melt for re cast

[lead chucker]

You ever get a new mold and melt down old bullets so you can cast new ones. Because now you don't want to shoot the old ones?

[MikeS]

I do that a lot! I usually have a few pounds of each of the boolit moulds I own, and when I sell a mould, I usually remelt the boolits I have on hand from that mould. I figure with my luck, I'll shoot some cartridges loaded with the boolits I can't cast for anymore, and decide I really like them, and would have to find another version of the mould I sold, and hope it casts boolits that are as good.

I also find that sometimes I will remelt some boolits I cast when first learning, and had lower standards of what GOOD was. A while back when checking to see what boolits I had on hand I found a box full of boolits that today I would call rejects, so I melted them all down and recast them.

[ku4hx]

You ever get a new mold and melt down old bullets so you can cast new ones. Because now you don't want to shoot the old ones?

Oh yeah. The way I see it the boolits are just little ingots anyway and they have no say in the matter so why not? I may have wasted a smidgen of time, lube and electricity but hey ... it's one of my hobbies.

[stubshaft]

All of the time. I think of it as therapy and at the very least practice. Although I have been practicing for over 30 years.

[MikeS]

Another thing about melting down boolits you've already cast and lubed before is that the lube acts as a flux, so you have self fluxing lead at that point!

[Wayne Smith]

My first 6 cavity mold was the MAV big lube 44-40 boolit. I must have cast close to a thousand of those things when I first got it, sized many of them to .427". Found my rifle didn't like that size, melted and re-cast to size to .430". Not even another mold!

[williamwaco]

You ever get a new mold and melt down old bullets so you can cast new ones. Because now you don't want to shoot the old ones?



:oops: How did you know that?


.

[runfiverun]

they made boolits the first time around,they'll make them agan.
i will go through my boolit shelves every once in a while and remelt everything that's just been sitting there.
otherwise i end up with a bunch of boxes that have 20 boolits in them taking up space.

[Wolfer]

A few years back I bought a 500 rd box of commercial bbswc to try in my ruger 45 colt. They didn't shoot that great and leaded my barrel pretty bad so sometimes when I'm smelting I'll throw in a handful. Their almost gone. For some reason my work bench and loading bench are always covered in assorted boolits. Some have flats filed on them for checking hardness, some are covered in lapping compound, some have off center HP holes drilled in them. Some appear to be fine but ever so often I gather everything up and throw it in the pot.

[soldierbilly1]

I recently bought 1000 38 spl PB boolits from an FFL that were sized wrong! I melted them all and made 9 mms out of them. dont shoot the 38 slp much anyways.
BTW, as prior posters noted, don't need much flux!!

bill boy center 'em up (more points that way)

[ddixie884]

Adding them a few at a time fluxes as you go, if they have been lubed...........

[Shiloh]

You ever get a new mold and melt down old bullets so you can cast new ones. Because now you don't want to shoot the old ones?

Yes.

Especially if the old ones were of marginal performance or fit.

Shiloh

[Gunslinger1911]

Funny this should come up.
I have been using LLA 45/45/10 for years. Decided to try my lube /sizer again cause I heard good things about Carnuba Red (really didn't like Lyman moly).

I and the friends I cast for really like the performance and appearance of boolits with CR, so.......... I melted down 6 three lb coffee cans of cast / lubed boolits. WOW, all that LLA really makes a mess in the smelting pot - saw dust took care if it, but, yuck !