Thanks for the tip! Mine only came with round hollow point and blank (flat-point) pins. Maybe because it's only a .227 boolit? The solids cast much easier. I'll return to the HPs but solids meet my needs for now as I work up a small game load. A couple good suggestions I've been given are to polish the pins and to coat them with a chalk solution in alcohol.
Threw together some 45/70 loads for my Sharps Carbine.
If you are going to make a hole in something. MAKE IT A BIG ONE!
Last edited by 414gates; 09-18-2022 at 02:20 AM. Reason: clearer picture
Cleaning out and coming upon things I need to get rid of to make room.....
Why the heck am I holding onto things I will never use? But I guess we all do that.
Yesterday I pulled down 150 300 BO that I assembled a week ago. Why?
Day before yesterday I started to load up some 9 mm Lee 358-125-RF with 5 grains of herco. The charge just didn't look just right weighed on my reading beam scale. Weighed on my Chinese electronic scale 4.5 grains. Got the old hard to use lee scale down from the back of the top shelf, and again 4.5 grains. Then I tried to balance the beam on "0". No go. I have 2 reading beam scales, so I got the other one out. It would not "0" ether. ????
Then moved the pans and hangers around and both worked fine. I got out the black marker and put X'es on all parts of one and O's on the other.
Now back to why I pulled down the 300 BOs. I had loaded them with the scale that was still together on the bench. I pulled one of them down and instead of having 18.0 gr of 1680 there was only 17.5.
So out came the Hornady cam lock bullet puller. Much faster than the inertia puller.
Problem no. 2.
All of these boolits were gas checked. 1/2 of them came off while pulling the boolit. It is not easy to get a gas check out of a bottleneck case.I used a small screwdriver to punch the check down into the case dumped the powder and got out my tweezers and holding the case above my head, proceeded to shake and poke the check till I could grab it with the tweezers. After I had done about 15, I found that if I pulled the boolit out very slow, I could get about 85% of the checks to come out with the boolit.
Project for today.
1. Replace the checks on the boolits where they came off.
2. Properly charge the cases.
3. Re-seat the boolits.
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
Had scrounged up some 125lb or so wheel weights; SOWW mostly with some COWW. As temps have gone down a bit, decided to make ingots. It was still too hot! LOL.
I cast for 9mm and 10mm. Still learning.
I rebuilt my Pro Melt control box with a new PID from Auber. When I was putting casting back together I got an Imkbird kit from Amazon. It never worked right and someone here said there were fakes. The symptoms sounded like my PID so I ordered one from Auber which was what I had before. The are $50 shipped which is very good for the quality you get.
Rain today so I'm headed out to the shop to clean the old Pro Melt and fire it up.
Mal
Mal Paso means Bad Pass, just so you know.
Now that temps are down to a chill 95-degrees, I fired up the furnace for a couple thousand .38 DEWCs.
Yes on the tests. Better than most autos not so good as large mags but way more rounds on the bears. Got to do what you can the 200gr flat nose at about 1200fps better than nothing. I think it’s better to start with industrial strength pepper spray and maybe save the ammo. Bear’s are scary Big‼️‼️
Garage sale 230lbs $100. Coww too hard to get and more expensive. Trying to guess the alloy. About 8 bn and very shiny. Tested with hydrocloric acid. Melted below 600F. Water hardened to 14bn tested with pencils ✏️. Going to cast some.
Anyone chime in on shooting PC Bollits with lube groove❓ Is there enough Bering surface to protect the barrel with apple to apple loads ❓❓. Thanks Reed
I cleaned my old Pro Melt. I had used some questionable alloy and garbage metal was stuck to the stainless pot. Usually lead alloy will peal off, not this crud. I tore the whole thing apart and removed the pot so I could use a torch on it. I used the opportunity to remove the old dead thermostat and replace the power cord strain relief. I cleaned the valve seat and stem and put it back together.
I had rebuilt the PID yesterday so I filled the pot halfway and fired it up. I started casting the 38-200 mold that was still on the hotplate and ran the pot down. Not one drip which was why I'm moving back from my Pro Melt 2. I had filled it back up ready to start casting when my neighbor came knocking. Tree down, our road was closed. Unlike my Pro Melt 2 I just shut it down and I played tractor while my neighbor played chainsaw. We got paid in Romaine Lettuce, country life.
Look at that spout on the old Pro Melt, much easier to see than the Pro Melt 2. This was a rebuild, several owners ago it it really got trashed. It was well worth bringing back!
Mal
Mal Paso means Bad Pass, just so you know.
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 |