home made bullet mold

[owejia]

Molds are available at regular prices.

NOE
MP
Arsenal
Accurate

The first three can have a mold in your hands within a week to 10 days.

The fourth might take 2-3 weeks.

Sometimes it more about the journey than the destination to some of us.

[Jim P.]

I took an hour or so after work and started on my new mold. It still needs finished but I did cast a few bullets by just clamping it together. I shot for a diameter of .356 but it's only casting them about .354. I'm going to open it up a little. I did load one up and shot it.

https://ibb.co/M8VyjPC

[country gent]

Jim P.
At .354 finish it up and .002 is about perfect to hand lap in for the nicest finish to size. Start with yellow diamond and work by hand with a back and forth tapping motion. making a few casts to see where your at. Work slow do 2-3 rotations and clean and a few cast to see increase from here you can get an idea of how many rotations you need to finish.

[Traffer]

I took an hour or so after work and started on my new mold. It still needs finished but I did cast a few bullets by just clamping it together. I shot for a diameter of .356 but it's only casting them about .354. I'm going to open it up a little. I did load one up and shot it.

https://ibb.co/M8VyjPC

Very very nice. For the first time, you are doing extremely well. One thing I would still suggest though is to make the start of the ogive about .348" and do step at the start of the bearing surface. It's easier than you may think. If you start out with a .345" or so d bit then follow that with a reamer a little under, .354"? just up to where you would want to load the bullet for the bearing surface, Then you can lap the whole thing. But if your gun will chamber the non-stepped bullet at the OAL that you want, then there is no need for the step.(only 9MM bullets).
However this is the advise of a tinker not a machinist.

[Jim P.]

The 90 lb chunk of lead I have is pure lead i believe. it's very soft. could i make powder coated 9mm hollow points from this or will I need something harder.

[Jim P.]

I'm getting a hardness of 9.8 bhn.

[Jim P.]

we have a giant roll of wire solder that's about 3/8" in diameter. would this be any value to mix with the lead.

[Traffer]

Tin is approximately 9x the value of lead. It is used in bullet making but only a small amount is needed. You only need 2% tin in an alloy IF you are having difficulty filling the mold.
9mm is a tricky cartridge to load lead bullets for. Powder coating helps a lot, but not always. I think that 9.8 BHN with powder coat should work. If you find that it is gas cutting or otherwise not working well, you may want to experiment with either a bit larger diameter or a bit harder alloy...11 BHN to 12 BHN. But I am sure that many folks have good results with 9.8 BHN.
Another side note...alloy hardness is crazy, it changes with time, how you cool it and yada yada. Different tools show different results when testing hardness. Even the scale itself is not written in stone. Some scales start with dead soft at 5 BHN. Some around 7 BHN...This all necessitates trial and error, testing and tweaking. Welcome to the fun!

[ryanmattes]

I cast for 9mm at "something near 10," not trying too hard to be accurate. Coated with Hi-Tek and .001 over my barrel diameter gives me good results. No leading, no smoke, good groups.

I'd just cast your 9.8 lead water dropped and worry more about the size and coat steps.

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[Burnt Fingers]

I cast for 9mm at "something near 10," not trying too hard to be accurate. Coated with Hi-Tek and .001 over my barrel diameter gives me good results. No leading, no smoke, good groups.

I'd just cast your 9.8 lead water dropped and worry more about the size and coat steps.

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Yep. I try for a BHN of 11. Usually end up between that an 10. With Hi-Tek and properly sized boolits I've never had a problem.

[mdi]

Just a thought; https://www.mp-molds.com/product-cat...nk-molds-kits/

[Traffer]

Just a thought; https://www.mp-molds.com/product-cat...nk-molds-kits/

$73 for a blank aluminum mold kit? Kind of defeat's the purpose doesn't it?

[P Flados]

You say you have a big chunk that is soft and then you say you are at 9.8 BHN. Are these two different sources?

Rotometals says that 97% lead and 3% tin will run about 9 BHN.

