How many cast boolits do you make.

[The Dar]

I usually cast a Lee 4-20 pot full at a time. With either 2 six cavity molds or 3 two cavity molds, depends on what I'm running low on.

[barnabus]

I normally cast in 1200 round lots. usually two or three sittings and then don't pour for a month or so.i think it keeps my lead level down.

[kevin c]

I cast to feed my action pistol habit, so when I'm shooting a lot (out recovering from some health stuff at the moment), I'll cast over a few days to have two to four months worth of boolits, around ten thousand. These will be HiTek coated, sized and stored, to be loaded once my current stock of components runs out. I try to anticipate the need so that the casts have aged to stable hardness.

I run 8 cave aluminum molds with Promelt with a Lee 4-20 feeder mounted over it. Both are PID controlled. Right now it's one mold only, but I'd like to perfect running two molds in a production run. But with the feeder and some care to make the layout of the equipment efficient, even with one mold I can cast close to a thousand an hour and do it without a break for two to three.

I'll bring out enough ingots for three or four full pots worth, starting with empty pots and ending with full ones to continue the session in the next days (occasionally I'll change alloys, which is why I'll empty the pots when finally done). Casting just one boolit and using consistently sized ingots makes it fairly simple to estimate what I've cast that day.

Raw casts are stored in bulk until I'm ready to coat them. They get divided into 250 count lots by weight for consistent heating in the oven, and stay segregated that way through the final bake and sizing. Then it's easy to put exactly 2500 into a labeled or bucket (I really like the Acme Bullet Co boxes I scrounge from my fellow USPSA shooters who load commercial bullets) until it's loading time.

So, yeah, I guess you can say I count them, or at least have a close estimate by weight.

[6bg6ga]

You guys are starting to make me twitch. Casting an ammo can full and not knowing how many are in there is just unacceptable, I would lay awake at night wondering how many bullets I have. Weighting bullets in a pinch will work but the count might be off by one or two so it's just better to count them. Ya I got issues and I have spread sheets proving it.

I think you can get spot on weighing the bullets. You just need a decent scale and perfect bullets damn now I'm going to have to count the 100 lbs of bullets I just made.

[murf205]

That's a good reason to get an electronic postal scale. They are pretty reasonable on Ebay and really come in handy when weighing up a pot full of metals. My tin stash last longer than when I used to guess about the weight of how much I was dropping in the pot.

[DukeConnors]

nuff said

[Green Frog]

It depends on what game I’m shooting at the time. I don't maintain large stores of cast bullets in boxes and jars, rather I consider the casting session as one step in the campaign to prepare for a specific shooting discipline. For instance, I need to be ready for N-SSA skirmishes come Spring, so fairly soon I’ll fire up my pure lead only pot and cast a few hundred .578” Minie Balls and at least that many .454” round balls. Then I’ll do the same with my soft alloy pot and cast a few hundred bullets for my Maynard. Since I bought a coffee can full of bullets for my Henry repeater from a team mate (while looking for a mould) that will give me a good start on my season’s needs for skirmishing. If I am fortunate enough to shoot more events than usual, I’ll do a resupply casting session of whatever I’m running low on.

Back when I was involved in the Schuetzen game, I would try to cast up 3-500 rounds for each of the cf rifles I would be shooting in the next event. These were as perfectly cast as possible, lubed and shot as cast in the order cast, so having a batch of bullets all from the same session was desirable, and getting that many near-perfect bullets at a sitting was about my limit.

For pistol bullets, number cast per session depends on mould and mood. If they’re dropping well, I tend to keep going until I just get tired. Again, I don’t maintain the large stocks some of you seem to feel you need to... maybe now that my partial retirement has become a little more “full” I’ll be looking for something to occupy my time and start building more of a standing stock, especially in 32 and 38 sizes. Maybe as I settle on a couple of “favorites” I’ll make bigger batches of them... the little 105 gr SWC-HP for 32s that I got from MP comes to mind.

Froggie

[dale2242]

I have reached my goal casting the 452460 with a 4 cavity Lyman mold.
I have a cast, sized and lubed 1K of them in three days working off and on....dale