Startup cost

[Will]

So many people think they can’t get started casting because of the startup cost. Well, back in the 50’s I was determined never again to pay $3 for a box of 38spl. I bought a Lyman 310 tool to do my loading and a 358156 mould. The mould with handles cost me $16. I didn’t know you could shoot them without gaschecks so I spent another $3 on a box of checks and another 3 on push through sizer for the 310 tool an another 75cents on a stick of lube. I stopped at an auto salvage and asked the guy if I could pull some wheel weights off some of his wrecks. He said OK and I soon had about 5# of lead for free. I went to a junk store and bought a 6” cast-iron skillet and an old cooking spoon for a total of $1.25. I put the skillet on our apartment stove and soon had a skillet full of melt. ( I had a very accommodating new wife.) I bent the old cooking spoon into a crude ladle and started pouring. I knew almost nothing about casting and I didn’t even know I should clean the mould first so it took a long time before the boolits started to drop without wrinkles. I melted the lube in an old mayo jar lid and dipped the boolits, stuck on a check and pushed them through my sizer. I was a caster. I have never bought another factory 38spl.

My total startup cost was about $24 which in today’s money would be over $100 but it was well worth it and has paid me back several times over.

Has anyone else started with so little knowledge and equipment?

[Shiloh]

Little knowledge but a lot of enthusiasm. My buddy got me started. I acquired my own equipment and never looked back.

Shiloh

[Bret4207]

A discarded soup ladle was bent into a casting lade. I used an old steel pot on the stove in my apartment for heat. My first mould was a 405 gr Lee that sold for $11.00 and lube was whatever was in that 55 gallon drum in the garage. I did have an RCBS RS press and the dies. WW were easy as I worked at the garage.

Even to day you can get in for well under $100.00 if you can scrounge a little and aren't afraid of used stuff or "make do" methods. Shoot, I loaded for years, very successfully too, with Lee dippers! Didn't get my first scales for several years. Now people give them to me.

[rbuck351]

I started loading in 1968 for the 38spl. I bought a rcbs reloader special which was a jr press and your choice of dies for $29. I also bought a lyman dcwc mold handels, a stick of lube and a lead dipper all for another $25/30. I used the bottom half of a soup can for a pot on the kitchen stove. The lids were soldered on then and it started leaking as soon as the lead melted. Mom didn't think much of that. A friend gave me an old lead pot and I was in business. Cast some bullets and smeared some lube on by hand and loaded them up. Then I found out that some of the loaded rounds wouldn't fit in the chambers so I ran the tight rounds back through the sizer die. I was in hog heaven. I could load and shoot my 38 for about a penny a round. I was hooked. Since then I have been saving money like crazy. 5 or 6 more presses, 30/40 molds, 30+ die sets, 3 luber sizers, with a dozen sizer dies,2 bottom pour pots, hundreds of lbs of wheel weights and on and on. The wife keeps telling me I can't afford to save any more money. She just doesn't understand me.

[runfiverun]

the starting is easy................ it's the stopping thats hard.
i am still buying molds it seems i have to buy three for each caliber till i find the right one for each gun.

[warf73]

If a person goes with Lee products the start up is very inexpensive (wouldn't call it cheap) compared to other companies. Here is a rough start up with new products.

All Lee equipment: In 357 pistol.

10lb bottom pour pot........ $52.00
2 Cavity Mold......................$20.00
Push thru sizer....................$16.00
Shipping cost Aprox.............$12.00

Total....................................$100.00

OR with more of a production thought in mind.

20lb bottom pour pot........ $65.00
6 Cavity Mold......................$39.00
Mold Handles......................$13.00
Push thru sizer....................$16.00
Shipping cost Aprox.............$12.00

Total....................................$145.00

So considering what it cost Will back in 50's compared to now its still very cheap to get started casting, the only down fall now compared to then is WW's are getting very hard to find.

[qajaq59]

I was one of the lucky ones. I had a friend that was a caster and reloader. He gave me some spare equipment and helped me buy the rest back in the sixties. Then he mentored me for quite a while. Doing it from scratch without a mentor must have been harder.
Now if someone wants to start, and reads the forum, he can have 15,000 mentors with an inexhaustable store of knowledge.

