When do you sort/cull your cast boolits?

[JBinMN]

Thanks for all of the replies/( and votes if ya voted!)
Very interesting & informative for the most part!


I was trying to be brief in my OP, so as not to carry on too much & try to keep things simple. Some folks like it that way & others seem to prefer more detail. The short version of this post ends here, the more detailed is below the dotted line & you can choose to continue reading or just skip on.


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As I said, I do most of my culling/sorting after casting & before I store or lube. I do not usually do it "when" casting , as I am wearing thick leather gloves & it slows my "cadence" if I try to separate as I go. Sure, if I have the chance I will cull them out if they are on the edge of the pile when air cooling, but I am not going to dig thru a pile of boolits wearing gloves, or if water dropped, go thru them when wet. Of course I would dump the first castings as the mold heated up to where I want it, but I do not even consider those clumps of metal with crappy bases to even be worth keeping/mentioning, let alone call them boolits. I consider them no different than the cut off sprues. Any bad bases or wrinkles, etc., after the rhythm or cadence is going, go into the pile of boolits I have cast & I sort afterwards before I store or move to the next step.

Any that get missed before storage if that is where they are going, are found before lubing & sizing, (as well as seating if they somehow get damaged if I am tumble lubing), as they may have been missed or damaged when storing, but overall, most of the inspection is before they get stored since it is one step that I spend the time on so I do not have to do a lot of inspection & culling during other steps in making cartridges. Just the occasional one that was missed or damaged.

I haven't seen any reason to waste time/materials lubing defects before sizing, and since I use single stage presses or a turret one load at a time, in batches of a specific number, I do not have to worry about large lots of boolits being loaded that by chance have a defect of some sort. I load in small lots of 25-50 for testing, 50-100 at a time for plinking/target shooting for fun. I am not a "competition shooter" so other than testing loads, I do not have the need for getting too "picky" about the cast boolits I am using for plinking once I have sorted them earlier. The ones for testing/accuracy & such, are inspected more closely of course. [ < Not sure if I am explaining this well enough... ]

Of course, the boolits get inspected "as I go", but the main inspection is as I said, at one dedicated time before storing or lubing a small batch to be loaded & shot so I am not doing what I consider wasting time with the other steps & end up with a lot amount of a specified number & not have to go back & make up for any I missed inspecting before. By the time they are seated, if they( or the rest of the components) are not damaged for some usually rare reason in the cartridge loading process, they are going to get shot & I know that they are not going to be a reason for blame when I get a flyer. I can blame myself for that usually, no need to blame the boolit/bullet if I know they are loaded "up to my expectations"from the time they leave the press/bench to the time I shoot them.

Long ramble, but I was trying to be more specific, since some folks may need such detail. I left some out since I already made this a longer post than I expected to do.


BTW... For those who might be interested... The poll was an effort made to try to share info in a simple form. Not perfect, but at least an attempt to share information. I am not a professional at polls, so ya get an amatuer attempt at making one, but some folks like them none the less. It was done only to try to help folks out, not as an official and "end all" of info.

I might add that I can accept criticism for trying out using a poll, and fall short of others expectations, but a little "constructive criticism" goes a lot further than just criticism that comes across as a complaint. If ya have a better example of how to do it, please hold forth & explain just how it is done. I would love to learn more if ya have the time to instruct on just how to make a "Good" poll with all the right choices.

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Thanks again for the replies/votes!

[sigep1764]

I cull as Im lubing through a Star lubrisizer. The culls are seen as they set base up in the Star die and I pull them out of the lubed boolit pile after they go through the star. I use these lubed rejects for fluxing the casting pot when I dump in a new ingot so the lube is not wasted.

[Jayhawkhuntclub]

I cull as I'm casting. Rejects go right back into the pot. But I usually miss a few. Those get picked out during sizing.

[Walter Laich]

Since I tumble 'lube' with PC and do it in batches I don't look at each one.

sometimes I catch them as I size them (after PC)

some I catch as I put them on top of the cartridge

[pjames32]

I voted for "before I size", but there are some in between steps. A visual when they are cooled gets most of them, a few more when I size/lube and I look them over when loading. If I'm plinking I'm not too picky as long as the base is good.

[GhostHawk]

Depends on the purpose, pistol I am not as fussy. I do tend to watch for poor fill on bases and send them straight back to the pot.

If I am water dropping for rifle those will get looked at very carefully before getting lubed, and again before loading.

Only rarely do I sort out wrinkles or such minor defects. Incomplete fill of base yes, those get recycled. If I have major wrinkles I'll probably dump all 6 cavity's back into the pot and warm the mold more and try again.

Minor wrinkles don't bother me for most of my shooting.
I just never could see a clear cut difference between them and perfect bullets.

If I still hunted I would probably sort out the best looking 20 for loading for hunting. You'd want nice ones for that.

Punching paper or ringing steel IMO it is just not that important. I don't shoot long range. And I don't shoot much high speed precision anything. YMMV

[dale2242]

I cull the obviously defective boolits I see while casting.
The rest I cull by inspecting under a magnifying light.
My rifle boolits will also be culled by weight.
All culling is done before storing or lubing...dale

[FISH4BUGS]

So, this is not recommended to those who haven't refined their own technique...but I cull out major flaws in pistol boolits as I cast. I observe for base fillout before I dump them out of the mold. Then when dumping them out of the mold, I move the flawed boolits into a reject pile. That takes care of 90% of my flawed boolits.
I also 'quickly' inspect each boolit as I size it...if I see a flaw, the boolit gets rejected. I also inspect them as I load ammo, it's rare I find a reject at that time, but it does happen.

