Not sure where to start,,,I have been reading so much that now I feel confused and not sure where to start. Since I do not have millions to toss into this new hobby I have been looking hard at my intended use of bullets that I cast, which will be casual plinking and paper punching.
My firearm is a Uberti SAA 5" barrel chambered in .45 Colt. I have a cast iron pot and Coleman stove for the first melt to pour into ingots, and a Lee 20# bottom pour pot. I have not purchased a mold for this gun yet since I have not slugged it yet (Still looking for the thread) and cannot make my mind up on which bullet type (WC, SWC, or RNFP). I do plan on doing a lot of practice drawing and shooting this gun, so I imagine a 250-260 gn RNFP will be the first mold.
The lead that I currently have I got out of a wire stripping machine that I rebuilt at work. I got around 175 lbs, it sure was oily and dirty. The lead shows to be in the 8 Bhn range according to my Lee tester. When pouring the ingots from my pot it looked like the metal was wanting to keep away from the mold, so I think it needs some tin, and needs a bit of hardness, so maybe some Roto Metals Super Alloy.
I tend to over analyze things before I do them so my plan is to get the lead between 12-15 Bhn, get a mold, and cast some bullets and fine tune later as I need to. Please chime in if there is an inherent problem with this logic.
I also need to feed a 1863 Remington musket and .44 cal cap and ball revolver,,,have molds for these but have not live fired them. I am a reenactor so these guns have seen plenty of powder.