IS it really worth it?

[tomf52]

May be I'm getting old, but after thirty plus years of chasing lead sources, sorting , and smelting lead with all the related health and safety factors, I have to ask myself is it really worth scrounging, sorting, and smelting all this lead for a guy like myself who shoots one to two hundred rounds a week? I think if I continue to cast bullets at all, I'm going to simply keep one to two 5 gal pails of lead (usually wheel weights) on hand and melt directly in my Lee electric pot a little at a time and cast the bulltets as I go instead of all this ingot stashing. Taking the time to be meticulous, I have found there is no problem cleaning up the lead thoroughly in the single process method. I have had no trouble doing it this way so far. I'm also thinking of all the other crap I can throw out of the house (melting pots, furnaces, large ladle, and all the other miscelaneous junk). May be time to simplify my life a little here. Any opinions?

P.S. - I may even just buy the lead bullets and do away with all the stuff.

[ANeat]

If you dont enjoy doing it then dont. Heck lifes to short and right now bullets are easily available. I was under the impression that most people on here enjoy the scrounging/smelting/casting et all on the way to getting shootable bullets. I know that I do. If I didnt get some satisfaction out of it I would just go buy my bullets and be on my merry way. It would certainly be a lot easier but just not as much fun, at least for me anyway.

Adam

[threett1]

Its all part of the game. If you want to change your game a bit, have at it.:mrgreen:

[TedH]

Heck, the scrounging around and hitting the occasional jackpot is half the fun! Ok, well maybe not HALF, but it is part of the process that I enjoy and gain some satisfaction in. If I did not enjoy it anymore I sure as heck wouldn't do it!

[Bass Ackward]

I have to ask myself is it really worth scrounging, sorting, and smelting all this lead for a guy like myself who shoots one to two hundred rounds a week?


Tom,

I figure that if you have to ask the question, you already settled on the answer.

But even at 100 rounds a week, that is roughly a free mold once a month. If you aren't buying new equipment, then in a year, you have paid for what you bought. And it can always be sold.

The beauty of casting "to me" is that you are in charge. You are in control. You can make a mold now to your hearts desire. No more compromising. You control the mix and the hardness. You know how clean the melt is because you were the one who fluxed it. That in itself is worth my casting.

[grumpy one]

May be I'm getting old, but after thirty plus years of chasing lead sources, sorting , and smelting lead with all the related health and safety factors, I have to ask myself is it really worth scrounging, sorting, and smelting all this lead for a guy like myself who shoots one to two hundred rounds a week? I think if I continue to cast bullets at all, I'm going to simply keep one to two 5 gal pails of lead (usually wheel weights) on hand and melt directly in my Lee electric pot a little at a time and cast the bulltets as I go instead of all this ingot stashing. Taking the time to be meticulous, I have found there is no problem cleaning up the lead thoroughly in the single process method. I have had no trouble doing it this way so far. I'm also thinking of all the other crap I can throw out of the house (melting pots, furnaces, large ladle, and all the other miscelaneous junk). May be time to simplify my life a little here. Any opinions?

P.S. - I may even just buy the lead bullets and do away with all the stuff.

It seems to me the amount and type of equipment you use is just an outcome of the way you choose to do the job. I use far more stuff to seat gas checks, size, lubricate, and then assemble the rounds than I do to cast bullets. I don't smelt in my little ten pound Lee pot because the bottom-pour equipment would make it way too hard to remove the steel clips and the huge layer of dirt from the top - if I were using a dip pot to cast I'd just use the one pot, because running the gasoline Coleman stove is way more trouble than the Lee electric pot. Personally I don't think dirt in the "good" pot is an issue, provided you pour ingots after smelting then clean the pot properly before you try to pour bullets from it. I wouldn't contemplate trying to pour good bullets from a pot that had been smelted in and not cleaned, because the crud ends up in the bottom pour spout and after that it's all downhill. I know you have said you are careful, but personally I've never been able to avoid there being some pockets of dirt down in the bottom of the pot somewhere, no matter how I flux and scrape.

Buying the bullets is a different story altogether. Unless you have an arrangement with the bullet caster that lets you specify the bullet mould, the alloy, the driving band diameter, the nose diameter, and the heat treatment, then all you've done is locked yourself out of your own hobby.

Geoff

[tomf52]

I thank you all for your replies. I guess I may have gotten myself in a mood the other day smelting in the intense heat and humidity and having a baqckache also from bending over the pot most of the day. Will give it a try again under better circumstances and when in a better frame of mind. Also had these containers of weights and other materials lying around the garage and was annoyed with the appearance of the garage which left me with the mindset that it (the smelting) was something I had to do when I guess I really didn't. Thanks again all for the input. Tom

[Junior1942]

Man, if I quit casting I'd lose the joy of killing a deer with not only a cartridge I loaded but with a bullet I made. It brings another level to hunting. Then there's the joy I experienced last week. While having a flat fixed I looked in a corner and there sat a plastic bucket filled with wheelweights. I asked the man, "How much do you want for those wheelweights?"

He replied, "How does $7 sound?"

They weighed 70+ lbs.

[Gun-adian]

I'm lucky if I shoot 200 rounds in a month.

Funny how kids suck up all your time.

But I still have about 1000 lbs. of wheel weights sitting in my shed. It may take me twenty years but it'll get used.

Mike

[Nazgul]

Smelting, casting, sizing and reloading are just as much fun to me as shooting. Well almost as fun as shooting. My wife and friends think I'm a little goofy when I make a big score of WW's. Even the one who shoots a lot of the cast bullets. I don't go to bars, don't watch sports, don't watch NASCAR, don't smoke, so casting bullets and reloading keep me busy.

