spurgon
06-05-2009, 02:56 PM
I am attaching two photos of my first cast bullets. I am brand new to casting. A while back I converted my wheel weight collection to ingots. While i had the heat going (turkey cooker and dutch oven), I cast my first bullets with a mold that Carl Lumpkin has made available to me, God bless him. I had the same troubles that most of us do when we start I guess. Main thing being in my case was temperature control of the mold during the casting of the 8-10 bullets I got, that were even close to right. Anyhow, my purpose for casting out of the smelter was to generate some bullets to slug my barrel , of course to see what size die I might need for the "real bullets"when I cast those. I applied STP to the bore of my Marlin 1893, 32-40 and drove the bullet ,in the photo, thru the bore. Very hard to start but after it got going surprisingly easy to force out into the receiver. I used a set of calipers to measure the slug. I don't use the calipers enough to be certain of my measurements but the best I could do resulted in a reading of .323-.324 as casted and .321-.322 after the slugging. The bullets felt out of round. I hope that is a result of my crude casting attempt. The out of roundness that is. Most of the bullets I dropped were frosted, too hot I think. The nose of the slug as you can see didn't fill out but I figured they were good enough for slugging my barrel. I now need to know what size sizing die I need for my rifle. Thanks for any advise you can give. Sorry to be so wordy. Thanks to you Carl Lumpkin for all you have done for me and it has been alot. You 're one great individual.