Newbie question about cost.

[wvmedic]

Ok a little back ground, I have just done my first smelt a couple days ago. The smelt was WW and my lands did they stink, which is what has brought my Wife to complain, She wants me to order my boolits on line now instead of rolling my own. She feels it is too dangerous with the fumes, yes I did the smelt outside in the open air.

So is anyone as analytical as I am? I am trying to show her a savings amount for doing it myself, I have two Lee molds one in 45 ACP 200 gr and a .358 38/357 in 158 gr. So has anyone did a figure on cost per boolit, for say a pound of lube? How many boolits can you get out of a pound of lube?
Also what about tumble lubing V/S traditional cost difference?
I have my cost per boolit for the 45 ACP at free for what WW I scavenge, 0.022 a boolit for WW @ .50 a pound with a 80% loss figured in, I can also get PB in sheet form for .50 a pound. This is of course not figuring my propane cost as I don’t yet know how much I can melt per 20 pound tank @ $13.00 for 20 pounds.

I did look around for an answer but came up empty, I might just not be wording it correctly in the search though. Sorry for being so winded, and I didn’t even figure in the fun factor.

Jeff

[waksupi]

You may have had some rubber tire stems in the mess, along with Copenhagen, dog pee, and who knows what else. All tend to smell bad. Lead itself doesn't have any real smell at the temps we deal with. Nothing harmful is being created.
If this is a big consideration, you can buy clean lead from several vendors here, to eliminate the original WW to ingot melt.
Ordering your boolits isn't a good thing, unless you know exactly the diameter you need, and the company will guarantee the diameter shipped. Most won't, as they are trying to be all things to all people.
I don't have all the figures your looking for, but can tell you the home made cast boolits are substantially cheaper than any you can buy.

[wvmedic]

waksupi, yes I agree with the savings. I just don't know about the cost of the lube per boolit, so I'm trying to show her a cost savings. She likes to shoot as well so if I can show her that we can shoot say four times as much for the same coin doing it myself, it might sway her opinion. I have told her about the smell of the smelt being due to the WW being so dirty.

Jeff

[btroj]

Cost per bullet on lube depends so much on the bullet design. I will say that you can easily lube 500 to 1000 of about anything with 1 stick of lube. If you pay 2.50 a stick it works out to well under a penny per bullet. I cast a fair amount and have been shooting a reasonable amount of handgun lately. I figure on 3 to 5 K per year and my total lube cost is most likely well under 20 dollars a year.

Lube cost is not relevant in the cost analysis.

Waksupi was dead on as far as the smell goes. It is the oil, dirt, etc in the lead that smells. Keeping most of that out of the pot will reduce the odor a bunch.

As for safety, as long as you are not stupid the dangers are minimal. Burns are the biggest hazard to me. I fear lead dust more than I do molten lead. Good hygiene is a must, wash hands very well after handling lead and all will be fine.

Sadly, you have more arguments to handle with your wife than cost. We live in a society that is being trained to fear everything. Lead is "evil" and should be banned from the periodic table entirely! Over coming this is going to be your biggest challenge.

Good luck, and keep casting. The rewards are far greater than a cost savings.

Brad

[canyon-ghost]

:coffeecom Here's a few tips for the wife and yourself, too. To get that smell out of your clothes, use a dishwashing detergent (like Cascade powder) and wash twice to get rid of the slimy feel. I just drop the entire change of clothing in the washer and 1/4 cup of Cascade. They tell me that the high-phosphate detergent gets rid of lead traces too.

The price you pay for 500 bullets online is about what I would pay for 100 fully loaded rounds from my reloading room. It is cheaper. About 30# of lead makes half of a 3lb coffee can of bullets, approximately 500 rounds or so. And considering weight, 30lbs. isn't that large a volume of lead. A little is worth a lot.

I flux with candle wax, Gulf canning wax, or parafin (all the same wax). You can light it afire and burn the smoke, it chars the smelly stuff you skim off to black. One only needs to be careful, it generates very tall orange flames, very flammable. That cuts down some, on the fumes. Most of what you smell is really only tire mounting lube, vegetable fat used to lube the bead on tires. But, yes, it stinks.

