Final Step for casting and needed equipment

[Walter Laich]

let us know where you live--could be someone is near by and can show you the ropes.

pan lubing is not too hard and you need a minimum of equipment. can be a bit messy. easy and quick--just my 2¢

[Lakehouse2012]

For 9mm, wax lubes aren't the best choice.

1 they are messy. In automatics that means (depending on outside temp) gumming up you action.
2 cost, time and materials. RCBS or star sizers are expensive in this day, it's a slow process when your wanting to shoot lots of rounds and wax and powders aren't cheap now adays either.

I'd reccomend hitek, or even Powdercoat. It allows you to do 100's of boolits at a time and the cost can start with just a can of acetone, dry powder and a garage sale toaster oven.

Now, if your going to start loading revolver for magnum loads the answer changes dramatically....

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[AndyC]

You need:

A Lee bullet sizing kit (around $20 or so): https://www.amazon.com/Lee-Precision...dp/B00162UJN4/
A cheap toaster oven
Some powdercoat paint and a few plastic #5 tubs

Simple.

[farmbif]

ok sorry bout the Redding sizer answer
never even thought someone would confuse a resizing die for brass cartridge for a bullet sizing die.
if this is the case new bullet casters can learn

here is link for free book

http://www.lasc.us/Fryxell_Book_Contents.htm

hopefully this can help some

[bangerjim]

Go with PC......it is forgiving on hardness! Don't get "lost in the weeds" like so many new casters do with hardness. 9-12 +PC will probably handle 95% of your shooting needs.

Lee dies are great. I have over 20 sets of different cal's I load for. Don't invest $$$$ in a Star lubra-matic!....if you can even find one. I and thousands of others have been doing PC since around 2013 with EXCELLENT success.

[ryanmattes]

Just a note, I have a drawer full of Lee sizers for all the different bullets I cast. I also have multiple in the same size, that I've opened up with fine grit sandpaper and polish, so that I can have incremental sizes, like .356,. 357, .358. it's a lot of damn dies. All in all, I have almost $300 in sizers.

If I had it to do all over again, I'd get the NOE push through sizer. You get the die body once, for $45, and then you get a $12 bushing for each size. They make bushings in incremental sizes so I wouldn't have to make my own, and they're half the price per caliber. My $300 of sizers would have only cost $200, and I would've saved the time and pain of making all the non-standard sizes.

This is the die body: https://noebulletmolds.com/site/prod...size-die-body/

This is the .357 bushing: https://noebulletmolds.com/site/shop...-bushing-b357/

You definitely want to add a Lyman M-die in place of your expander die, if you don't have one. They are ideal for loading cast.

https://www.midwayusa.com/product/1011246697

Hope that helps.

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[gifbohane]

let us know where you live--could be someone is near by and can show you the ropes.

I live in extreme Northern New Jersey, just over the border from Airmont in Rockland County. I would bring coffee and lots of donuts to the sessions.

[GregLaROCHE]

Have you slugged your bore? It important to know what finished diameter you need to aim for. This could effect the diameter of the boolit sizing die you get. There’s plenty of threads about slugging you bore if you use the search engine, if you don’t know about it.
Good luck on your adventure!

[gifbohane]

Ok- Thanks to all of you I just purchased the rest of the needed equipment from NOE. Now I am stuck with a new set of Handles and Mold from Lyman. But thanks to you folks I have all the right stuff.

Now to call Hi Tek.

[ryanmattes]

Don't give up on your mold just yet, cast with it and see what size they come out with your alloy. With a steel mold brought up to the lower end of casting temp and some practice, you might be dropping .357-.358 bullets from it. The size in the name isn't an absolute indicator of the size it drops.

Hotter lead and mold is easier to get good fill out, because it flows more before it freezes. But the hotter the lead, the more it shrinks when it cools. So keeping the mold and lead temps fairly low will often give you less shrinkage, for a fatter final bullet. The bigger the bullet the less that applies, but 9mm is pretty small.

And the handles should work with most brand molds of similar size.

For HiTek, one of these will easily do 10k-15k bullets.

https://hi-performancebulletcoatings...-oz-container/

Go check out a HiTek thread for a look at the colors and process. The simplest method is to dump 5lbs of bullets in Tupperware, add a couple squirts of the mixed HiTek (around 1ml per lb), shake for 30 seconds or so, dump them on a wire basket to dry for an hour (or set them on top of your oven while it warms up, 5-8 minutes above 100F dries them plenty), then bake at 400F for 8 minutes. They'll shoot fine like that, or you can do a second coat to improve color and coverage.

Biggest problem with HiTek is it's intended for volume. So I cut the recipe in half, coat 30lbs of bullets, and then the remaining 2/3rds of the liquid sits until it's not worth the effort to re-mix it and I dump it out. I waste far more than I use. It will still work after it sits, but the color has clumped in the bottom and people have to use vibratory tumblers or paint shakers for like an hour to get it back into suspension. So even if I only get 5k bullets out of a tub of HiTek, at 3 rounds for a penny, my time is worth more than the mix.

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[gifbohane]

Don't give up on your mold just yet, cast with it and see what size they come out with your alloy. With a steel mold brought up to the lower end of casting temp and some practice, you might be dropping .357-.358 bullets from it. The size in the name isn't an absolute indicator of the size it drops.

Hotter lead and mold is easier to get good fill out, because it flows more before it freezes. But the hotter the lead, the more it shrinks when it cools. So keeping the mold and lead temps fairly low will often give you less shrinkage, for a fatter final bullet. The bigger the bullet the less that applies, but 9mm is pretty small.

