Guns & Outdoors Forum

My son in law had his equipment shipped here so we can start playing with it.

I guess I’ll get into casting finally
Lead melting pot, wife and hand in picture for scale Bullet sizer Commercial casting machine, we’ll need an engine lift to tip it upright. Molds Oh boy…

NICE!!!

Machine casting is a little outside my wheelhouse. The main name in that arena seems to be "Magma". If that's the pattern you're using, Accurate Molds will custom cut blocks for those machines if your current collection has gaps in it.

Never done the mechanized lube-sizing machine either. White Label Lubes is gonna be a good one-shop stop for you. Their 2500+ lube is a great contender for one-and-done across a very wide performance spectrum. You might need something else if you're doing black powder.

The Cast Boolits forum will have folks knowledgeable on both.

Otherwise standing by to assist. Welcome to the Dark Side!

Oh man! Our very own dealer!!!

Bigslug wrote: ↑Sat Jan 06, 2024 1:52 am NICE!!!

Machine casting is a little outside my wheelhouse. The main name in that arena seems to be "Magma". If that's the pattern you're using, Accurate Molds will custom cut blocks for those machines if your current collection has gaps in it.

Never done the mechanized lube-sizing machine either. White Label Lubes is gonna be a good one-shop stop for you. Their 2500+ lube is a great contender for one-and-done across a very wide performance spectrum. You might need something else if you're doing black powder.

The Cast Boolits forum will have folks knowledgeable on both.

Otherwise standing by to assist. Welcome to the Dark Side!

Thanks for the info. My SIL is a wealth of information and experience but this whole endeavor seems like it can be a deeeeeeeeep dark cave

Going to start small and we’ll see where this goes. He had a very good ammo business going for a while but Uncle Sam kept getting in the way so he packed the stuff away until now. It’ll be a few weeks before we get everything cleaned up and ready to roll. We’d like to start by making .458 bullets for the 45 dash cartridges from 300-500+ grains.

Elk Creek wrote: ↑Sat Jan 06, 2024 1:55 am Oh man! Our very own dealer!!!

Might be my next career

BTW the red car is a 1968 Grand Prix they just finished fixing up and the car holding the molds is a 2020 mustang that is being chopped up for the drive train for a Shelby Cobra kit car my daughter and SIL are building. Their garage is Disneyland for adults

Wambli Ska wrote: ↑Sat Jan 06, 2024 3:23 am

Elk Creek wrote: ↑Sat Jan 06, 2024 1:55 am Oh man! Our very own dealer!!!

Might be my next career

Could do worse! You are in Nevada where the “oldest profession” is legal…..

Casting is something that has never tempted me. Regardless Bigslugs attempts to sway me.

You could melt down a VW in that huge pot! Did you get the lead as well? Your wife is good looking!

Zee wrote: ↑Sat Jan 06, 2024 4:50 am Casting is something that has never tempted me. Regardless Bigslugs attempts to sway me.

Never thought of it as something that would interest me just for personal use, can’t shoot enough ammo to justify this for myself alone. But this is a whole different scale…. Now I’m thinking business and THAT has my interest. It also means being able to do stuff that other companies are not. Soooooooo I have a lot of homework to do.

Gene L wrote: ↑Sat Jan 06, 2024 5:33 am You could melt down a VW in that huge pot! Did you get the lead as well? Your wife is good looking!

Thank you, she’s a hottie

Yes there is a LOT of lead lined up to start, and crates of brass and powder if we decide to go the loaded ammo route too. Will probably be testing the waters soon.

Elk Creek wrote: ↑Sat Jan 06, 2024 3:31 am

Wambli Ska wrote: ↑Sat Jan 06, 2024 3:23 am

Elk Creek wrote: ↑Sat Jan 06, 2024 1:55 am Oh man! Our very own dealer!!!

Might be my next career

Could do worse! You are in Nevada where the “oldest profession” is legal…..

Piracy?!?!?

Good call on starting with the .458 rifle family - those and .45 ACP are pretty forgiving gateway drugs to casting.

Bigslug wrote: ↑Sat Jan 06, 2024 11:55 pm Good call on starting with the .458 rifle family - those and .45 ACP are pretty forgiving gateway drugs to casting.

That’s what I’ve been reading. We have molds down to 25 cal, we’ll save those for last

I got what bullets I need for pistols. I’m looking for a long, WFN 6.5 for my WW M96 Swede!

Zee wrote: ↑Sun Jan 07, 2024 6:50 am I got what bullets I need for pistols. I’m looking for a long, WFN 6.5 for my WW M96 Swede!

Lead? How long?

Wambli Ska wrote: ↑Sun Jan 07, 2024 5:55 pm

Zee wrote: ↑Sun Jan 07, 2024 6:50 am I got what bullets I need for pistols. I’m looking for a long, WFN 6.5 for my WW M96 Swede!

