AmBraCol , The Center Of God's Grace
How I started
Tuesday, September 13, 2022, 06:28

Lee makes some decent molds, I've used several with complete satisfaction of the years. As is mentioned already - get the Lyman cast bullet book, there's a lot of important information in it. I'd suggest you start with handgun bullets.

Once you've got the mold you need a way to melt the alloy and transfer it to the mold. Cheapest way is to pick up an old cast iron pot - if you can find a small one. A skillet will do, but tend to be shallower and wider, I prefer a deeper container for melting lead in. You can use this on a gas range in the kitchen (assuming your significant other is out of the house or you don't have one or she's wanting to learn also) or on a Coleman stove outside. Anywhere you set up you need GOOD ventilation.

You can make do with a Lee dipper for stirring the alloy and even casting up to 45 caliber pistol bullets in a single cavity mold, I think you've got to dip twice to do a double cavity mold. You can also use a stainless steel serving spoon (make sure it's not out of the wife's company serving collection - Goodwill and yardsales sometimes offer good candidates for reasonable). An RCBS or Lyman dipper offers a greater volume of lead which can be a good thing, but the Lee or an improvised dipper work OK.

You'll need an old towel or some such to drop the hot bullets and sprue on and an old hammer handle or other such instrument for striking the sprue plate on the mold and tapping the hinge pin to get the bullets to drop if they don't fall free at first.

As already mentioned in this thread you'll need at least a Lee sizing die and some liquid allox (usually included in the sizing die kit from Lee). You can also pan lube your bullets and push them through the Lee sizer that way if you like. I've put a LOT of allox lubed bullets through my sixguns over the years with complete satisfaction.

That's about as cheap as you can go unless you eliminate the lubing/sizing step and shoot them as cast lubed with allox or another tumble lube type.

Keep your eyes open and you can improve your kit considerably by picking up electric pots, beware of second hand ones as they sometimes come "with issues" (my 20 pound RCBS needs some attention regarding the heating element or thermostat - haven't had time to check it out and it came from a second hand purchase) You'll always need "one more mold" and a good luber/sizer gives me more satisfaction than the lee push through type of sizer does.

Jim Taylor's dad shot tons of "slip bullets" that were lubed with melted crayon, if I recall correctly. So there's always some way of doing things on the cheap, or relatively so.

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I'm a peaceful man and prefer the pursuit of peaceful sports. Those involving teams and balls of any sort tend to be deleterious to one's body and promote violence by both spectators and participants.