Casting lead

[Alpha1]

Most hard cast bought bullets are actually to hard I melt them down and add pure lead.
A good source of lead is range scrap from the back stop. The club I go to collects it and casts it into ingots for sale to members.

[dromia]

Bought them ready cast eventually to remove the possibility of it causing inaccurate rounds ,

Commercial cast bullets are at best a poor choice, they are invariably too hard, too small, use a poor quality lube and have no quality control (eg weight variance).

The whole point of casting bullets is that you have total control of the bullet, its alloy composition, how it is cast, sized and lubed. Casting allows you to tailor your bullets to a specific firearm and application. You can impose your you own levels of QC commensurate with your needs such flexibility is priceless and can never be matched by commercial producers.

Hard alloys and poor bullet fit are the main causes of leading and poor accuracy, as I have said commercial cast bullets are invariably too hard and too small so not a good starting point.

[Musclebob]

I ended up using plumbers lead and alloying that 20:1 with tin. Casts nice 500 grain bullets for my trapdoor, once I get the mould up to temperature. Still getting the hang of ladle casting, so lot's of defects, but getting better.

[Furiouspilgrim]

It’s something hopefully I’ll get into this year, slowly collecting all the bits as I already have a stash of lead.
Makes sense as a lot of the shooting I do at the local club is using downloads due to range limits.