Hardening agents and O.D. dropped from mold

[Naphtali]

Casting for muzzleloading rifles, I have avoided acquiring alloys containing antimony and arsenic because I have been informed that regardless of their action hardening the alloy, their presence causes bullets dropped from the mold to be larger in diameter than a lead:tin mixture.

I pan lube these muzzleloading bullets that are not Minié balls or R.E.A.L. bullets or round balls. They are custom-designed conicals with three driving bands, each a different diameter. Because of bands' diameter variations, creating a sizing die would be difficult-to-impossible.

Result has been that my casting alloys are significantly more expensive than "reclaimed range lead" or linotype or other "mystery" lead alloys.

If there is a workaround that will allow me to use less expensive alloys while creating bullets more or less as I have been, please identify and describe it.

[357maximum]

If what you are doing works.....The Workaround is to find pure lead or lead pipe(minus the joints) cheaper...other than that you is stuck with what ya got. Anytime you add any of the normal hardening "stuff" to pure lead you get a bigger boolit in return.

[runfiverun]

creating a sizing die would be nothing more than a push in and push out affair.
that's how swaging dies work.

[popper]

Bismuth

[badgeredd]

Result has been that my casting alloys are significantly more expensive than "reclaimed range lead" ..........

If there is a workaround that will allow me to use less expensive alloys while creating bullets more or less as I have been, please identify and describe it.

Range lead is usually a bit softer than COWW, particularly is you render the lead yourself and try to remove all of the 22 rimfire bullets. I'd put a "Wanted to buy" in the swapping and selling forum for purish lead. I'd guess that there are some fellows here that have soft lead they'd be willing to swap for COWW lead. Also, if you can dilute WW lead with purish lead, you can minimize the tendancy to go oversize. Perhaps someone here has an idea on how to remove the antimony, at least to some degree, from antimonial lead. As for a sizing die, I suspect one could be made it you were to shove the casting into the die (with different ring diameters) and then knocked it back out. It is a bit of a hassle but it seems it might be worth a try.

Edd

[mefunkymxw]

i invested in a rcbs lubri-sizer... so regardless of how the bullet drops out of the mold you can make very very precise diameters with an extra step.