New To Casting: advice please

[Casty]

I'm about to take the plunge. I'm a long-experience handloader, well over 45 yrs, and am also a specialist gunsmith, making custom bolt rifles, and just now getting into M1As, with all their reloading quirks! They are quite the mystery platform!

But I'm going to get into casting (or swaging, but that seems to be prohibitively expensive to get all the necessary stuff...). for my .451s, .32 mag, 45 ACP, 45-70, 45-90 and 38-55. possibly also for my 6.5-06 Ackley, just for plinking you understand...

I can get great pricing from Redding (as any of you FFLs& shops know) on Redding/SAECO stuff, and have decided I"ll probably get some Paul Jones or Hoch, and other quality or custom rifle bullet molds to get the necessary 500+ gr bullets for long range BPCR shoots.

If I hope to keep it all under, let's say, $1000 total, which equipment on a higher-end level would you guys wish-list for me? Also, what about real good used equipment (here's your chance to upgrade at my expense, guys!).

I'd obviously need a good stable temp furnace probably bottom pour, yes?

And molds for .458 in 450+, 500 and 550+ gr, plus a couple for .451 (Colt LC & Casull) for now. But do I start with single hole mold, or double, or 4 at a time? Also someone's mold handles that might just accept single or multiple hole molds perhaps? Is that even possible?

I'd also need a way to lube them, probably with Steve Garby's black powder SPG lube I think. So, a [SAECO?] lube sizer. I do have a small cast iron ladle already (I had to start somewhere after all! ).

What else? Any good advice will be appreciated!

[454PB]

Once again I have to advise anyone starting out to go "cheap" and simple to start with. Unless you're absolutely determined to continue casting, it makes no sense to invest $1000 on a hobby you may not like or continue.

For around $300, you can buy a few moulds, a bottom cast furnace, and a lubrisizer. Buy this used from the classifieds on this forum, and it could be less.

One of the worst things a new caster can do is start out with a big heavy, hard to manage 4 or 6 cavity mould.

I do nearly all my casting with several Lee bottom pour melters, but started out ladle casting. Some say ladle casting is better for pouring the big 500 grainers, though I disagree.

Bottom line.....start with Lee moulds....they are around $20 WITH handles, and if you decide to upgrade, you can sell them here.

[MBTcustom]

The reloading side is the expensive part, the casting part is inherently cheap. If you want the best, I can tell you what I use but even there you will be hard pressed to rack up a $1000 bill.
I prefer to use a coleman stove to melt my alloy, It brings the heat up very quickly, and it gives me the ability to run two pots at once. It is also very easy to control the temperature.
I use an RCBS bottom pour ladle.
I use 4.5" diameter X 4" deep stainless steel containers for pots. Get four.
invest in a good quality thermometer with a big easy to read dial, with 200 degree minimum reading. (so you can check it for accuracy with boiling water.)
Buy good quality cast iron molds. Aluminum works well but I definitely get better quality boolits out of the iron molds.
Get a way to check the hardness of your alloy like the Lee hardness tester.
Get a good supply of pure lead, an antimony rich alloy, and tin or a tin rich alloy so you can control the percentages of these elements in your alloys.
I have heard very good things about the seaco boolit sizer. You will need sizing dies that are .001, .0015, .002, and .0025 over the size of each caliber that you plan to load for in order to be prepared for anything, but most folks just buy them as they need them. Either way, you are going to end up with a bunch of sizers.
Buy a good supply of bees wax from randyrat, get a supply of carnauba and lanolin too if you plan on making your own lube.
If you plan on buying your own lube, get a sample pack from White Label Lube Co. You can order in bulk when you find out what works for you.
Invest in several thousand gas checks in the calibers you think you will use them in.
Above all, buy up all the lead you can get your hands on while it is still able to be gotten cheap.
These are just my opinions and they reflect how I have done it for the last 18 years.There are many that can draw issue with these recommendations and they may be right, but there is no doubt that if you buy all this stuff, you will be just as far along as I am after many years of picking things up as I could afford them.
Good luck!

[cbrick]

Unless I'm reading something into Casty's OP he doesn't sound much like someone that wants the cheapest equipment he can find. Here is an example from another post by Casty:

Problem is, I'm also a curmudgeonly 64 yrs old, a raving perfectionist, and therefore would just have to have the higher-end stuff, not the lower-end furnace, standard molds, etc., because I'd end up upgrading to that better stuff in the end.

And from this post:

which equipment on a higher-end level would you guys wish-list for me?

I'll agree that he should find out first if casting is something he will stay with or is a passing fad for him.