[bootsnthejeep]

My dad still recalls with fondness his time in California in the 60's when he was working construction, driving tow truck and working at a garage as a foreign car mechanic. And he and some friends had gotten hooked on this new combat handgun thing being promoted by some guy called Cooper. :Fire:

Anyway, he found his way over to this little machine shop in San Diego run by a couple guys named Gibbs and Hensley, and picked up a couple of moulds that he still raves about to this day as being the best thing since sliced bread. Four cav 230 grain GI ball profile. They would sit out back of the shop in the evenings, or in the yard of his crackerbox apartment, melting wheelweights in a cast iron pot on a coleman stove to keep the 1911 fed for those matches. And a can of Bullseye lasted quite a while too. He still has some trophies. I think he was even using that damn Herters single stage press that he still has bolted to the bench in the garage.

By the sounds of things, he didn't have a LOT of money tied up in loading setup, but he sure got a lot of use out of it. Yes the Hensley and Gibbs mould was probably less than $20, but before he left to come home to Maine, he bought a brand-new Ford F-100 for $1400, so do the math.

I've got that mould now. Still throws great bullets. Thanks Dad. :cbpour:

[twotrees]

That I was reloading for way back in the stoned ages (60's). A friend that I had been taking hunting, offered to Loan me his casting setup.

I had been casting round balls for my cap and ball pistol and fishing weights for years, but never for Real guns. I was using a Palmer 2 lb hot pot and pouring directly into the molds.

Bill showed up at my house with a couple 30 cal molds, an bunch of 38 cal molds and 1 45 mold. He loaded me his Seaco 20 lb pot and a 450 lube sizer, with dies.

Well, much to the first wife's dismay, I spent weekends casting buckets full of boolits of all these molds. After about wearing out Bill's stuff, I bought duplicates of everything he had lent me, EXCEPT a 358156 HP mold.

That started it and by then I was working overtime every week and had the money to buy more guns. That meant more molds, more sizing dies. It still continues today. Buy a gun, buy a couple of molds sizing dies, gaschecks etc.

I am de-rusting a bunch of molds for a friend and one of them is a single cavity 358156...... Hummmmm.....a couple of guys on here HP those don't they????

If you spread the cost over 40+ years and the money I have saved (:?) not buying condom bullets, It's a cheap hobby, Yea right, Lyman, RCBS and Lee are listed on my W4 as dependents.[smilie=s:

Good shooting, Y'All,

[anachronism]

I went all out when I started. I bought a LEE Precision melter, a LEE ladle, A LEE single cavity .357 mould & one of the original LEE lube & sizing kits, the one with the stick of 50/50 lube, a small pan & a drive through sizer. It came up to a whopping $35.00. My first bullets were made from linotype because it was more available than wheelweights at the time, & only ten cents/lb. Still I suffered with wrinkled bullets & incomplete fillout. Most newbie problems seem to revolve around casting temp. The LEE ladle didn't help matters at all. There was no internet in those days, and all I had to guide me was magazine articles & the Lyman Cast Bullet Manual.

[thx997303]

I started 2 years ago casting for my cap and ball pistol.

First roundball I cast from a bag of shot my father in law gave me on my coleman camp stove, in a stainless steel pot, using a stamped steel measuring cup held in vice grips as a ladle.

Didn't know a thing about alloys, so those roundball are pretty hard. I still have a box of them.

Cost me $20 for the Lee 2 cav mould from cabelas, and 2 for the propane.

[RU shooter]

I dont know you can still get up and casting pretty cheaply if your only going for plain base pistol or rifle boolits .