The wire solder is probably 60% tin. If your soft chunk is indeed pure (under 5 BHN), you can get to 3% tin (at close to 9 BHN) by blending in 5% of your 60-40 solder by weight.

And by the way, if you get a mold working well, it is very likely that you can go through 90 lbs in no time at all. The standard recommendation to new casters is to start actively searching out lead re-supply opportunities the moment they jump in.

With powder coat, 9 BHN has a good chance of working fine in the 9mm. I use range lead and think I run somewhere between 8 and 10 on any given batch.

[Jim P.]

I assumed it is pure lead but with my improvised hardness tester I get 9.8. I used a 5/32 steel ball and pressed it into the lead under a 60 lb load. the resulting dimple measured .072".

[P Flados]

I checked your math & the 9.8 looks good. And pressing a ball into lead is how BHN is defined so the only accuracy issues would be caused if you were inaccurate in measuring dimple and/or measuring force applied.

You should probably save the solder in case you do come across some pure and or you need to boost your tin to improve fill out.

For your profile, it looks more "round nose" (more like a 380 bullet) as compared to a typical 9mm profile. With a near ball shaped nose, the full diameter portion of the bullet is longer. For the 9mm, many guns have next to nothing for a throat. Your profile would need to be seated deeper than is typically desirable for one of these guns. When you look at a lot of the Lee bullets for the 9mm, 40 and 45 ACP, they have a fairly lengthy nose in front of a very small shoulder. This Lee profile generally works pretty good in these poorly throated guns.

Have you made a dummy round and checked out what is your longest OAL before the bullet contacts rifling?

[Buckshot]

.............Well with a CNC mill and a tool grinder, you're pretty well set. I haven't been on E-Bay in ages, and there may be better places now but it had a wealth of junk a guy could utilize for creating moulds or whatever.



12 GA slug mould for a rifled Mossberg shotgun ............... the core plug isn't shown naturally.



"Maximum Effort" slug for a .577 Snider ..............



Mould blocks for the above, and on the right a Lyman 12 GA had some drive bands added.



Some of the best tooling I found was simply "D" type reamers to use as a basis for cutting/boring/forming tools/(ABOVE). They're also superb for boring swage dies for slugs that will be paper patched.



Swaged PB slugs for paper patching. Ground "D" reamers may be used for various OD's in swage dies, to a degree.

.................Buckshot

[M-Tecs]

The expansion rate for lead can be found here. https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/l...ents-d_95.html

Lead has a greater expansion rate than any of the materials commonly used in molds. That why the alloy effects the bullet size.

[Jim P.]

I checked your math & the 9.8 looks good. And pressing a ball into lead is how BHN is defined so the only accuracy issues would be caused if you were inaccurate in measuring dimple and/or measuring force applied.

You should probably save the solder in case you do come across some pure and or you need to boost your tin to improve fill out.

For your profile, it looks more "round nose" (more like a 380 bullet) as compared to a typical 9mm profile. With a near ball shaped nose, the full diameter portion of the bullet is longer. For the 9mm, many guns have next to nothing for a throat. Your profile would need to be seated deeper than is typically desirable for one of these guns. When you look at a lot of the Lee bullets for the 9mm, 40 and 45 ACP, they have a fairly lengthy nose in front of a very small shoulder. This Lee profile generally works pretty good in these poorly throated guns.

Have you made a dummy round and checked out what is your longest OAL before the bullet contacts rifling?

I just took a few minutes to make the tool that I used. it is more of a round nose than I would like. I was trying to allow more material so I could put a rather large hollow point in there. I did load one round and it did chamber but it is harder to chamber than a factory fmj round. I am going to taper the tool more before I do any more machining. I can just mill a little off the top of the mold until my new tool profile cleans up.

[Jim P.]

here is my tool since I revamped it a little

https://ibb.co/M5k88qJ

[mdi]

$73 for a blank aluminum mold kit? Kind of defeat's the purpose doesn't it?

The reason the OP stated he wanted to make his own was not to save money, but to have a mold...

A lot of times when a thread is pretty long (40+ posts), some forget what the original thread/question was about...