Ron

[canyon-ghost]

Oh, and can I shoot more?

Take your pick: 32-20, 32magnum, 7mmTCU, 7mm-08, 22 hornet, 41 magnum (either of the two), 9mm(two of those) or 22lr. I used the first 5 gallon bucket of wheelweight for ten years! Now, I have a 44 Special on order. As far as bullet lube goes, I use Carnuba Red : http://www.lsstuff.com/lube/

My boss paid $45 a box/50 rounds for 32-20 recently. I make it for less than half that.

Another alternative is to buy lead that is already clean, that takes dollars though. Just a thought.

[geargnasher]

I end up paying $1/lb for my ww lead after the cost WW themselves, propane, and tin, that's about $37/1,000 for 255-grain .45s, or about $23.50/1,000 for 160-grain .30 caliber boolits. Felix Lube costs me about $10/lb to make using Randyrat's beeswax, Lithi-Bee costs about $7/lb, and White Label lubes costs not too much more. I can lube 1,000 of any boolits I have for about $3 using home-made lube, or about $5 using White Label, or about $7 using most other lubes. I keep mentioning White Label Lubes because if you want to save money, in all reality you CANNOT make equivalent quality lube in small quantities cheaper than he sells it by the time you factor in the cost of tools, supplies, and time.

Basically once you have the smelting equipment, casting equipment, lubing equipment, and lube or lubemaking supplies on hand, you're looking at $30-$50/1,000 for most boolits at current market rate for scrap lead and solder. Plus your time, of course. If you approach this as a hobby that you enjoy, your time is a discount, not a cost, since it's something very enjoyable. If you don't care that much for the nitty-gritty of casting boolits, the cost of your time might be a factor. As far as buying commercial there ARE a few, small companies that sell hand-cast boolits with good lube on them, cast to your specs, but it isn't cheap to buy them.

Gear

[Crash_Corrigan]

I have been doing this for almost 20 years. I have a stash of alloyed ww ingots in my garage that is over 3000 lbs. I buy my lube from lars45 at white label lubes and it is very cheap and goes a long way.

I load for 9 MM, .38, 357, 327 Mag, 6.5x55, .223, .30 Carbine, 30-06, 8 MM, 41 mag, .44 Special, 45 ACP and 45 Colt. I also mold 695 boolits for my 50-90 Sharps BPCR.

I go shooting pretty much weekly and recently I have been shooting the BPCR, 41 Mag and .44 Spcl mostly. For the 41 and 44 I can make a box of 50 rounds tailored to my specifications for about $3.50 a box. Compare that to paying $30 to $40 per box of factory fodder. If I were to purchase boolits and just assemble the 4 basic components of a round I would have to pay at least eight cents more a round so add $4 to the cost of each box of 50.

Not only are the boolits expensive but they are usually improperly lubed and they lead my barrel and shoot lousy beause they are the wrong diameter and weight for my purposes.

So I pay more for bad boolits that shoot lousy but I shut up my complaing wife. I have had two of them and they both complained and they are not missed.

So man up and do your thing and tell her to take a hike. I you do not then she will direct, command, control and be a SWMBO until you die.

[fryboy]

" How many boolits can you get out of a pound of lube? "

ummm if you give us the exact volumetric capacity of the lube grooves in question i'm sure we could get real close until then we can only guess , here's a good example - i have a .22 cal boolit with two lil lube grooves , a stick of lube will lube thousands of boolits , i also have a .54 cal maxi mold - if i'm lucky i can get a couple hundred boolits lubed ( strong on the luck btw ) if using lee or lars alox it can be cut with mineral spirits and a little goes along ways ( i dont care for it's smell tho and recluse's recipe is alot better - both as a lube and less smelling )
i do have to state that making your own lube has it's own ummm aroma's some more so than others , if you have the time you can wash your ww's and then let dry but they need to be dry to smelt or the tinsel fairy has a bigger invitation to come calling (not a good thing )
even outside it's a good idea to stand upwind from the fumes and/or even use a small fan on calmer days , as stated buying ingots saves a bit of time and smell ...the cost factor varies , i prefer to time my smelts so that as soon as i'm done i'm taking a long hot steaming shower

[bobthenailer]

as for the cost of propane,$18.00 for a refill . last year after smelting i ended up with approx 1,200 lbs of WW ingots and i had some left to run the bq grill for a short while on one 20 lb tank.

