Jumping in lead first.

[dpaqu]

I don't make impulse decisions very often and I almost never buy anything on impulse so I find it odd that one night I just decided to spend 400 bucks on reloading and boolit casting equipment. Let me preface this by saying that I have never reloaded and have only bought one gun in my life.

I blame the Internet for this. The Internet makes things that you might not even know existed researchable from the comfort of your study.

It also makes all to easy to spend 400$ at Midway.

What did I get? A bunch of Lee stuff. A hand-press(I live in a duplex) some dies, brass, gas checks, jacketed bullets, and two aluminum molds and other odds and ends.

I should say that I have the ABC's of reloading here from the library and have read it cover to cover so I must be an expert.

What am I loading for?

-One Mosin Nagant with the hex receiver.

The only gun I have ever purchased. I bought the 185 grain lee mold for the British .303. I got some cerrosafe and will be doing a chamber cast tonight. The cost of brass is freaking me out.

-One inherited nickel plated, break top, S&W lemonsquezer(safety hammerless) in .38 S&W.

It feels tight and I would like to shoot some cast boolits out of it.

http://www.armchairgunshow.com/ot53-pix/dtd-606.jpg

-One plastic 40S&W that the institution I work for requires me to have.

No cast boolits in this one and if anyone asks I am not shooting reloads in it either.

The “special project” in this case is casting and loading the first two and not messing up the 3rd. Those are my initial goals.

[454PB]

Welcome to the forum!

Man, you take big bites. Trying to learn handloading AND casting at the same time should keep you busy!

Keep us informed, and of course ask questions as needed.

[klcarroll]

dpaqu;

Not to worry!!!!!!

We will get you through this!!

It's not hard, ......And I promise you it will be fun!!

Kent

[copdills]

Welcome to the forum, before your HOOKED you still have time to Run LOL

[Catshooter]

Welcome to the asylum. The inmates are as in charge as they can be here.

Wise decisions you've made, I think. We will be happy to help.


Cat

[45&30-30]

I don't make impulse decisions very often and I almost never buy anything on impulse...

That's what I tell my wife every week, but she doesn't believe me. [smilie=1:

Welcome to the forum, you picked an awesome place to get started, wish I knew of this information gold mine many years ago. Good luck casting, reloading and :Fire:.

[35 Whelen]

dpaqu, this truly is an asylum. And don't be too hard on yourself. I once bought a 9mm pistol just so I'd have a new caliber to reload!:shock: I used to own FIVE Swiss K-31's...and it broke my heart to sell three of them off. I buy duplicate moulds just because a different example of a type I already have might throw a bullet a little smaller or a little larger than my others.

Don't stress over the 7.62x54r brass. Go to aimsurplus.com and buy several boxes of Prvi ammo. It's only $11.00 per 20 and it's reloadable! Or go to Grafs.com and there you can buy Prvi brass for $41.00 per 100. Also, I have some 38 S&W brass you can have just for the price of shipping it if you want.

35W

[dpaqu]

Ok, got a chance to open the boxes and take a look at everything. The Lee hand press looks like it will work well as do the dies and lee priming thing. Not that I have anything to compare it against. The only surprise was how small the 10lb lead pot was. For some reason I had it in my head that it was bigger.

Off course all this good stuff and nothing to do with it as I did not buy primers or powder. I did order some Cerrosafe and thought that this was the perfect opportunity to give chamber casting a whirl. I took a look at Suplusrifle.com and there little article on it and thought I have everything I need to get this done. According to that well written article all I needed was some tubing, a funnel, a patched jag and a way to melt the cerosafe. I gathered these items, Melted the Cerrosafe with a torch and tin can, and with the Mossin wraped in a towel pinched in the vise made a go at it. Everything went butifully till I tried to take the cast out. In my ignorance I assumed a patched metal jag was the vernacular for a patched metal brush. Something I was familiar with due to recently using JB bore paste to clean up the bore of my riffle. I think the cerosafe got around the patch and locked all the bristles on the brush into the bore making it imposible to get out.
I hope to be able to melt the cerosafe out with a heatgun being careful not to screw with the temper of the steel. The stuff seems to melt at low temperatures so I don’t think this will be a problem.
The lesson here is one I honestly already know but apparently could not help myself. DO NOT RUSH. I got too exited to get going with the chamber cast that I did not reread the internet help carefully enough.

Oh Lord.



This..
http://huntandhobby.com/images/cleaning%20jag%20tradpica1284.jpg

Not this...
http://www.midwayusa.com/midwayusa/staticpages/highres/834044.jpg

[Willbird]

Cerrosafe melts at 158-190 degrees so you will be ok as far as ruining the action(that would take 400 degrees or more), you may need to carefully use a propane torch on the barreled action (I would take out of the stock).

I suppose if you have a large stock pot you could just BOIL the darn thing :-).

Winchestor also loads 7.62x54r ammo.

Bill

[dpaqu]

BTW thanks for the warm welcome.

35 Whelen. (my uncles favorite cartridge.) Free brass? Where do I sign up?

I went all out and bought the Lee 148 grain wadcutter for the 38S&W. Hopefully that will be a good Boolit.

On my way home from work today I will be swinging by the local indoor range to blow some 40 cal downrange so I can try my new dies out. I also hope to pick up some powder and primers

[Willbird]

BTW thanks for the warm welcome.