Hot plate at yard sale -$5 OR LESS
small metal bowl- probably have one if not $1 or 2
Lee mould-$20
spoon for a ladle- Free everyone already has a spoon!
Lee sizer with LLA for your lube-$15

So for easily less than 50 bucks you can be up and casting your own
Heck I still use the metal bowl and hot plate I started with although I did get a real ladle :razz:



Tim

[mpmarty]

Back in the late fifties or early sixties I was reloading with commercial j-boolits for my rifles and using a C&H Swagomatic to form half jacketed bullets for my 45 and 356 reloads. I was shooting a 38/45 which was a 45acp necked down to 9mm using very hot loads of Herco to drive the half jackets at explosive speeds. Also used the stock barrel and springs in the same 1911 to shoot half jacketed 45s. An acquaintance at the local range mentioned to me that casting might be a better way to go for the pistols and so I tried it. Hooked for life. No turning back. First purchase was a Lyman bottom pour ten pounder and some Ideal molds along with a Lyman 45 lubrisizer.

[ScottJ]

I started just a bit over a month ago.

Lee 429-200-RF $20
Lee ladle $4
Lee .429 sizer (that I haven't used and need to send back for a .430) $15
9" cast iron skillet that my mom quit using and gave to us with a bunch of other CI cookware FREE

Tried using the hot plate I use in my Alton Brown home made ceramic smoker as a heat source and it wasn't enough. The turkey fryer burner did the trick.

I'm working from a 5 gallon bucket of WW that I bought for $25 back in March.

[Lead Fred]

http://www.handloads.com/calc/loadingCosts.asp

[qajaq59]

Tried using the hot plate I use in my Alton Brown home made ceramic smoker as a heat source and it wasn't enough. I've tried a couple of hot plates for smelting small batches and had no luck. They just took too long. The Coleman still seems best for that.

[thx997303]

I think you have missed the point of the thread Lead fred.

Though thanks for the link.

[Whitespider]

I started casting just a 3 or 4 years ago, and I did it with very little start-up cost.
Started stopping at car/tire shops about two years before actually casting and had collected several buckets of free WW’s, (cost=$0.oo).
I asked around, family and friends, if they had any old cast iron cookware and was given a Dutch oven and two fry pans, (cost=$0.oo).
After a bit of coaxing, my wife gave up an old slotted spoon, an old muffin tin and a couple of cake pans for pan lubing, (cost=$0.oo).
I had an old electric kitchen stove that still worked fine (wife had up-graded it about 10-years prior), all I had to do was move it into the shed and plug it in. The main burner can be set to use 4,6 or all 8 coils and puts out a lot of heat, and the oven is used for heat treating, pan lubing, storage, etc, (cost=$0.oo).
I collected some saw dust/wood flakes from cutting firewood with a chain saw, and the wife gave me some candle stubs she was going to throw out, to use for flux, (cost=$0.oo).
My wife likes to stop at Antique Shops/Flea Markets when we go places and I kept my eyes open, and picked up an old open-top cast iron ladle ($4.oo) and a 1½ qt cast iron sauce pan ($7.00), (cost=$11.oo).
Bought some bees wax at a craft store ($8.oo) and a bottle of LLA ($4.oo) and used a bit of Crisco from the kitchen to make my own pan lube, made my cookie-cutters from old cartridge cases, (cost=$12.oo).
Started a thread in the “Swappin’ & Sellin’” entitled “My Stuff for Yours”. I went through my stuff and listed all the things I’d been given, acquired as extras in trades, etc. None of that stuff had any value to me and most had been free anyway. I traded for 4 Lee molds, 1 Lyman mold (w/handles), 2 Lee push-through sizers, 10 lbs of tin and 20 lbs of Lino, all it cost was some postage, (cost=approximately $25.oo).
TOTAL START-UP COST = $48.oo and I was casting 5 different boolits in 3 different diameters.

I’m still dipping from cast iron over an old kitchen cook stove, suits me just fine. But I have added a couple more ladles and a used lube-sizer. I don’t even want to talk about how much I’ve spent on molds since I’ve started.

[cajun shooter]

My casting started because I needed money for my new family. I was working in a gun store and the owner sold all the things needed for casting. His local guy that was making bullets for the store quit. I was set up with two Lyman pots and several 4 cavity molds plus some H&G eight cavity. I was also given two Stars for the sizing part. I never quit casting even after leaving that job and that all started in 1971.