Lead? How long?

Lead/160gr

You could make alot of money in the airgun industry.

I picked up some cast .265" GC bullets a few years back, but cant recall where from. I was going to try them in the Grendel.

Zee wrote: ↑Sun Jan 07, 2024 6:27 pm

Wambli Ska wrote: ↑Sun Jan 07, 2024 5:55 pm

Zee wrote: ↑Sun Jan 07, 2024 6:50 am I got what bullets I need for pistols. I’m looking for a long, WFN 6.5 for my WW M96 Swede!

Lead? How long?

Lead/160gr

Here's where the real "fun" can begin. (And thread drift ) As I found with the .30-06, it can be a challenge to get up to a cartridge's max jacketed projectile weight - i.e. 220 grains for the '06 - when using cast.

Ideally, you seat the bullet so that the sides of the gas check are contained within the neck of the case - primarily to ensure the check doesn't fall off, but also to keep the lube grooves isolated from the powder.

The shank of the bullet is ideally sized to 0.001"-0.002" over groove diameter. How long a shank you can get away with on a bottlenecked case is dictated by the measurement of rear of case neck to where that diameter would collide with the rear of the throat.

A common practice for the nose length is to use a "bore rider" bullet design where the nose section is the exact diameter of, and therefore a slip fit in, the smaller bore diameter. If your mold isn't spec'd just right for your alloy, that diameter can end up too small (accuracy SUCKS), or too large (good luck chambering the heavy weights), and it isn't practical to die-size the nose diameter like one does for the shank.

So between the bore and groove diameters, neck length, throat length (by cut or wear), and potentially mag box length, it's easy to collide with issues where max "factory" weight just doesn't properly fit the gun. . .and you'll likely be really limited by what nose shape you can pull off maintaining that weight. You just don't have the room to fiddle with seating depth that jacketed can give you.

I don't run a 6.5 of any description, so may be talking out of my butt, but without making a swage-cast of the chamber/throat to get those measurements, I'd be really hesitant to take the plunge on a mold going to the full 160-162 grains.

Here's links to a couple of NOE's 6.5 options:

https://noebulletmolds.com/site/product ... 40-fn-bm3/
That's a 140 grainer with a tapered ogive that can chase up into the bore diameter at the throat, and a tapered front driving band that can likewise be chased up to contact the throat's groove diameter. A fair bit of flexibility and wiggle-room.

Here's more the traditional 163 grainer: https://noebulletmolds.com/site/product ... 163-rn-w6/
Note the short ogive on the nose and the long, parallel sides of the .262" diameter, bore-riding nose section. If the throat doesn't allow that nose to chamber readily, things rapidly decline into needing to seat the base of the shank too deeply into the case. Not saying you can't or it won't, but I've had my ass kicked a couple of times with mold purchases that were at the extreme upper end of the tolerance range.

With luck, a Swede gives you the necessary space. Cautionary tales, free of charge.

I would have to check compared to my M96 or my 6.5x55 using a M38 NOS barrel, but the 6.5x55 Swede has a very generous throat/leade intended for the long 156gr rn bullets it was designed for.

Just checked on a M98 based 6.5x55 that would have had the chamber cut with a standard 6.5x55 reamer. The Hornady 160gr RN has a max OAL in my rifle of 3.303". This leaves 0.095" of the bullet in the neck and would not be a wise seating depth.

I stand corrected on the cast bullets I have. They are 146gr .264" with a gas check. The lube grooves would extend way past the case mouth unless you seat the bullet so deep that the GC and some.of the lube grooves are below the case neck.

Disregard the holes in the target. The target is from playing around with a R700 .35 Whelen

Mitdr - thanks for the sense of scale. That's a good photo to illustrate my point.

Yeah. . .not an uncommon approach to lube grooves. A lot of guys will fill those many-groove bullets in their lube-sizer, and then gently roll them in one of the harder-shell tumble-lubes to seal the softer stuff in. Obviously not ammo you'd carry in your pocket on a sandy beach, but perfectly shootable within certain care-in-handling limits. Some guys will seat deeper if fit requires and work up their load with a weighed wad of Dacron stuffing or sized bit of tissue paper in front of the powder charge. There are ways.

Why I don’t cast. Pain in the ass!!

Zee wrote: ↑Mon Jan 08, 2024 12:55 am Why I don’t cast. Pain in the ass!!

Yes, but you can strive to be this guy!
I could certainly see you starting with a hard division of casting for the handguns and saving the deeper dive into weird rifle science later. The straightwall cases really are pretty forgiving, and given the amount of stuff that you kill, you could do A LOT of good science with meplat size, shallow and deep hollow point cavity pins, etc...

Don’t culturally misappropriate my kind!!!