[wvmedic]

Thanks to everyone for the replies, I know there are variables as to how many boolits can be lubed by a pound of lube. That is why I included the two calibers I will be loading as of now, latter I will cast and load for my rifles. For now though I will stick to handgun for my learning the basics.
So I guess what I was wanting to know is can I expect to lube 20 of the above or 10,000 of the above with a pound of lube. Being as I have never done this I thought someone with experience could provide some incite to a new caster. Maybe I should have worded it like that to begin with, I realize that there is not a precise figure per boolit. So an approximant number per pound would be the better question.

Crash, no she is not like that at all she is very understanding. I do pretty much as I please, however out of respect for her I do get her opinion on things. Her concern is that I have some respiratory problems and a long family history of such. My Mother died at the age of 37 with the same disease, so she is just concerned. Me not so much, I have done far worse things than smelt dirty wheel weights. When I started fighting fire, I think we only had 4 or 5 air packs for the whole department. So not everyone fought fire with an air pack, just an example of one of the things I’ve put my lungs thru.

Thanks Jeff

[wvmedic]

fryboy, I did see recluse's sticky. In fact I got the .357 mag. mold for tumble lubing because of his sticky, it looked to be easier for a beginner such as myself to learn. I did get the .45 in the standard mold.

Jeff

[rockrat]

Get yourself some of Lars Xlox, dilute it with mineral spirits, about 5/1 MS/Xlox and tumble lube for the pistols. It doesn't take much.

Buy your lead off the board, I bought a bunch from MuddyCreekSam. You won't have the stink then. At $1/lb, figure $2.50/100 and $3.30/100 for 38/45's respectively. I don't know where you can buy boolits for that price.

When you get to rifle boolits, thats where the price difference really shines. I can make boolits for my 375 H&H for $5/100, but if I bought some, no telling what it would cost

I usually guess I can shoot 4X the amount of ammo, when I cast vs. buying ammo

[C.F.Plinker]

Javelina costs about $5.70 per stick from Midway. A stick is about 1.65 oz or 1/10 of a pound. I lube 1200 to 1500 per stick for my 45 and about 2000 per stick with my 38 wadcutters. I have found out that I only need to lube the bottom grease groove with the boolits I cast in these calibers. So it is about 12,000 to 15,000 45s or 20,000 38s per pound of lube. This means that the cost is about 0.3 to 0.5 cents each using Javelina. Now if you use Lars 50-50 or BAC you can cut these costs by a factor of 3 or get it down to 0.1 to 0.2 of a cent each.

Since each stick is about 1/10 of a pound you are paying about $57 per pound for Javelina from Midway. Gearnasher gave some costs for making lube. Doing this will get your cost down to 0.1 cents each.

I haven't done enough tumble lubing to have a handle on those costs.

[fryboy]

the 45 in the standard mold will tumble lube well , it and 38 special loads are two of the easiest to tumble lube for , and as they say if you can see the lube you have applied too much , while i find that's not 100% accurate it's reasonably so , one can use regular lube on the tumble lube boolits ( at least from reports here ) these IMHO would use less lube , the volumetric capacity of the lube grroves is half in jest and half serious , there are so many variables , for instance alloy , various alloys will weigh different in the same mold , while this wont skew the capacity of the lube grooves much added with how much they are sized will , i have the mold in question , i havent pushed it real hard ( no need really for target loads ) i also have the 158 rnfn - i love this mold but with some alloys sizing it shears/swages away part of the groove , i figure that it takes about a stick and a half to a stick and 3/4's to fill up a sizer , it's no problem to size 700-1000 452-374's with this before needing a fill up , but then again i have never ran any of my current sizers empty before topping them off , while making lube isnt exactly cheap it is more so than buying most brands , saeco green is 1/2 beewsax and half paraffin for the most part ,this is about what i deem pushing the edge for higher velocity rifles yet a pound of beeswax makes a lil over two pounds of lube and that's alot of grooves that can be filled cost is about ten - thirteen bucks give or take , i use quite a bit of lee's liquid alox , it had been just getting hard in the bottles from buying the various sizing dies i wanted as i didnt care for it straight even tho it works , i've prolly given away more than i've used (mostly mixed as recluse's recipe ) yet i still have several bottles left , if i manage to run out ( which i cant see happening ) both lee's little bottles and lar's quart are reasonably well priced and using the bottles that came with the sizing dies means it's about 10 times cheaper than using home made regular lube , i'll spend more per shot on primers and powder than anything else

