Please Help-Cast Bullet Mixup

[MW3840]

Good Sunday Morning to all of you fellow casters. I have a great dilemma which hopefully, some of you might have already experienced and can give me your always sound advice. My shelving storage unit for my cast bullets collapsed on me. Probably 3500 to 4000 bullets got mixed together. They are all round nosed 125 grain bullets, in .355",.357" & 358" diameters.

Short of melting them and starting over, what other options are available to me to sort them out. Please Help!!!!

Thanks in advance,
Mike

[GrayTech]

Run them all through the. 358 sizer. Separate those that are a snug fit. Run the rest trough the 357 sizer and separate those that are a snug fit. You should be left with 355s. Labour intensive, but beats melting everything up again.

[Dusty Bannister]

Set a gauge or make a gauge like the Lyman E-ZEE case length gauge at .357 as a go-no go gauge. No go is .358, sloppy fit is .355, and the rest are 357.

However, if the majority were at .357 you might use the method of Gray Tech and use the .357 die. Then the loose ones would be .355, the rest would become .357 and you would only need to cast up replacements for the .358 size. That would go pretty fast I would think. You would not need to lube them as they are already done. Good luck Dusty

[bedbugbilly]

Ouch! Sorry to hear of your problem . . .. that's going to be one big "sorting" process. Good luck and don't get frustrated. It will all work out . . . maybe do small batches at a time to ease the pain?

[country gent]

You dont need to resize them even. push the ejector pin out of the sizing die start with .355 die. fit in by hand then 356, and so on. Use the sizing die bodys for gages to gage the boolits quickly. Pushing the pin out or down out of the way allows you to hand fit.

[mdi]

The answer to use a Lee sizer as a gauge is prolly the easiest method. Say you have a .355" die, well only .355" bullets will pass through easily. I'd start there, then the next largest, and so on.

There's only one way to eat an elephant. One bite at a time...;)

[Der Gebirgsjager]

I can't argue with any of the above, all sound ways to proceed. A friend of mine visited Sierra Bullets about 15 years ago and they had barrels of "reject" bullets for sale by the pound, different calibers and weights all mixed in together. He purchased an awful lot of them and then sorted them by caliber by taking a thin steel plate an drilling holes of various standard caliber sizes in the plate. Then he sat for hours pushing bullets through holes and dropping them into the appropriate cans. Later he sorted them by weight. You'd only need two holes.

[dondiego]

Set your micrometer at 0.357 and lock it in. Use it as a gauge.

[runfiverun]

size em all to 355.
3500 boolits would be done this afternoon if you have a star.
3500 9m's isn't even a 5 gallon bucket full.

[Scharfschuetze]

Better to toss them back into the pot than risk a scored bore.

My policy too, particularly if they were already lubed and prone to picking up dirt. If you're OK with shooting them, I think that I'd just use a dial caliper and sort 'em out and restock 'em that way.


There's only one way to eat an elephant. One bite at a time

Apropos in the extreme. Love it.

[mdi]

I had about 700 lubed and ready to shoot bullets fall of a shelf onto my "clean" floor (clean for my shop, filthy for Ma's living room!). I had sized and lubed all of them carefully so I didn't wanna remelt them. I just boiled off the existing lube and re-lubed them. I was lucky that all were either .357 or .44 caliber so sorting them was easy...

[gwpercle]

Buy sturdier shelving next trip to shelving store !

[leadman]

The sizing die is probably not a good way to sort them as most boolits springback some after being sized and do grow a little with time. The calipers set a an appropriate dimension would be the easiest way to sort them. Measuring a handful should give you a setting to do them the easiest.

[Budzilla 19]

One more suggestion. If they had different configurations as to type of lube grooves,point configurations, etc., just find one of each caliber and visually compare the rest, if possible? Might speed things up. Just my opinion. Thanks and good luck

[RogerDat]

I think post #2 was spot on. Starting with the largest even if you make a mistake and decide a bullet going through the .358 size die was "loose" and it really was a .358 the worst that happens is your "mistake" would end up getting resized a size smaller.

Combine that with a dial caliper and while not super fast it is probably faster than casting, lubing and sizing them. Since you would just be sizing them.

How critical is the size? If a 357 ends up in the 358 box or vice versa? I'm guessing the 355 will be the easiest to not mistake for one of the larger sizes.