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Blitzfike, thanks for weighing in and taking the time put forth your information. Sounds like you may be very experienced in casting. I have never casted with the Lee molds but it seems they have their following. And lots of folks are not so turned on by them. I believe Lee has made it possible for a lot of folks to put up casting. The Lee pots/furnaces especially. 458 Winchester, 375 H&H and 375 Winchester almost sounds like your a big game hunter. Those are some incredible calibers. I saw a 458 Winchester one time in a WalMart or something that thing is huge and imagine it is quite painful to shoot. Casting bullets for those calibers will run up out of alloy fairly quickly. I assume that you laddel those large bullets? Most I have read has lead me to believe that bottom pours are not very good for large bullets like that. Just looked at powder requirements for 458 Winchester, that's a fair amount of powder as well. What is a normal firing session for a caliber like that? I shot for the AMU for awhile when i was in GA and the International Service Rifle folks had a sub group that shot 300 Win Mags and after about 20 shots they would pack up and head home. That rifle seemed to have fairly impressive recoil.Thanks for the info on zinc. I have been giving due diligence to sorting wheel weights. I hand sort with side cutter dikes or for the smaller wheelweights I use a automatic center punch and divot them. I also sort out the stickies as well. When rendering WWs I use digital thermometer and keep a sharp eye out on the temperature. So far I haven't had any issue with zinc. I just finished hand sorting 300 lbs of raw WWs today. I found a place that will sell me unsorted WWs at .60 a pound. Some would say that is high but I will say this is the first time I have been able to find them at all in a couple years. I bought some from a elderly man in Duncan about three years ago for 1.00 per pound fully rendered. He was selling a thousand pounds and foolishly I only bought 100 pounds. I also have several hundred pounds of range scrap I need to render when I get back to Duncan. Interesting info about the zinc and molds. I have never seen that discussed before. I will certainly file that away should i run into a problem.Pin guages have been very enlighting. I was having some issues with leading with a mixture of 50/50 WW and pure that was perplexing me for awhile. I think I have located the cause with the pinguages, my Redding Profile Crimp dies were swaging the bullet bases slightly. I haven't conclusively ran this down yet but feel I am close. I had my throats reamed by the Cylinder Smith. Not sure if he is still doing cylinders or not, the last time i looked at his site I think he is or was only doing 45 Colts. He did a fine job on a couple S&Ws and both my Rugers. I have seen a couple videos of this on you tube but still don't feel comfortable trying that without seeing it done in person first.Interesting points about the Alum checks. Might need to look into this further. I was going to use the checks on some hard cast bullets I bought years ago before I started casting. They are sized .358 and .430, a little small for me and didn't really want to melt them down as they are some pretty nice bullets. On the subject of abrasives, where are you on fire lapping a revolver barrel. My 44 Redhawk has a couple good restrictions in the bore. It will pass a .417-" pin completely but a .418-" will enter the muzzle and stops right around cylinder side of the rear sight or left edge of the Ruger "billboard" warning. Again thanks for the post. Good day.
Blitzfike, thanks for weighing in and taking the time put forth your information. Sounds like you may be very experienced in casting. I have never casted with the Lee molds but it seems they have their following. And lots of folks are not so turned on by them. I believe Lee has made it possible for a lot of folks to put up casting. The Lee pots/furnaces especially.
458 Winchester, 375 H&H and 375 Winchester almost sounds like your a big game hunter. Those are some incredible calibers. I saw a 458 Winchester one time in a WalMart or something that thing is huge and imagine it is quite painful to shoot. Casting bullets for those calibers will run up out of alloy fairly quickly. I assume that you laddel those large bullets? Most I have read has lead me to believe that bottom pours are not very good for large bullets like that. Just looked at powder requirements for 458 Winchester, that's a fair amount of powder as well. What is a normal firing session for a caliber like that? I shot for the AMU for awhile when i was in GA and the International Service Rifle folks had a sub group that shot 300 Win Mags and after about 20 shots they would pack up and head home. That rifle seemed to have fairly impressive recoil.
Thanks for the info on zinc. I have been giving due diligence to sorting wheel weights. I hand sort with side cutter dikes or for the smaller wheelweights I use a automatic center punch and divot them. I also sort out the stickies as well. When rendering WWs I use digital thermometer and keep a sharp eye out on the temperature. So far I haven't had any issue with zinc. I just finished hand sorting 300 lbs of raw WWs today. I found a place that will sell me unsorted WWs at .60 a pound. Some would say that is high but I will say this is the first time I have been able to find them at all in a couple years. I bought some from a elderly man in Duncan about three years ago for 1.00 per pound fully rendered. He was selling a thousand pounds and foolishly I only bought 100 pounds. I also have several hundred pounds of range scrap I need to render when I get back to Duncan. Interesting info about the zinc and molds. I have never seen that discussed before. I will certainly file that away should i run into a problem.
Pin guages have been very enlighting. I was having some issues with leading with a mixture of 50/50 WW and pure that was perplexing me for awhile. I think I have located the cause with the pinguages, my Redding Profile Crimp dies were swaging the bullet bases slightly. I haven't conclusively ran this down yet but feel I am close. I had my throats reamed by the Cylinder Smith. Not sure if he is still doing cylinders or not, the last time i looked at his site I think he is or was only doing 45 Colts. He did a fine job on a couple S&Ws and both my Rugers. I have seen a couple videos of this on you tube but still don't feel comfortable trying that without seeing it done in person first.
Interesting points about the Alum checks. Might need to look into this further. I was going to use the checks on some hard cast bullets I bought years ago before I started casting. They are sized .358 and .430, a little small for me and didn't really want to melt them down as they are some pretty nice bullets. On the subject of abrasives, where are you on fire lapping a revolver barrel. My 44 Redhawk has a couple good restrictions in the bore. It will pass a .417-" pin completely but a .418-" will enter the muzzle and stops right around cylinder side of the rear sight or left edge of the Ruger "billboard" warning. Again thanks for the post. Good day.
