Building up my supplies

[bangerjim]

Casting for your 45's............you will need a LOT more lead than you have! Conserve the #2 and dilute it with pure (as said) that you should be able to find in most local scrap yards. Forget the COWW thing. That free-bee ended years ago. And unless you can buy COWW's for 20-30¢ a pound...they aren't worth all the mess and fuss you have to go thru to sort and re-melt them.

Start with a single stage press and leave the "Dillon magic carpets" for your more experienced days!!!!!! Learn why and how things happen and work with a single loading press B4 diving off that deep end.

The 45 long colt is my favorite cal to load and shoot in 5 different revolvers and carbines. Fun! I cast every standard weight of boolit from 160 thru 310gn for them. The heavier the better! Just started dropping 268gn HP's from a MiHec 4 banger brass mold. SWEET!

TG was my go-to powder in the past. Fast, clean, and not much needed. Just watch for those illusive double fills!!!!!!! Now I load and shoot only ETR7. Same load data, just easier to find! And cheaper.

And I powder coat all my rounds for no smoke, no sticky boolits and no leading.

Good luck!

banger

[robg]

One of the guys in our club gives me some scrap lead gas pipe,much cleaner than water pipe no lime scale etc I just add a little lead free solder casts great .

[Garyshome]

"I load more ammo with my cheap LEE hand press ($30?) than I do with my Dillon 550."
Not me!

[David2011]

Ural,

WELCOME!

Just my opinion but based on a lot of practical experience. I'm a huge fan of Ruger .45 Colt revolvers and all they're capable of. If you're only interested in plinking, by all means develop one light load that will work in the revolver and the lever gun. For flexibility I would recommend also developing a "Ruger and Contender only" load for the Redhawk. Another powder will be needed but the Redhawk is capable of power in the same neighborhood as the .44 Mag. It's my go-to in a .45 Colt Blackhawk when I'm hunting or otherwise in the field. I trust it to be effective on small game and big game up to 400 pound feral hogs. Cast boolits will do anything either firearm will do.

David

[W.R.Buchanan]

With all the "fake" wheel weights floating around I think I will be waiting on those until I learn a bit more about the whole process.......

And yes, she is broke in, but only has a tad over 20,000 km on the clock so far.
Good on ya for even knowing what a Ural is.

This is my Mom and me....she is 81.

Attachment 161672

As a former BMW owner I have known about Urals for 25 years + We have a Ural Dealer here in Ventura and I see them frequently.

I said that because the understood "break in period" for Urals is said to be 20,000 miles. This is because of the fact that there is no word in the Russian Language for "Deburring" nothing they make is deburred. Everything comes right off the machine and right into service.

Change oil frequently for the first 20K. They will last for along time after that.

Randy

[Artful]

Well, I generally would say you have a nice plan - got a stash of goods just need a press - While I have several presses, I usually use a Lee Turret press for teaching people on. It's a good press that can handle rifle or pistol and with quick change die holders. But if you only intend to ever load 45 colt I could see the attraction of the Square Deal.

I don't have one myself but I do have two other Dillon presses. I'm with most of the other guys here in that I like to start a newbie with a single stage or unit set up as a single stage so that they learn each process well.

[John in AR]

...Forget the COWW thing. That free-bee ended years ago. And unless you can buy COWW's for 20-30¢ a pound...they aren't worth all the mess and fuss you have to go thru to sort and re-melt them...

Probably 'mostly' ended, for most people in most areas. I'm just now getting into casting after reloading 30+ years, but have had surprisingly good luck finding coww's pretty close to free. I'm in a rural area in north-central arkansas and simply hit several tire shops and oil-change places; mostly places I've done business with on our company vehicles.

In just a couple weeks, I accumulated over 300 pounds of final ingoted weight (muffin-pan ingots) from wheelweights with a total material cost of $20. (Paid $20 for a bucket at one shop, all others were free.) Took several hours sorting & plier-testing, and more time to melt/flux/mold the weights into usable ingots, but other than propane cost my total material investment was just that one $20 bucket; for more than 300 lbs. I'm sure the day will come that the coww thing will be as bad here as in many places, but so far, it's been surprisingly cheap & easy.

Fwiw, I did also buy some lead at a scrap yard that was much cleaner, at 75 cents a pound. Have 417 lbs in ingots in all, but 300 of that was from the $20-total wheelweight supply. The four boxes on the left are all within one pound of 100lbs each, and the box on the right is the 'leftover' seventeen pounds:


Figure whenever we have a company vehicle get tires, brakes, oil change, or whatever at the several shops we use, I'll continue to ask about their castoff wheel weights. It means doing the zinc-sorting thing which is a nuisance, but for the return I can live with it.

At least until it dries up here in Mayberry the way it's already dried up in a lot of places...

[CASTING MACHINE]

Some local ordinances may apply to having large amounts of powder. Keep it to your self. I wish we were neighbors.

[dondiego]

"I load more ammo with my cheap LEE hand press ($30?) than I do with my Dillon 550."
Not me!

At least 5000 rounds this winter with the LEE hand press. It hasn't broken once either, unlike the Dillon.

[jimb16]

Wow, 20 pounds of powder and 4K rounds of brass??? I'd say you're in for the long haul.

The .45 Colt is one of the most rewarding things to cast and reload for. That 8.5 or so grains of Unique behind about any 255ish grain bullet works in everything it seems.

200 grain SWCs designed for the .45 ACP in front of 6.5 grains of Red Dot is a real nice plinking load and accurate.

I like 8.3 gr of unique behind a 255 gr swc. Works very well in both my Blackhawk and my 94 Winchester.