And the handles should work with most brand molds of similar size.

For HiTek, one of these will easily do 10k-15k bullets.

https://hi-performancebulletcoatings...-oz-container/

Go check out a HiTek thread for a look at the colors and process. The simplest method is to dump 5lbs of bullets in Tupperware, add a couple squirts of the mixed HiTek (around 1ml per lb), shake for 30 seconds or so, dump them on a wire basket to dry for an hour (or set them on top of your oven while it warms up, 5-8 minutes above 100F dries them plenty), then bake at 400F for 8 minutes. They'll shoot fine like that, or you can do a second coat to improve color and coverage.

Biggest problem with HiTek is it's intended for volume. So I cut the recipe in half, coat 30lbs of bullets, and then the remaining 2/3rds of the liquid sits until it's not worth the effort to re-mix it and I dump it out. I waste far more than I use. It will still work after it sits, but the color has clumped in the bottom and people have to use vibratory tumblers or paint shakers for like an hour to get it back into suspension. So even if I only get 5k bullets out of a tub of HiTek, at 3 rounds for a penny, my time is worth more than the mix.

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RYANMattes- Thank You- very helpful. Can you do a batch of say 100 bullets at a time? And do you then put them through a (NOE?) sizer after powder coating? Is it better to size and then Coat? It would seem that if you coated afterwards you would add a few thousands of an inch. Getting there.................

[AndyC]

I run mine through a sizer after powdercoating because I want a specific, finished size to load up.

I PC about 100 at a time because I don't have a huge oven - works just fine.

[ryanmattes]

Yes, size after coating. It both ensures that the coating didn't add diameter (it's usually less than 0.0005 total per coat, so it's not much), but it also means you don't need to use lube to size them, and keeps your sizing die from getting gummed up with lube, or dirtied up with lead that you have to clean out.

Also, you might want to try a few different sizes (.356, .357, .358), so you want sizing to be your last step. I'd only size what I'm about to load until you've determined the right size for your gun.

You can coat smaller batches, but you'll find its not worth it to work that way. You need to cast more than that to get that many good ones, to start with. 100 x 125gr bullets is around 2lbs, so 5 lbs is around 280 bullets, give or take a few. You might as well cast a lot more.

When you start out you'll make more bad ones than good ones, and you'll get a lot of variation in weight due to temp fluctuations. So if you make 100 one day, then come back and make 100 more another day, they're likely to be different weights. So to keep them consistent, I usually try to cast a whole bunch at once. Get into a rhythm, and just keep casting till you run out of prepared alloy or you just get tired.

Then I sort the bad cast out visually. Wrinkles, torn-out bases, edges that aren't sharp, etc. If they're bad enough to be obvious while I'm casting I'll throw them back in the pot, but smaller defects you have to look for. You can do that another day, because once they're cast, they're cast. And then I weigh them all, and try to find a +/- 0.5gn group. You'll have outliers that are much lighter (probably air gaps or bad fill out) or much heavier (you added lead and the pot temp cooled).

To sort by weight, I drew half-inch lines on two sheets of paper taped together, and numbered them for 1/10th grain increments, 0-9 repeating. That way the middle can be my target weight, like 125.0 or 255.0 or whatever, and then I can sort them all around that target weight. Half-inch lines let's be use that sheet for .45 as easily as for 9mm. Photo below.

So generally I'll cast as many as I can at a sitting. The next day I'll sort out the bad ones and weigh them all, placing them on my paper by weight. Then I choose the 1 grain segment that has the most bullets, say for example 124.5-125.5 grains, and toss the rest in my throwback pile, to remelt another day. You can get away with wider variation of you're just plinking at shorter range, but as you get out to 20 yards or so, you'll notice a difference in point of impact by weight.

What you're left with is however many fit in that 1 grain group. If it's only 100 bullets I'm usually disappointed, because that was a lot of time and effort to only get 100 rounds out of.

Now, when when it's time to coat, I shake 5lbs at a time and put them on a wire basket and cook them. While they're cooking I'll shake the next batch and put it on top of the oven to dry, repeat until I run out of bare cast (I usually do 2 coats, for color). After the first coat, I pull one out and smash it with a hammer, to make sure the coating bonded fully, called the smash test. The coating shouldn't flake or expose any lead because of deformation. The hammer or the grit of the concrete might scratch the coating, but stretching shouldn't cause it to come off. You don't have to smash test after further coats, because as long as the first coat is bonded to the lead, the later coating bonds to itself easily.

So you're going to ruin at least one bullet doing that. And then, depending on your alloy, you're likely to drop one or two while you're sizing or loading, and if they land on the edge of the base, it'll dent the base. Bad bases can cause leading, so those go in the throwback pile too.

So you want to cast more than you need, and coat more than you need, to get enough good coated cast to load how many you need.

All that said, there are two other considerations too. First, if you're just trying to do test loads, you only need a handful, right? Problem is, if you develop a load with the majority of the bullets you have, then cast more, they're likely to be a different weight, and it might throw off your load. It's going to take a lot of casting to make more consistently good bullets. And a lot of casting produces a lot of bullets, which means once you have your load figured out, you can bulk load.

And second, coating is much more consistent with consistent size batches. So I try to cast in marathons, like a good chunk of a Saturday or Sunday. Make like 30+lbs of bullets. Treat it as it's own hobby, rather than a precursor to loading. Then on another day I'll sort out the good ones. Then on another day I'll coat them all (twice). Then on another day I'll size them. And then I'll have a few thousand bullets, so I can develop a load, and then bulk load once I've got it nailed down.



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