.50 BMG a good casting candidate??

[fatelvis]

I finally made the jump, and bought a .50. I've recently been doing alot of casting and was wondering if the .50 BMG would be a good candidate for casting, and if so, any tips? Thanks-

[Blammer]

Get a dang big ladle and a really big melting pot....

[45nut]

I do not have a 50bmg myself, but I do have a 500A Square and it's main diet has been cast, either 500gr or 725's from an NEI GC mold. The 500A2 is a necked up 460Wby that delivers 88% of the BMG with 1/2 the powder consumption and fills the high power niche quite well, I suspect a ph call to NEI could have a mold in your hands inside a couple weeks. No reason to treat the cartridge any different than any other IMHO.

[Buckshot]

..............I think a 50 BMG is a upscaled 30-06 in relation to case capacity and bore ID. As such it should be well balanced enough to shoot cast. Loads may have to be reduced slightly. One issue may be twist. I'll bet there are guys shooting cast in them though.

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

[44man]

You will have to become a dedicated truck WW thief!

[fatelvis]

Does anyone know of a dedicated website or thread that would discuss it? I thought this one would be sure to have a few .50 shooters at least.

[klw]

I finally made the jump, and bought a .50. I've recently been doing alot of casting and was wondering if the .50 BMG would be a good candidate for casting, and if so, any tips? Thanks-

Owned a couple of them, one LAR and one Barrett as I recall. Mine were single shots so shooting cast bullets was no problem. NEI at the time had a 960 or so grain bullet that was almost identical in shape to the jacketed bullet the army used. Not all that hard to cast but hourly production was sure low. I think that NEI has since dropped that mould. It was just huge and required an unusually large block.

Walt Melander told me at the time that that bullet could be used in semi-automatics and was popular because those cast bullet were a lot cheaper than factory jacketed stuff.

There are a lot of cast bullets for the 50 BMG. This is no big deal. The only unusual thing is how long it takes the blocks to cool.

There are a lot of heavier bullets, of course, going all the way up to about 2600 grains. Casting only becomes a problem if you want a ball for a three inch cannon. Casting those is an entirely different thing.

Incidentally some one, weaver maybe, made a 10 cavity aluminum mould for 50 BMG's I think. Never saw one but I would have like to have.

[Linstrum]

Hey, good deal! I'm glad to see another .50 BMG shooter among the ranks.

Like Buckshot mentioned, the BMG is a 5/3 scaled up .30-06. It is not a particularly big deal to shoot cast with it, just keep the pressure down and you'll do okay. A mildly loaded .50 BMG will still shoot farther than all but a few of the big magnums, its power is simply mind-blowing!

I use the Lee 500-grain 0.515" boolit in mine for "plinkers" (I still tend to think of a plinker as a 45-grain round ball in a .30-30, not something 11 times bigger that could take out an imperial mammoth (or Chrysler Imperial for that matter!).

Have fun with it!