[Bent Ramrod]

I like scrounging basically because I like free stuff. The only elaborate smelting I ever did was when I moved, and had to get all the miscellaneous lead scrap I had in coffee cans into a more easily transported form. Got a lot of it cast into bullets, but eventually the time limit for the move forced a big ingot run. But normally, I flux, remove the dirt/crud/oxides/ww clips, etc., and cast the rest directly into bullets. The only ingots that get cast are the dregs in the lead pot when I change alloys.

I find casting kind of mellow, if the mold is running well. Kind of a Zen thing. Of course, it's no fun if its sweltering hot out and my back is aching. But I can't imagine buying cast bullets. That's like buying bottled water.

[PatMarlin]

Heck I always spend 2-3 times more money to have to do all the work myself.. :mrgreen:

I think there's no better time than now to buy your boolits from guys like Bullshop Dan. Nothing wrong with it at all, and if it's more fun for you that way, go for it!

I get a thrill from the science and challenge of it all. Reloading copper all the time would bore me to death, eventhough it's nice to do for the simplicty of it all sometimes, but I'm to cheap also.

Harvested my first deer with a LEE boolit... 4895 mil surp powder and my 45-70 last year. Now that was a thrill for sure... :drinks:

[Leftoverdj]

There's a simple compromise solution. Turn all the lead you have and all you can lay hands on into ingots. Box up the ingots using a couple of garbage bags as liners, and unload your smelting stuff or put it in dead storage. You've freed up space and have clean ingots for years.

[gregg]

May be I'm getting old, but after thirty plus years of chasing lead sources, sorting , and smelting lead with all the related health and safety factors, I have to ask myself is it really worth scrounging, sorting, and smelting all this lead for a guy like myself who shoots one to two hundred rounds a week? I think if I continue to cast bullets at all, I'm going to simply keep one to two 5 gal pails of lead (usually wheel weights) on hand and melt directly in my Lee electric pot a little at a time and cast the bulltets as I go instead of all this ingot stashing. Taking the time to be meticulous, I have found there is no problem cleaning up the lead thoroughly in the single process method. I have had no trouble doing it this way so far. I'm also thinking of all the other crap I can throw out of the house (melting pots, furnaces, large ladle, and all the other miscelaneous junk). May be time to simplify my life a little here. Any opinions?

P.S. - I may even just buy the lead bullets and do away with all the stuff.

I think your right. Dirty rotten hobby. That stuff just a EPA problem. Now I will
try to help you out for free. Just box it up and send it all to me and i will take
care of the problem for you.
For real I enjoy it all. I have more money in the group buy molds that I could
shoot in bought bullets.
If it hurts quit doing it. Shooting about fun and we should do it so it is for us.
One of those each to his own thing.

[rbstern]

I find I'm doing it for pride in my results rather than savings.

If I figured all of the time, gasoline, electricity, wear and tear, etc., versus buying boxes of 500 or 1000 cast bullets, I'd probably run screaming in the other direction.

A few months ago, I decided to stop casting for 380acp, because the 90 grain cast bullets are often on sale for $13/500. I just don't shoot enough 380 to justify the time and effort to save $13 on a box of bullets that will last me a year or more. On the other hand, 357 pistol and 30 cal rifle boolits, which I go through rather quickly, I can justify a bit of time on.

Bottom line, if you feel like doing it, do it. If you don't feel like doing it (aka, your back aches), then order yourself 1000 or 5000 bullets, and be done with it.

Most of all, don't torture yourself over it. Go out and enjoy your shooting, no matter who made the bullet.

[Bucks Owin]

Besides the savings in cost vs jacketed projectiles, I find casting ACCURATE lead bullets that'll rival J word boolits in group size to be a hobby in itself. Sometimes I can do that but most of my cast bullet efforts have some fliers in them....I'm still learning about consistent technique and alloys...

Always trying to improve,

Dennis :Fire:

[DOUBLEJK]

I must be a real sicko...:shock:
Here I've been thinkin' this was fun n relaxin'.....my heart even skips a beat when I run inta a supply a raw material....[smilie=w:
Oh!Well! Guess I better go pour me a few n get my fix fer the weekend...:drinks:

[Springfield]

Man, if you think a couple of buckets make your garage look messy, you should come over and see mine. I have 6 buckets of lead in various states of sorting, my brother's motorcycle that I have to fix the tranny on, My reloading bench, my casting bench, my gunsmithing bench with the shotgun barrels I have to re solder, my sizer bench, my 2 lathes that need to be made operable, my Shopsmith, my radial arm saw,my grinder, my drill press, my guncart, my 2 500 pound boxes of ingots, my large toolbox for auto work, my other large toolbox full of magazines and bullets, my plastic bins full of styrofoam trays for shipping bullets, and until a couple of days ago about 300 pounds of lead pipe on the floor that I finally turned into alloyed ingots. And it's not really a real garage, half of it I walled off to turn into a play room for the kids. If I am not careful when I turn around I knock stuff of the benches. But it is a home away from home and I won't get rid of anything to make it better if it means i have to start buying what I can make myself.

[slughammer]

I thank you all for your replies. I guess I may have gotten myself in a mood the other day smelting in the intense heat and humidity and having a baqckache also from bending over the pot most of the day.

I smelted 7 buckets in December-January of 2004/5. IIRC is was NOT hot and muggy.

Right now it's about 70 deg in my basement reloading room.