Yield?

[dbarnhart]

What I mean is, what percentage of a pound of your lead ends up actually being bullets?

I'm thinking about casting my own and trying to get a rough estimate of the cost savings. There are 7000 grains per pound, so in theory that should make 30 230gr bullets if the yield is 100%.

What is a good value for yield that I should be using in my estimates?

[Wally]

If it is clean alloy you can expect to get 99% yield...

[sqlbullet]

I would say it is over 99%. I don't think I have 1 lb of loss in 100 lbs of lead. I have never measured, but I would guess I might have .25-.33 lbs of dross out of 100 lbs cast.

This assumes clean lead going in, and that you don't run your pot insanely hot.

[GREENCOUNTYPETE]

i don't have any hard numbers , but if your lead is clean and you return all your sprue better than 95%
so for your 230gr you might get 29
shoot them into your own trap made with wood chips or rubber chips get your lead back when you melt them down again not sure how much you loose on smelting

shoot them again


my brother and i were talking about filling a barrel with snow this winter and shooting into it , come spring all we should have to do is pour the bullets back out

[sqlbullet]

i don't have any hard numbers , but if your lead is clean and you return all your sprue better than 95%
so for your 230gr you might get 29
shoot them into your own trap made with wood chips or rubber chips get your lead back when you melt them down again not sure how much you loose on smelting

shoot them again


my brother and i were talking about filling a barrel with snow this winter and shooting into it , come spring all we should have to do is pour the bullets back out

This would push up to a yield of 1018% by the time you had to buy a new lb of lead if you lost 5% each cycle.:-P

Unfortunately I loose 100% each time I shoot since I don't have a way to recover the bullets.

[Mk42gunner]

Once you have your lead in ingot form, I would guess 97% plus yeild. Of course when you melt down Wheel weights you get a lot less yeild because of all the clips and vaporizing dog urine.

Pete,

I think you will need a very long barrel full of snow to stop boolits, I seem to recall it taking several feet of snow to stop them. Good idea though.

Robert

[williamwaco]

What I mean is, what percentage of a pound of your lead ends up actually being bullets?

I'm thinking about casting my own and trying to get a rough estimate of the cost savings. There are 7000 grains per pound, so in theory that should make 30 230gr bullets if the yield is 100%.

What is a good value for yield that I should be using in my estimates?

The only actual testing I have done is with 158 grain .357 swcs

7000/158 = 44.3 bullets per pound. I have never actually produced more than 40 to 41 and if the metal is dirty, more like 38.

[Colorado4wheel]

It's so close to 100% that it's not worth worrying about. You can't cast very well with a 1/2 empty pot so your constantly refilling it before it's even close to empty. All you could measure is your dross and that next to nothing.

[Crawdaddy]

98.4765921%

[ku4hx]

If the as-cast boolits weigh precisely 230 grains, 95% return will yield 28.91 boolits; 99% will yield 30.13. Your max difference would be 1.22 boolits. Lordy if my casting were only that precise.

[1Shirt]

Depends a lot on the caster, how much sprew, technique of pour etc.etc.etc. Think if you did a close test with 10 caster and exact weights (may be possible???),would bet you would get 10 different results in small but varying degrees.
1Shirt!:coffee: