Thinking about starting to cast...

[Hueyville]

Lyman four cavity molds are my favorite. Last forever and dropping four bullets after each pour piles them up pretty fast. Started about 1:30 pm after church and by 6:30 pm (just finished) had just over 1,200 200 grain 45's dropped and just over 500 sized and lubed using a Lyman Lubrisizer. About to eat dinner then go back down to gun room and run the bullets sized/lubed through the Dillon 550b and will be 500 rounds up on the day. Should have the 2,000 rounds of 45 need for January done by Thursday and all my 40 Smith by Sunday night. Then it will be a week of trying to hold onto those little 9mm bullets and cases with my fat arthritic fingers.

A Lyman Mag 20, four cavity iron molds wont let you down and move about as fast as I am able to move. Suggest either use a tried and true Lubrisizer or powdercoat. Never liked tumble lube or other methods. Honestly the pair of Lubrisizer will likely handle all my bullet sizing and lubing chores for life. So used to them, work so well and give a near perfect bullet. For the money they do super job without dropping large on a Star or similar. The cheap methods are just that, cheap. IMHO, YMMV and other standard disclaimers. Started casting at age 13 and my guess is 70% of my handgun shooting since has been cast. The cost savings means you shoot 10 times more ammo and get a hobby for rain days and short winter days to boot.

[kmrra]

TexasGrunt , since you have all the time in the world to devote to casting, I say go for it , it depends how much you shoot as to weather its worth it , I just recently got back into casting myself. That being said I like reloading , and casting , More so than shooting and I try to shoot as often as I can, I have my own range here at the ranch , It will cost you to get into it tho , I had the good stuff years ago , but when I decided to get back into it I went with Lee equipment and its a lot cheaper, The best thing about going with Lee is that I bought 5 double cavity molds for what one from other companies charge , and from my experience they cast great bullets for the kind of shooting I do. BUT its still costly that way also . As I said I like to do things like that , Im not trying to discourage you at all , I believe it would be great therapy for you ,It is for me .

[Hick]

I have a Lyman 225646 2-cavity mold that gives me 60 grain gas-checked bullets for my 223 Remington at 2.5 cents per bullet if I buy the high priced alloy (Lyman #2 from Rotometals). I use Rotometals because the alloy is clean and I don't have to mess with smelting. I push these bullets, with a gas check, to 2000 fps with no leading. These bullets are sized and gas checked using a Lee push-through sizer and only Ben's tumble lube. So, for the price of one mold and the fairly inexpensive Lee push-through sizer I get up to 2000 fps in cast from my 223 Rem. Without the gas check, and tumble-lubed only, I run down around 1300-1400 fps and shoot a load similar to 22LR at less than half the price of current 22LR. So-- nothing wrong as far as I can see with shooting cast in 223 Rem. I actually think I could get well above 2000 fps but I haven't tried it yet.