[canyon-ghost]

I use the 4500 lubesizer from Lyman that uses 1x4" hollow sticks, 1 stick does a batch of 500 of those 41 mags. It's done with a heater though. If you have a lubesizer and 10 hollow sticks, you're in business. You won't cast as fast, I'd think.

White label sells theirs for around $2/stick. Never pan lubed in my life, never done tumble lube either.

[mold maker]

You didn't say what kind of pot your smelting in, or I didn't see it. I use a dutch oven and only smelt LEAD WWs. Since I don't have to worry about Zinc, I add waxed sawdust to the pot with the fresh WWs. A lid helps to speed up the melt and really cuts down on the smell and smoke. Usually when I lift the lid, the fumes quickly ignite and that gets rid of almost all the evil smell. Stirring while lit gets the clips all floating with the burned trash. Scooping everything that floats will cost a very small amount of lead, but getting it out of the heat quickly, reduces the stink.
Then load the wife some ammo with bought bullets, and load yourself the same value of your boolits. Take the wife to the range and let her shoot hers, and when she finishes them show her how many more rounds you still have to shoot. Nothing inspires a women as much as jealousy over a bargain.

[geargnasher]

You can buy one heck of a respirator at Home Depot for about fifteen bucks, cheap insurance against most fumes. No worries about lead fumes from clean metal, doesn't happenuntil about 1,100 degrees or more. Might get trace lead carried with soot from a smokey smelt, but you'd have to really be sucking it in.

Gear

[wvmedic]

Thanks for the info everyone this really helps.

mold maker I was useing a large cast iron skillet, it is what I had on hand. I will be getting a dutch oven. And she would be real ticked off when she ran out of her ammo, and I wouldn't share. That made me laugh, I could see me doing that and it would be all kinds of funny.

geargnasher, I have conciderd that as well.

Jeff

[wvmedic]

I smelted the rest of my WW today, so I will be roling my own.

Also i made a mistake on my molds I have the Lee 358-158-RF
and 452-200-SWC.

Thanks again for the help.

Jeff

[LabGuy]

Jeff, I know you asked about cost justification, but. I stared burning a bit of diesel fuel in my melt when I smelt. It helps heat up the melt, and burns those smelly fumes into a slight diesel smell. I do remove all rubber products before I start. My neighbor used to smell what I was up to and come over and visit while I smelted. Now the only time she knows I’m smelting is if she sees me in the driveway cooking lead.

[giz189]

So I pay more for bad boolits that shoot lousy but I shut up my complaing wife. I have had two of them and they both complained and they are not missed.

So man up and do your thing and tell her to take a hike. I you do not then she will direct, command, control and be a SWMBO until you die. CC I like the way you think![smilie=l:

[Recluse]

Lee 452-200-SWC.

Thanks again for the help.

Jeff

That is one of my best and absolute favorite boolits. And for what it's worth, you can tumble-lube that thing and have no worries. I probably tumble-lube two-thirds to three-fourths of the ones I cast--and I shoot quite a bit of .45ACP.

:coffee:

[noylj]

You can order the alloy. Missouri Bullets charges ~$140 for 66 pounds.
Rotometlals charges $2.59/lb.
You can order as-cast and unlubricated bullets from most vendors. Some will even give you a decent discount.
Smelting is always the worst, and I wouldn't even think about it now with the neighbors I have and the home owner's association nazis.
The biggest concern any one should have is over the heavy metal dust in the casting area. One needs to keep the area fairly clean and never eat, drink, or smoke in the area and ALWAYS wash your hands after.

[wvmedic]

Thanks for the info noylj. I think I will be doing my own, for now at least. I bought a 7.5 qt dutch oven Monday, I think it will be better than the skillet and it has a lid.

Jeff