I suggest that if he is going to start out with the investment of a lubrisizer that he start with the star. The reason? Because he sounds like someone that wants quality equipment (he said so) and if he sarts out buying dies, the most expensive part of a lubrisizer and not the machine itself, then wants to go with the Star as many do he has to buy all of the dies all over again. Get the Star and buy dies once. I have known many people that want to get a Star, the reason they don't . . . Dies, they already have dies for another machine. When I started casting I started with an RCBS lubri-sizer, traded that off for a SAECO. A few years later I picked up a used Star and never looked back. I bought the used Star from John Adams, John owned SAECO and sold it to Redding. The Star I bought along with several dies was the sizer used in the SAECO shop. Hhmmm . . . Why was SAECO using a Star when they sold SAECO sizers. Interesting.

I suggest to not start out with heavy iron gang molds but 2 to 4 cavities in iron, aluminum or brass would be good. He said he wants higher end equipment so he should also take good look at MP and NOE. RCBS has always been a good mold but in the last few years they have really stepped up the quality and they have a huge selection of bullet styles.

For a pot I would start out with the RCBS Pro Melt 22 pound pot (actually I did but many years ago). I wouldn't wish a 10 pound pot on anyone and given the BP bullets he want to pour, well . . .

Rick

[felix]

I would use straight line sizing dies for his target guns, boolits and cases and seaters. ... felix

[Cowboy T]

+1 on the Lee moulds, but I would opt for the 6-cavity models. I use those almost exclusively, and they're very good. Additionally, the moulds pump out the boolits in short order. Remember, just because it's not horribly expensive doesn't mean it's not good stuff.

Lee's downpour spout Pro 4-20 is also a fine melting pot. Does it drop a little? Sure, sometimes. Does it get in the way of my casting? Nope, not one bit. I must have about 30,000 boolits on this melting pot's clock by now, and it's still working fine. At about 25,000 boolits, I had to clean the pot and replace the plunger rod's depth adjustment screw--a buck at Home Depot and about 5 minutes of time to replace.

[largom]

I have only owned one 6 cavity gang mold and I got rid of it in a hurry. I like Handloading [different than Reloading], and I like making boolits one or two at a time. I look for perfection, not speed.

I would suggest selecting one caliber to start casting for. Do research to select a boolit for that caliber and then buy a custom mold from one of the vendors on this site. There is nothing wrong with a Lee 20# pot. Lube any way you want but I would size [if required] with a push thru die in my loading press. You can also get push thru sizers from members here made to your required diameter. Spend your money on good loading dies, especially seating dies. Remember that your fat cast boolit may not fit into standard seating dies [I make my own].

After casting/loading for that one caliber you can decide if you want to expand to all of your other calibers.

Larry

[454PB]

Since casty is a gunsmith, he can make his own sizing dies......that's what I do.

I'll agree that if money is no object, you're a perfectionist, and you're SURE that casting is your obsession, go for the best.

Guys like that have sold me a lot of their unused equipment at a discount!

[GP100man]

I`d still start out cheap , it`s not like ya can`t move the equipment later .

All over the place , a new caster pops up here ,there , everywhere !!!!

One thing I wish I`d bought sooner than I did is a quality thermometer !!!

[Moonie]

If you are a perfectionist you will truly appreciate the custom mold makers we have in the group buy section. They are not cheap but they are certainly the best value going for molds, works of art that should cost considerably more than they do.

[Casty]

Appreciate the friendly & understanding advice here! Yep, I do enjoy (and kind of insist on, frankly) quality equipment since I'm rapidly frustrated by poor build quality. And it's always fun to use such stuff, with it's quality "clicks and snicks", and that it slides &/or threads together properly, unlike, say, that new RCBS Precision Mic I just got from Midway. They should'a just designed & built it right in the first place and charged a few measly $$$ more, frankly, since it's their reputation that suffers after all!

I was the Manager in charge of Quality Engineering some years back @ Mitsubishi of America, and later @ Mazda. I designed some US-side QA/QC programs, since the factory in Japan hardly needed too many of those kinds of programs (they did, after all, design & build that innocuous little Zero fighter a few years back... even if they did steal some of it's design parameters from Howard Hugh's monoplane design featured in the movie The Aviator: ever notice how the Zero-sen looks startlingly akin to that plane he flew around in? Hmmm.......).

[I also think it's informative that when I tried to suggest some of the same stuff @ GMC a few years later, they were totally uninterested. They "knew it all", of course, and look at what happened to their market share! Car buyers do NOT like crappy quality, it seems!!! Duhhhh.... Such pathologically bad upper management @ GM back in the mid-2000s!]

