I can do 1,000 an hour with 2 lee 6 cavity 358-125-RF molds. My lyman mag 25 starts out full and is full when I finish. I preheat Ingots to just below melting and continuously add them as soon as there is room. I wish that I could do 2k an hour.
I can do 1,000 an hour with 2 lee 6 cavity 358-125-RF molds. My lyman mag 25 starts out full and is full when I finish. I preheat Ingots to just below melting and continuously add them as soon as there is room. I wish that I could do 2k an hour.
There is no difference between communism and socialism, except in the means of achieving the same ultimate end: communism proposes to enslave men by force, socialism—by vote. It is merely the difference between murder and suicide. Ayn Rand
I’d have to see it to believe it! Just sayin.
Perfect Practice makes Perfect. At the police range next to the public range it's empty the mag as fast as you can. That has always bothered me.
Hot and heavy can get you into trouble with brass molds. Some areas heat faster than the mold can absorb it and "tinning" on the grooves next to the block face can be a real problem. I think I was up to 3 casts a minute with the MP 503 solid 4 cavity but cleaning the mold killed any speed record.
Last edited by Mal Paso; 06-04-2021 at 10:32 AM.
Mal
Mal Paso means Bad Pass, just so you know.
These guys will be at the range when I take one of my flint locks. In the time it takes me to fire off 5 or 6 shots they have unpacked, shot a hundred dollars worth of ammo, packed up and left. I am still sitting there enjoying a days worth of shooting. Oh yeah, they also come over and admire what I am shooting like it's an early Colt Snake gun or a 50 bmg.
Slow down and enjoy.
A vote for anyone other then the conservative candidates is a vote for the liberal candidates.
I know I’m bragging about my speed here but honestly it’s just the fact that it’s a small Bullet and an 8 cav mold, and a bit of practice. The combo of those factors makes them rain like mad!
In My youth I used to cast from a pair of Lyman 4cavs using a Lyman XX 20lb pot and an RCBS Pro-Melt 22lb Pot. A Hot Plate too.
About 1,000 - 1,200 an Hour. Problem was I couldn't keep enough going thru the pots. It took a good 10min to refill a pot. And then switch over to the other pot, then 10min later I had to go back to the 1st pot and top it off. Fluxing took up time too.
Did 25,000 bullets in one weekend, Boy Howdy, was I sore come Monday morning. That is I ended up with about 25,000 with that many, about a 5% rejection rate.
I HATE auto-correct
Happiness is a Warm GUN & more ammo to shoot in it.
My Experience and My Opinion, are just that, Mine.
SASS #375 Life
Can you do that with a REAL boolit mold? Not some 47 gr pellet mold? I doubt it.
That's the favorite saying of my Senior Drill Instructor.
With my eight cavity MP mold I can cast 1000 125 gr 9mm boolits in right around two hours. This includes feeding the sprues back into the pot. If I didn't put the sprues back in I'd run out of alloy in my PMII.
2000 of those little pellets equals 752 of my 9mm boolits. I could match that in a hour. That would be one pour every 40 seconds.
NRA Benefactor.
My normal pace is 700-750 per hour with a Lee 6 cav 125RF. I use the "BruceB" wet rag method on the sprus and drop them back in the pot. I have the bottom cut off a plastic jug with a wet wash rag in it. As soon as the spru flashes I turn the mold upside down on the wet rag for a second or two and then cut the spru. That keeps the hot spru from smearing molten lead on the blocks and lets you cast quickly without waiting for the spru to harden. I had a friend using the old Saeco 10lb 1000 watt pot with 2 H&G 4 cavs did 1000/hr for his reloading business. He started with a full pot and heated the ingots as he went on the top of the pot.
"Masculine republics give way to feminine democracies, and feminine democracies give way to tyrannies.” Aristotle
With my 8 cav 147 gr 9mm aluminum MP molds and a bottom pour with a feeder pot, a nice cadence allowing inspection and culling (actually very few rejects when at optimal mold temp) is right around 1000 an hour. I can go two or three hours before stopping from being plum wore out.