I didn't vote - not enough choices. However, I think it makes sense to cull at every step. When casting, when putting them into coffee cans, when sizing/lubing, when putting them into storage in coffee cans, and certainly when loading. The more inspection you do the better the end product.
We had a 5 day power outage here after the Halloween storm, and I did a monumental casting session or two during that time. I cast, sized and lubed something like 4000 H&G #51's, half plain base and half gas check.
Not many rejects during that run. But there were a few.

[Wayne Smith]

I started trying to cull as I cast - but the boolits were too hot and too small and my welding gloves too clumsy. Now I cull as I lube - I can take a good look at them at that point and not worry about heat and picking out just that one from the pile.

[waksupi]

I inspect each bullet every time I handle it. If they aren't perfect, back to the pot they go.

[fecmech]

I cull at each stage of the process. Anything I see while casting, sizing, or loading gets culled. Bases being most important to me are critically looked at when I cut the spru. No bad bases get to the next stage or any other flaws I see while casting.

[Bent Ramrod]

I didn’t vote either.

Match castings and those for load development and “annoying the animals” off the bench on the Silhouette range get weighed into groups and inspected for flaws after I’ve cast a pile of them. If I see flaws when I open the mould, of course they go back into the pot, but once things seem to be running well, I don’t look at each casting that closely.

After culling, the good ones are stored by weight for lubrication or patching later. The culls go back into the cans marked for the appropriate alloy.

Plinking and offhand practice castings, and pistol boolits, are culled for flaws while casting and again when sizing/lubing, but not weighed. If a slightly bad one is noticed only after lube and gas check, usually it gets fired anyway.

It’s basically the economics of time and effort. If you’re sweating out your match loads or want a repeatedly accurate powder/boolit combination for your load book, it’s a waste of your other efforts to utilize a flawed casting. If you know you’re doing good just hitting a tin can at 100yd with your reference load, maybe your efforts are better spent at the range, practicing, than at the loading bench with a magnifying glass, checking boolits for lines and wrinkles.

[quilbilly]

I sort pistol boolits by appearance but rifle boolits I sort by appearance and weight. I have been amazed at the variations of rifle boolit weights coming from the same mold with the same alloy with good appearance. I allow a little less than 1% variation either side.

[dverna]

So, this is not recommended to those who haven't refined their own technique...but I cull out major flaws in pistol boolits as I cast. I observe for base fillout before I dump them out of the mold. Then when dumping them out of the mold, I move the flawed boolits into a reject pile. That takes care of 90% of my flawed boolits.

I also 'quickly' inspect each boolit as I size it...if I see a flaw, the boolit gets rejected. I also inspect them as I load ammo, it's rare I find a reject at that time, but it does happen.

Exactly.

Rifle bullets are different but they should be.

[MT Gianni]

I weight sort 6 mm and under, eye sort the rest at casting, lubing and occasionally one slips by to the loading stage. If it is just plinking stuff I don't mind flaws above the bands where they may have bumped another bullet being dropped. Anything with an imperfect base or bottom band goes back.

[10gaOkie]

After a first time session with a new bullet. I find about a 1.4gr variation in weight from high to low. Out of 100 bullets, I normally find 3 to 4 bullets outside this range and cull them. I make note of this weight range and used that same info on each casting session. On each session I weigh and seperate into a low half and a high half. Bag them up for use later. This gives me weighed bullets for use that are within .7gr variation. /Chris

[Echo]

So, this is not recommended to those who haven't refined their own technique...but I cull out major flaws in pistol boolits as I cast. I observe for base fillout before I dump them out of the mold. Then when dumping them out of the mold, I move the flawed boolits into a reject pile. That takes care of 90% of my flawed boolits.

I also 'quickly' inspect each boolit as I size it...if I see a flaw, the boolit gets rejected. I also inspect them as I load ammo, it's rare I find a reject at that time, but it does happen.

Plus One - my procedure exactly...

[OS OK]

After the first cast or two the mould is at temp, casts are wrinkle free and now that I use the PID for temp control, I have no need to worry about more than a grain of weight variance, I keep the sawdust out of the casting pot and have no worries about inclusions...so...all I worry about is fully filled out bases and clean sprue cuts...since I dump them into a cotton towel I can pull any rounded bases or ones with holes from inadequate sprue topping...

that's about it.

[ewlyon]

Once my mold is up to temp I just pour and drop without inspecting any, although if I am using a mold that takes a while to cool down then I will scrounge in the pile for an obvious flaws and toss them right back in the pot.
After they are cast I no longer do any real inspection, but I keep a jar for rejects by my storage/lube/size area and another under my reloading bench. Between powdercoating, sizing, and loading I seem to find pretty much all the bullets that aren't up to snuff even if I am being nitpicky about em.

[robg]

If the bases are square and true and no obvious flaws I'm good to go .wrinkled ,flawed boolits go back in the pot along with the sprues .check again as I size and gas check. The base is the crucial bit.