Smaller than .30!!!

[joatmon]

I have always been told that casting for less than 30 cal was too hard and a wast of time.[smilie=1: ---------OK have you calmed down yet?:roll: Now with the purchase of a 7X57 #1 Ruger with a 1 in 8.75 twist(factory spec.?) Any idea what would be a good mold or at least weight to give a try? Paper would be the game.

[Buckshot]

...............The RCBS 7mm-168 would be my suggestion. Super boolit! A superb opportunity to fill that 7x57 case up with WC860 and go shooting!

................BUckshot

[Sundogg1911]

It always amuses me when people tell me that you can't cast for this caliber or that. Did you ever notice that it's the people that don't cast that are saying this :-)

[DLCTEX]

I was able to cast good boolits on the first try with both 22 and 243 molds. Was this luck or what? I've wondered why Lee doesn't make the smaller calibers. Is it because it's harder to cut the molds, or were there problems casting the smaller boolits in aluminum? DALE

[Char-Gar]

I have never cast for anything smaller than 25 cal, but have found no problems casting for the quarter inch caliber.

I am certainly glad I have never heard what you heard, or else I might have problems with the sub-30s

[Poygan]

I cast for the .25acp with a two cavity RCBS mold. It does take a bit to get it up to casting temperature. I don't use it a lot and can't remember if it is a bigger pain to cast or size the little bitty things. It is one of the few calibers I use my Lee four hole turret for, to minimize the handling of the cases.

[joatmon]

An uncle in the 70's was mostly my "Tell me how to do it" connection. Mostly I heard "If Herters was still around" his thoughts were just buy jacketed for under .30cal . I will scrape up for a 7mm mold before long and give it a go! (may even get plum WILD and try .22) Aaron

[floodgate]

HA! Once, on a whim, I ordered the .185" DC Lyman round ball mould they offered back in the early '60's (I have no idea what it was for), and managed to get it hot enough to cast in plumber's lead with my old SAECO 10-lb. bottom-pour. Had quite a chore getting and keeping it hot enough, but I did get 100 or so nicely filled-out balls from it. So the .22's hold no terror for me.

floodgate

[Newtire]

I was able to cast good boolits on the first try with both 22 and 243 molds. Was this luck or what? I've wondered why Lee doesn't make the smaller calibers. Is it because it's harder to cut the molds, or were there problems casting the smaller boolits in aluminum? DALE

Hi Dale,
What boolit are you casting for the .243? Do you have any favorite loads? I have the Lyman 245498 (which is a kind of long boolit that I haven't got to shoot that great). I just bought an 85 gr. Saeco off E-bay and looks like it might be a good boolit.

Some guys say they are shooting the .243 to some pretty high speeds and getting great accuracy. Too small for deer though I will believe that. Anyway, can you post a few or send me a few of your loads so I can give em a try? Any help appreciated.

[ARKANSAS PACKRAT]

I have a two cavaty Raphine .25RB mold, I did not know it was hard to cast, so I just cast them like all RBs. Now I find out it's hard?[smilie=1: there goes that mold, won't work now!!!!!!!!!!!!! Have to sell the flinter????????:mrgreen:
Nick

[crazy mark]

22 cal hard to cast from "NOT". No harder than any other mould. Cast at a little faster pace. I even cast a 225107HP. You have to keep the pin warm on that one. Mark

[AZ-Stew]

OK, Guys. I was going to post this separately as an interesting offshoot (no pun intended) to what we discuss here, but this looks like an appropriate place for it.

I work as a mechanical designer for a major electronics manufacturer. As we're all aware, lead is becoming an environmental issue. Electronics companies have begun programs to remove lead-bearing solder from their products. The European Union has made it all but impossible to sell electronics containing lead in their territory. The new solder materials have been pretty good, but they have issues that we have to deal with, such as determining the physical strength of solder joints created using the new materials, which may differ considerably from what was expected from the joints made with lead-bearing solders. The good part of this is that the new materials are over 90 percent tin, with the remainder being silver and copper in various percentages. The high tin content is what allowed me to pull off this design, as shown in the accompanying photos. The company got lucky, having a bullet caster as one of their designers. You'd have been appalled at the sketches brought to me by one of the degreed engineers to describe what he wanted to accomplish at the beginning of this job. It was a "single cavity" (loose description) that would have been ergonomically impossible and incredibly slow to work with. My many years of casting experience allowed me to give them a design that's physically far easier and about 50 times faster to use than their original concept.

As you may notice, I borrowed the block alignment pin scheme from Lee's 6-banger, and actually use a set of handles canabalized from a Lee 2-banger that was bought specifically for the handles. The part that concerned me before we started testing the mould was whether the alloy would be able to flow through the small diameter passages ( a little over .02 caliber) and fill the larger diameter sections at the bottom without freezing up before the cavities were completely filled. While the mould requires pre-heating before each cast, it does work. The wires shown in the photos are a thermocouple that is used to allow us to achieve a uniform pre-heat temp. before each cast. The runner at the top allows casting four slugs at a single pour. I bought the company a Lee 10 pound bottom pour pot and modified the spout to have a larger orifice so we'd get a fast fill.

I submitted this design to Lee in the hope that they would help us with any details we might have overlooked and to have them fabricate the mould, but Pat and Mr. Lee declined the job, claiming that it probably wouldn't work. We had the parts fabricated from my drawings at a local machine shop that handles aerospace jobs. The only problem we had was that the alignment pin holes were a bit too big and the pins would slide back into the mould blocks when the mould reached casting temp. A couple of set screws fixed the problem. When we had all the parts and materials in place, I had the responsible engineer come out to my house and taught him how to use the setup. The slugs are cut from the runner and the individual slugs are used to test tensile strength of the solder alloys.

So there you go. You can cast under .30 caliber.

Regards,

Stew

[Newtire]

Now that is amazing! Sure is funny how Lee says that thing wouldn't work.

[KCSO]

As to loading under 30's i shoot a 250-300 and cast 70 gr fpgc for this caliber. I have had no problems loading or working with the 25's. I shot the rifle yesterday and got a 3/8" group at 50 yards usnig IMR4227 and L/R primers. The bullets are a little hard to handle for my fat fingers but no problems to load.

[DaveInFloweryBranchGA]

Stew,

Your story is a classic story of "If it ain't invented here, it won't work right." Even with a forward thinking outfit like Lee, it's amazing how folks get into that mentality, but they do. Obfviously, they were flat out wrong.

Great job and that mold looks fantastic. A wonderful way of integrating off the shelf parts with newly designed materials to facilitate quick fabrication of a needed item.

Regards,

Dave

[Dale53]

AZStew;
Congratulations on a job well done!

I have been casting .22's (Lyman 225415 and 438) and Lyman 257420 with near perfect results for many, many years. An old casting buddy of mine and I both started casting .22's at about the same time. Neither of us had ANY problems at all and we got a good laugh out of all of the urban myths about casting small bullets. Horse Hockey!!

Dale53

[Buckshot]

...............AZStew, very cool deal! That's putting your hobby know how to a practical use!

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