35 Whelen. (my uncles favorite cartridge.) Free brass? Where do I sign up?

I went all out and bought the Lee 148 grain wadcutter for the 38S&W. Hopefully that will be a good Boolit.

On my way home from work today I will be swinging by the local indoor range to blow some 40 cal downrange so I can try my new dies out. I also hope to pick up some powder and primers

You may have to leave some of the wadcutter hand out so as to not bulge the case when you seat them, I can send you some other 38 bullets if your willing to pay the shipping, I have some 158 Lee round flat on hand as well as some 105 grain Lee semiwadcutters. I think in an older gun like that I would look at TrailBoss powder if I did not already have a powder pile :-). I have a smith top break target 44 russian and that is what I plan to use in it, you simply cannot get enough in the case to hurt the gun.

Bill

[dpaqu]

I went to the local pistol range after work and bought some powder and primers and shot some 40 S&W. I have never bothered to collect my brass before and it’s a little bit of a pain. Most of it was in another guys lane so when he went to score his target I grabbed a broom and just swept as much brass as I could from the general area. The other shooter paid me no mind so I kept it all. Got a bunch of 45 auto and 9mm brass in the deal.

I was actually more exited about the chance to reload than I was that I got to shoot a box of ammo.

I swung by the local Harbor Freight tools place and got one of those rotating rock tumblers that has two drums. First I had a ton of brass to de-prime. Well it was not clear to me whether the dies that I ordered would de-prime the brass. It just said that there were 3 dies, sizing, flaring and seating. I was unsure so I ordered a universal de-priming die. Worked out well except that there is no universal shell holder to go with it. I used the 54r shell holder which kind of worked for everything.

Let me tell you, de-priming 400ish rounds is work. Of course I can only have firearms for 100 rounds of 40 cal.

I threw the brass into my new tumbler with some dish soap and lemon juice and 2hours later viola! Shiny brass. Awesome. Put an ex-girlfriend hair dryer on it and they were dry in no time.

http://www.findingking.com/images/Product/large/HF-90979.jpg

Sizing went well. Priming freaked me out. I had bought Federal primers and apparently these are Dangerous? At least according to LEE they are. So I put some welding gloves and a face shield (I weld as a hobby) on and primed the brass anyway. I have no idea how much flare is appropriate so I only did a little flaring. It was at this point that I ran into another issue. I have bought those Lee powder dippers but with the 231 Winchester powder I grabbed at he store the starting load is between the two smallest dippers. Hmm. Start with the smallest and see what happens? Sounds like a plan. So I seat the first bullet with my never used before die. It put the bullet all the way in the case. I adjusted it way out and worked my way back in until I was at the max overall length.

Then I crimped them. I put a pretty tight crimp. Or at least I think so, as sometimes I got a sliver of brass of the die. Does that mean to tight a crimp or that I need to trim my brass? I will break out the micrometer.
I made 19 rounds (minus the one with the bullet buried in the case) to try.

My thoughts at this point? Uh .22lr is looking pretty good.

In all seriousness this is going to be a bigger time commitment than I thought. Also, I need a better range. The local pistol range is indoors, expensive and kind of boring. I wish I had a range in my backyard. I’m not even sure if there are any ranges beyond 100 yards in the area.

Willbird- Once I cast up some wadcuters and try them out I may be interested in taking up that offer. I am excited by the opportunity to try different Boolits. There sure are a lot of variables involved with a good load. The mind boggles just thinking about it.

I will also have to try that trail boss. I notice some people are using it in rifles too. Looks like neat stuff.

I have so many questions I don’t know where to start.

[Springfield]

Just remember that 38 S&W is NOT the same as 38 Special. The bullets are suppossed to be .360, not .358 like 38 Sp. If you go with the 148 grainers make sure you use the lightest load in the book, those aren't exactly the strongest guns in the worlds and it sure isn't new. I prefer 105 grain bullets myself in my 38 S&W pocket guns. So how are you going to size these newly cast bullets?

[dpaqu]

Well, I’m not quite there yet.

I think the first thing I am going to do is take a bore cast to see what I’m working with. I’d prefer to load them as cast so I most likely will have to rework the mold. I probably should have gotten one of those makarov molds.

Definitely open to input/ideas you may have.

[Buckshot]

.............dpaqu, I've got a couple S&W Victory models and this Iver Johnson BELOw in 38 S&W.
http://www.fototime.com/8DAF2A1F0B9E0C6/standard.jpg
As mentioned the 38 S&W IS supposed to be .360 - .362" (ish), but if you cast your 148gr WC's out of pure lead you might be okay. A load my IJ shoots well is 1.6grs of Red Dot and a Lyman 150gr WC.

There is nothing contradictory between reloading and casting, but if you're familiar with neither it can be a bit of overload. Casting does have some hard and fast rules, but on the other hand as you progress you'll realize there is also some voo-doo. On the other hand reloading is an exact science and a dab of this and a dab of that tossed into a recipe that didn't call for them could casue more excitement then you'd like to experience.

My suggestion is to work on your reloading first. Concentrate on it until you have a good understanding fixed in your mind of the basic do's, don't's , and DON'T EVER'S and why they're so. You should reload and shoot some of your own production. Don't worry about the casting aspect of things right now. Besides, buying a couple pounds of different powder and a couple boxes of jacketed bullets will re-inforce some of the positives of casting your own!

.................Buckshot