Best Reloading Manuals for Cast Bullets ?

[old turtle]

I agree with everything said here. The older cast bullet it manuals are great. If you can find the one published in the early 70's by Lyman (I think) jump on it. I is spiral bound and has in the back, pictures of almost all of the Lyman molds. I addition should you run across a copy of Sharpe's "Complete Guide To Handloading" pick it up also. Much of the information is dated but it has a great deal of insight into all aspects of reloading.

[DoctorBill]

So the old Manuals are good to have, huh ?

No sooner said than done.

Been Want Ad'ing on Craig's List for any old Reloading Manuals and
someone answered the Ad !
Some fellow's Father-In-Law died years ago and these were sitting
on a bookshelf - nobody wanted them. Now they are mine. $20

Are these good ones to have ?

I photoshop'ed the Dates into the Photos. I was around 15 years old
when some of these were printed !











The C-H Die Co. book......I have no idea who they are/were.

DoctorBill

[Bret4207]

No Bill, that Wildcat one is not good for you. In fact, it might be dangerous, you should send it to me for proper disposal ASAP!!!!

Seriously, that Wildcat manual is in very high demand and I've seen it go over $75.00 in primo shape. You done did good.

On the moly, Lyman used to market a lube called "Black Magic" which IIRC was an alox based lube with moly or graphite in it. There have been other outfits selling graphite or moly impregnated lubes. I don't know the in's and out's of lube building, but maybe you can come up with something "new and improved".

[DIRT Farmer]

Doctor Bill when I stumbled across this site I had been reloading cast for forty + years, and ask a question that little known to me was the midst of a --- match. I almost blinked the site off.
Some sugestions, 30 cal mil-surps, 160 to 180 grain castings 10 to 12 grains of Red or Green Dot. I got the best results from 10 grains of GD in my 30-06 with 170 grain Lyman gas check in '06. Stright from the Lyman manual.
My sugestion, avoid the info overload, buy a Lyman manual, get your feet wet, stay safe. There is a lot of room to expeirment here but you need to get your feet wet.
A side note, after a few years of experience as an EMT, then two years of class and 2000 hours of clinicals, I still felt I did not know enough to ask questions, after a few runs I had a lot of questions and the Doctors I later found out were very good had time to give a lot of answers. For what it is worth
And I agree on the jargon.

[Bret4207]

Lyman has 3 editions of their Cast Bullet Manual. All 3 are valuable. All are available fairly inexpensively. A new edition is supposed to be coming out soon too.

[DoctorBill]

I though that it might be interesting to some of you guys as to what is
in the Speer Reloading Manual for Wildcat Cartridges from 1959.

So here is a scan of the Table of Contents.

Do these Cartridges have much meaning to anyone now ?









DoctorBill

[Char-Gar]

Taken as a whole, the Lyman books are the best in regards to cast bullets. I have every Lyman manual dating back prior to WWII. Before Lyman started producing books dedicated to cast bullets, they had a large cast bullet section under each caliber. These old book are still very helpful and chock full of information.

This is not to say, some of the others publishers are not helpful, but you asked about the best.

The downside is Lyman seems to change notions about cast bullet loading from generation to generation. For a while they had loads for fast and medium powders and then went to fast powders only.

There is so much disinformation and misinformation out there, that it is hard for a new person to separate the wisdom from the bull. There are some of the veterans of this board upon whose counsel you can depend. The above post by Bret is one such post.

As a general rule of thumb, it is not very hard to find a load at or below 1.7K fps that will shoot as well as jacketed loads in your mil-surp rifles. Just use a gas check bullet, an alloy of ACWW or harder and any decent lube. Of course bullet size is very important.

For these kinds of loads, which will do for 95% of your shooting, 16 grains of 2400, 4227 or 4759 will do the job for you in your mil-surp round. You can play with one grain more or less to find the sweet spot.

If you want to go faster than 1.7 fps then you will want to switch to a medium burning powder like 3031 or 4895.

I am not going to launch off into a long lecture on theory and why all of this is true, but it is.

[Char-Gar]

Dr. Bill --- I started handloading in 1959 and purchased that Speer Wildcat manual at the time. I still have it. I get a little queasy just looking at it.

Wildcating was very much the rage in those days. We necked up, blew out and shortened about every brass case we could lay our hands on. Some of those Wildcats later inspired new factory rounds or were adopted straight out such as the 25-06, 22-250 and 35 Whelen.

Many of the others were interesting, but a waste of time and money. We pushed some of those rounds to giddy pressures and I am surprised any of us survived with both eyes and all fingers. I never blew up a rifle, but I welded the case head to the bolt face a couple of times. Those rifles sure were hard to get open, but we did it.

Best of luck in your shooting and stay safe.

[Bret4207]

Bill, consider that the 22-250, 25-06, 7mm-06 (280 Rem) and 35 Whelen are all factory cartridges now. The 22 K Hornet, 6.5x257, 256 Newton/6.5-06, 8mm-06 are all still popular. Some of the rarer rounds like the Lovell, Wasp and Improved Zipper I recognize and there may still be some rilfles so chambered floating around. Now the Luft is a new one on me.

Interesting stuff.

[DoctorBill]

If anyone has any of the Wildcat Cartridge rifles and wants the info from
the Speer Wildcat Reloading Manual, I am willing to scan those page(s)
and E-Mail or PM them the information as jpg files.

Having just now downloaded a PDF4FREE program and fingered out how
to use it, I can send pdf files also.
You'll have to rotate the image 90° though. (VIEW | Rotate)

Just specify how you want them.

If I were to put them on my image hosting site, I would use up my Free Welcome.
Reduced by half they are 0.15 MB each scan (two pages/scan open book).
Therefore, I don't want to post them here.

I hope I don't regret this......please don't go ape on me!

DoctorBill

[Bloodman14]

DoctorBill, if you got the impression I was talking down to you, sir, I sincerely apologize. I did not mean to give that impression. I was simply offering advice based on my experience, and what I learned here.

[Upstate Matt]

I like to have originals as opposed to reprints, but some of the older Ideal/Lyman handbooks are not in good enough condition to really thumb through and can be a little dear. I'd guess most here are aware of Cornell Publications, but if not they do offer reprints of the old books.

http://www.cornellpubs.com/old-guns/reloading-catalogs/

[Alan]

NRA Illustrated Reloading Handbook - my copy is 3rd edition circa 1965. It is a compilation of articles from the Rifleman, and the 4-part series on boolits is incredibly detailed. There is loading data all through this thing.

I picked it up in Half-priced Books for $8 as I recall.

I look at the quality of articles in this book, and the current Rifleman, and want to cry.

[elk hunter]

Does anyone have information on where I can obtain a copy of the

NRA Cast Bullet Manual ?

I understand it has been out of print for quite a while.

I looked on E-Bay and in some used online book stores.

DoctorBill

This is the best source I've found for finding out of print books.

http://www.bookfinder4u.com/

Hope this is helpful.

[mrbill2]

I like to have originals as opposed to reprints, but some of the older Ideal/Lyman handbooks are not in good enough condition to really thumb through and can be a little dear. I'd guess most here are aware of Cornell Publications, but if not they do offer reprints of the old books.

http://www.cornellpubs.com/old-guns/reloading-catalogs/

Thanks for the link Matt. I ordered the Lyman Third Edition today even tho I have 1,3,and4. Be nice to have them all.