Old bullet questions

[Winger Ed.]

I do something to use them as they are. Boil & PC, tumble lube, etc.
I wouldn't re-melt them.


A bit of Airwinger wisdom:
Don't make extra work for yourself, there's plenty of other people who will gladly do that for ya.

[Walks]

Like others have said, if the lube is smooth, then shoot them.
I've seen bullets sold in a wooden box, I have bought some myself from 2 different outfits. But that was almost 30yrs ago, and they were Cowboy Bullets. But they were .44's & .45's. Sold at End of Trail in 1990 or 1991, just that one year. Didn't see the guy again. But they were good bullets. Had that hard blue lube. And they were Hard bullets too. But they shot ok with very little leading.
Really nice little "crate boxes" too.

[JBinMN]

[metricmonkeywrench]

Range update, based on the feedback I loaded up a box of .38 and a box of .357 and finally got to the range today. The dependable S&W Model 10 merrily munched thu the box with no issues. I haven’t cleaned up the gun but don’t see any signs of heavy leading. So that’s a load and go again.

The wheels fell of the buss right off the bat with the .357 SAA, the first cylinder locked up the gun while loading. I pulled the base pin out and was able to get the cylinder out. A second attempt netted the same result. It appears that several of the rounds OAL is too long for the cylinder.

I don’t think I can re-seat the bullets any deeper so rather than breaking them down, I’ll just kiss the nose of the bullet with a rasp to get the OAL down to an acceptable level. Apparently there is a lot of variation to the length of the bullet from the crimp groove as the brass was all trimmed to length. So for my .357 for these bullets are likely not going to be used again.