I thought I’d posted this issue, but I can’t find it now. Please excuse the duplication if someone does find it...
I have a handful of cast (commercial) bullets that I’ve goobered up in various ways. Mostly they’ve been sacrificed to adjust seating dies, verify feeding, or other productive uses. Some are lubed, others powder (or Hi Tek) coated.
I also have about 200 commercial cast and lubed bullets I bought to load .380 auto that just don’t work (at a reasonable or safe-seeming COAL) in one of my .380 pistols. I can’t justify loading this caliber differently for only one of three pistols, so I consider these bullets unusable.
Finally, I have a variety of jacketed and plated bullets I’ve recovered from range pick ups. Most of these rounds had goobered up bullets from feeding issues, so the bullets aren’t salvageable.
So the question: it looks like melting down lubed bullets is just a smelly, smoky mess, and advice I’ve found on these forums implies that I should just burn off the waxy lube as it floats up. But would 200 95 grain .356 bullets cause too big a mess? Should I just go slowly with those and put up with the smoke for longer, or toss ‘em all in and get it over with?
Of course I have no idea what alloy these bullets are, and I have no equipment to even get an idea of their hardness, so is melting them down separately a smart idea?
And what about jacketed and plated bullets? I figure the jacketS will just float too the top, but is there anything else to keep an eye out for? With the plated bullets, the plating seems to be an obstacle to melting out the lead. Would crushing them (probably? possibly?) break the plating enough to do the trick?
Thanks for the guidance!