A couple of months ago I picked up a well-used 1882 Colt Single Action Army in 45 Colt. It's a shooter grade gun at best, and I wanted to shoot it, so this prompted me to finally get my act together and start casting lead. I had been preparing for it since last winter when I put together the equipment to smelt about 130 pounds of wheel weights that I had collected for a different project about 15 years ago. The smelting was successful and I ended up with a nice quantity of ingots, so buying the Colt lit a fire to get some molds and start casting. I bought a Lyman 454190 on eBay and picked up a Lee 10-pound pot at a gunshow, so I was ready to go last week and cast up 100 bullets without too many problems once I got the mold up to temp. Next I needed to concoct a home-brew black powder lube, which made I with 50% local beeswax, 40 percent Crisco and 10 percent olive oil, then pan lubed and sized to .452. That was the last challenge because reloading equipment is out of stock everywhere! I was able to find a Lee breech lock lube/sizer kit on eBay but I couldn't locate the breech kit to use it in a press, so I just used it whack-a-mole style, which actually worked just fine. Got some Goex FFFg locally and loaded up a couple dozen rounds with about 33 grains. I've been reloading for over 30 years, but this was a very satisfying project and I feel like I have achieved a new level in the hobby. This forum was a great help as I researched a lot of questions. Here's the result.
Video of the first firing: