needing some information on casting. I was looking at the Lyman casting/resizing kit for starters, any comments on quality, problems, etc. or other equipment suggestions. What Alloy should I go with to prevent leading in the barrel, where can I get reloading info for cast bullets, How fast should I limit Muzzle velocity, What type of bullet lube, etc.? I know this is a lot of questions, but if you guys could answer them it would be great. Thanks, Marcial

LARRY338

The lyman equipment will work as good as any. Read the lyman cast bullet handbook and join the cast bullet association. They have a website I think. For your 45, wheel weights will work fine at any velocity. For the 06, you probably will need to keep the velocity down to about 1800fps when using wheelweights. There are lubes available that will make it possible to shoot the 06 at 2500 and up but you might need to richen up your alloy with some antimony first. Quenched wheel weights will do fine with alox lube at 1800 though. You are about to have a whole bunch of cheap and fun shooting.

LARRY338

Just an observation of mine Charlie brown, people who have never shot cast bullets seem to have an unfounded fear of " leading" the bore. I will tell you from experience that its a whole lot easier to get lead out of a bore than it is to get copper fouling out. You will know immediately if you start to lead the bore. Your accuracy will go slam to $hit. As long as you dont sit there and fire a hundred more rounds once it starts, its very easy to remove. Some solvent soaking and a brush will push it right out. If you are completely lazy you can just shoot it out with a couple of jacketed bullets. If you do that though, you will need to get the copper fouling out before your cast accuracy returns to normal. Before starting any cast bullet testing you should remove all copper fouling and then fire a few fouling shots with the load you wish to test. Its going to work like a 22 rimfire. A completely clean bore will need a few shots through it before best accuracy is attained. Theres alot of little tricks to getting very good accuracy from cast bullets, but its not that hard. I' ve heard cast bullet shooting in rifles referred to as the graduate school of reloading. I' d say thats a fair assessment of it. You will learn more about loading cartridges in the first thousand rounds of cast bullets you shoot in a rifle than ten thousand rounds of jacketed. Good luck.