Faster is possible if I use two molds or the speed casting technique involving wet sponge sprue cooling, but with the first I get sloppy with an unacceptable reject rate unless I can stay in the right temp range (harder with two molds), and with the sponge technique, I got rust on the steel hardware unless the mold got completely broken down for oiling, a pain when necessary every day in a week long casting run.
Yep here I’m bragging but in all honesty I just listen to the mold and it tells me how fast to go and these pellet molds demand a very high speed. Doesn’t mean I can’t revel in my production rate tho! Lol. I just did a stopwatch timed hour, and I banged out 2295 keepers! I made a time lapse movie but it didn’t come out as I’d planned so I’ll have to see how that works but yeah, it’s possible, with the right setup AND mold.
That's my exact speed with my MP 125 gr 9mm mold, too. Lots of down time waiting for lead to melt.
I need to stop being lazy and get my second pot (Dad gave me a vintage SAECO pot that still runs beautifully) going, so I'll be able to run non stop... run a pot, switch to the other while the first pot melts new alloy, rinse and repeat.
"Things sure are a lot more like the way they are now than they used to be." --Yogi Berra
It has nothing to do with 'being in a hurry'. Time is precious and I have better things to do than cast. I'd rather shoot. If I could make a robot pump out boolits all day long I'd press the on button and walk away.
Anyways, I think I am doing a rate of 720 per hour, 4 cavity MP452-200 HP mold, Lee 10lb pot.
Ya I'd say 14 to 20 seconds is the time it takes for me to fill the mold, wait for it to solidify, cut the sprue, dump into the water bucket, close the mold and sprue plate, and then fill again. I dont see how that part could be sped up really.
My bottle neck is reprocessing the cut sprues. The little Lee 10lb pot (with PID) drops very quickly in temperature if you start putting sprues back into it. Also, putting ANYTHING in the pot will probably drag some charcoal from wax/sawdust to the bottom and clog it.
So for max speed, might want to have perfectly clean lead, so you can use the pot up almost completely, then drop in all the sprues at one time to remelt.
And of course, the hot plate to preheat and maintain the mold temperature at any time you take a break or during start-up really improves things.
This helps a lot:
Sprues and fresh ingots into the top; hot alloy into the bottom. Both PID controlled, and if the sprues are added as cut and if the ingots spent time on the lip of the top pot before taking their lead bath, there isn't much temp drop in the top, and none, of course, in the bottom. The flow of immediately available and optimally heated molten alloy is essentially endless.
Kevin has the right idea. I MAY try that. When I cast, it's usually two days runnin'. This weekend, I sat down for both days, for about 8hours each, and I don't think I got 2000 for the entire weekend.
I don't feel too bad(except for the sun part) as my melt-time was reduced by using two different alloys, one a day.
I use 2 similar molds at a time, both steel, or both aluminum.
While one is cooling, the other is being cleaned, and repoured.
using two Lee six-holer .40s at 175gr the production goes right along.
With Ideal 1-hole .44s at 240grs...not so much.
The Lyman iron 4-hole .45s and Lyman 4-hole .357s make your hands tired.
the Lyman iron 2-holers .25s...the "tired" is a little lower.
I use an RCBS 20# pot, and keep the heat turned up a bit. Periodically, I'll drop spues back in, and toss some more wood chips in to keep the oxidation down.
The RCBS and Lyman (heated) lubri-sizers are gonna B busy for a while, though I do PC a large percentage.
Have fun, Gene
El plomo ES oro
BP | Bronze Point | IMR | Improved Military Rifle | PTD | Pointed |
BR | Bench Rest | M | Magnum | RN | Round Nose |
BT | Boat Tail | PL | Power-Lokt | SP | Soft Point |
C | Compressed Charge | PR | Primer | SPCL | Soft Point "Core-Lokt" |
HP | Hollow Point | PSPCL | Pointed Soft Point "Core Lokt" | C.O.L. | Cartridge Overall Length |
PSP | Pointed Soft Point | Spz | Spitzer Point | SBT | Spitzer Boat Tail |
LRN | Lead Round Nose | LWC | Lead Wad Cutter | LSWC | Lead Semi Wad Cutter |
GC | Gas Check |