Anyone in the Springs cast their own bullets?

[Birddog1911]

I haven't gotten set up yet for casting, but would like to make an offer for someone who does. I have a bunch of dive weights. I'd like to melt them down, and get any allows out of some. I need pure lead for black powder guns.

If someone would like to help, I'll gladly share what I have.

[Little Dutch]

I cast. I?m unclear on what you are after though. Are you wanting to remove the tin and antimony from lead dive wights? I?ve not seen a process to do that in a reasonable manner for a home shop.

[Birddog1911]

Thanks, Dutch. Perhaps my thinking was wrong. I thought that it wasn't a difficult process to smelt off any tin or antimony.

[Little Dutch]

I'll research it again. If you know of a relatively easy method I'd use it too. I don't shoot a lot of pure lead, but I've got a lot more alloyed lead than pure at the moment.

[bradbn4]

For casting - the issue is your source free of zinc - there are a few places like
https://www.rotometals.com/bullet-casting-alloys/
That are a clean source for your smelting / casting needs.

Pure lead works fine, esp in slow moving loads like 45 acp...

> added
some research can be done here:

https://castboolits.gunloads.com/forum.php

[Birddog1911]

Doing a little more research. It seems I may not need pure to my rifle and smoothbore. Seems pure lead is only really necessary for the revolvers.

ETA: I did see that once tin is in mixed in, it's there to stay.

[CO Hugh]

I dont' do it. However, I have a friend who used to cast. He would use lead wheel weights, or lead including dive weights. Smelted in an electric pot, added antimony, I think he was shooting for about a 11% ratio for hard cast bullets to use in revolvers. Then he cast the lead into weights to use later, or bullets, or slugs.

He said it wasn't that difficult. I watched him do it a few times.