I currently have some great Redding dies for the 45-70 & -90, and also have some Meacham equipment: his wonderful in-line seater is just primo great for assuring a good alignment. And Redding, well, what can I say?always high Q, IMHO. And some profile and roll-crimp dies. I'll get into loads for the ol' Marlin as well.

And so... it's off to the on-line stores and my Amex/Visa card. I'll letcha all know what I bought.

"Sorry honey; we just can't afford that trip to Maui again. Shop expenses just keep going up, don't you know?"


[Besides, a trip to Maui is but transient and fleeting, and you are drunk or sunburnt most of the time, while good reloading equipment is forever!"]

[largecaliberman]

I'm about to take the plunge. I'm a long-experience handloader, well over 45 yrs, and am also a specialist gunsmith, making custom bolt rifles, and just now getting into M1As, with all their reloading quirks! They are quite the mystery platform!

But I'm going to get into casting (or swaging, but that seems to be prohibitively expensive to get all the necessary stuff...). for my .451s, .32 mag, 45 ACP, 45-70, 45-90 and 38-55. possibly also for my 6.5-06 Ackley, just for plinking you understand...

I can get great pricing from Redding (as any of you FFLs& shops know) on Redding/SAECO stuff, and have decided I"ll probably get some Paul Jones or Hoch, and other quality or custom rifle bullet molds to get the necessary 500+ gr bullets for long range BPCR shoots.

If I hope to keep it all under, let's say, $1000 total, which equipment on a higher-end level would you guys wish-list for me? Also, what about real good used equipment (here's your chance to upgrade at my expense, guys!).

I'd obviously need a good stable temp furnace probably bottom pour, yes?

And molds for .458 in 450+, 500 and 550+ gr, plus a couple for .451 (Colt LC & Casull) for now. But do I start with single hole mold, or double, or 4 at a time? Also someone's mold handles that might just accept single or multiple hole molds perhaps? Is that even possible?

I'd also need a way to lube them, probably with Steve Garby's black powder SPG lube I think. So, a [SAECO?] lube sizer. I do have a small cast iron ladle already (I had to start somewhere after all! ).

What else? Any good advice will be appreciated!

Remember that reloaders are frugal people. ALWAYS start cheap. You could probably start with a stainless steel pot picked at a recycler. I've used Lee molds for starters, a 4-ring propane turkey fryer that I bought for $ 5.00 however I had to replace the missing valves that I picked up for $27.00. A pouring ladel (to fill ingots) from a garage sale with no handles but I replaced it with a pushbroom handle. I use a 6 footer to distance myself from the pot. Sawdust for flux from my woodshop, 5-gallon plastic bucket picked up from construction jobsites to store ingots etc. Start off with a bottom pour and even if you go a little extravagant, you could get away with less than $300. What will cost you is the reloading equipment. However, in the long run and even after a FULL day or two of reloading, especially the expensive boolits, you'll get a pretty good return. The only major expenses are your primers, powders, electricity and propane.

[94Doug]

What part of the Country are you from? Is there someone that can give you some "hands on" to get a feel for what you might need? I know for a fact that if you were to sit down and cast side by side with a Lyman and RCBS mould, only one would be your choice. But there are Saeco's plus the many custom manufacturers that we deal with that you might want to consider as well.

Doug

[Suo Gan]

Any good advice will be appreciated!

Get a couple of Star lubrisizers, and get the SAECO or RCBS unit too, get the pro melt or mag 20. Turkey burner and rendering setup too. I think that spent your thousand.

[LAH]

Get a couple of Star lubrisizers, and get the SAECO or RCBS unit too, get the pro melt or mag 20. Turkey burner and rendering setup too. I think that spent your thousand.

Can't disagree with this. And since you like the 45-70 I'd start there casting.

[jlchucker]

Since you're a gunsmith and a long-time reloader, you already know that there are a myriad of gadgets relating to both endeavors on the market that you've never bought and have never needed. I agree with those who say to start off with the basic stuff. I've casted for years, and while I'm probably not making match-grade boolits, the ones I do make for my leverguns and revolvers certainly are accurate enough for me. I've never owned a hardness tester, for example, nor do I have a chronograph. But I do keep good records of the boolits that I make in terms of what I used for materials, and I document all of my loads for each of my guns. You can always add extra gadgets if you think you need them. The temptation will always be there, depending upon what you want to accomplish. You can make up great plinkers, and deer and bear-killing levergun boolits without a big expenditure. This website is the greatest place to read how others have developed a lot of gadgetry on their own without spending the bank account.

[Lloyd Smale]

if its good stuff you want id start with a rcbs pot and a star sizer. those two will eat up about 600 bucks of your buget. Then look for molds, sizer dies, lube ect.