hand-cast lead BOOLITTS !?

[Bill_Rights]

What's the deal with bare lead bullets?

I know they're traditional, and I know it's great to be self-sufficient if you're a reloader (but primers and brass are huge and HUGER issues, now-a-days, and who's gonna mix his/her own powder? Therefore, el flusho to self-sufficiency.)

I was speaking with a gunsmith last month who said, "If your muzzle velocity is going to get near 1000 fps or over, you definitely want jacketed bullets. The lead will melt from rubbing down the barrel and leave a lot more rub-off, fouling and require heavy bore cleaning."

If you like how bare lead interacts with the target, you can get semi-jacketed bullets no lead on the front and with minimal thickness jacket except back in the engraving area. Plus, for heavy loads, the jacket helps hold the bullet together under rapid acceleration in the bore and prevents over-rapid expansion in the target.

What am I missing? I can't see any reason to use bare lead bullets for high power rounds, whether store-bought or hand-cast. Is there any situation in which a bare lead bullet is superior to a jacketed bullet in any way?

[2X22]

You just may be missing something.....

I drive my cast bullets up around 1700fps to 2400fps with sometimes sub 1" 100 yard groups, depending on gun, and have been taking deer and elk almost exclusively over the past 40 years with cast only.

I can cast and reload 50 rounds of .44 mag for around $2.

Can't imagine needing jacketed stuff...........

Oh, and your 'Smith should stick with repairing firearms and not with that which he clearly doesn't understand.

2x22

[Mac in Mo]

One big issue for me is price. Have you seen the cost of jacketed bullets lately. I have only cast my own a few times, but even store bought hardcast lead bullets are getting expensive. I have had no leading issues in my revolvers with any lead bullets. I have yet to load any lead bullets for my Marlin 336, but that will soon change.
Kevin

[mikld]

Your gunsmith doesn't know much about cast boolits! I routinely run plain base cast lead bullets to around 1100 fps w/no leading. Proper bullet fit and a decient lube will allow magnum velocities using cast lead (wheel weight alloy) boolits.

[J Miller]

You may have missed the fact that your gunsmith is wrong. Cast bullets of the proper alloy can be shot from handguns and long guns far faster than a 1000 fps.
It sounds to me like he was confusing the factory swagged bullets with cast. If he was thinking about swagged bullets then he's pretty close to right.

Home cast bullets are also less expensive and you can get them in a multitude of weights, shapes and sizes that jacketed bullets don't come in.

Jacketed bullets have their place, but they aren't needed most of the time.

Joe

[Don McDowell]

Cast bullets properly sized and lubed are better for hunting or target use in a handgun. They can give a person alot of trigger time with rifles that wouldn't be economically feasible with jacketed bullets.

So what did you miss? Well the first thing is you need a new gunsmith, the one you got don't know his head from a hole in the ground. Continuing to listen to his misadvice may cause you to "miss the boat"

[Terry Murbach]

aaaaaaaa,,,,,daaaaa.......whatsa booooolitt...???

[CEMENTHEAD]

I can't see what your saying Terry...................

[rimrock]

your smith must raise Comifornika condors for release in the wild

both 45C single action & .444 lever like cast better than jacketed when I shoot them. might be different if you were using them.

in the .444, my barrel slugs at .432+, & no jacketed bullet comes close to that diameter. Now I could paper patch something like a .416 Rigby up to accurate diameter, but lead is cheaper.

My 45C does ok with Corbon 225 jhp at about 1250 IIRC but better with plain base laed 255 gr bullets at about 950 is plenty around here.

maybe not for long but I can still srounge up free wheel weights to save for powder primers and brass

[.45colt]

I would run and hide from any "Self appointed gunsmith" who don't know any better than that.AND I would never let Him touch one of My Firearms.
makeing and shooting cast bullets only adds to the fun of reloading.
I have shot several thousand self cast bullets thru My guns with very little trouble or leading. All the way up to 1800fps.

[Chuck 100 yd]

If that "GUNSMITH" of yours is as misinformed about gunsmithing as he is about lead bullets, Go get anything he has of yours and quick.
He may be the same guy who drilled and tapped Joe`s rifle barrel for sights.

And there is far LESS friction between barrel and bullet with cast than jacketed bullets. Blow by of hot gasses is what causes leading. That and poor bullet lube.

[TedH]

I have nothing to add to what everyone has already stated, but you might continue your research into the wonderful world of cast bullets and go back to correct your "gunsmith" by telling him the way it really is.

[jhrosier]

I can shoot 500-600 rounds of .375 H&H with cast boolits for about the price of a twenty round box of factory ammo.
A 265 grain cast boolit at about 2000 fps is pretty powerful medicine for most anything that you might encounter in North America.
If I pay attention to proper technique, five shots can be covered with a nickle at fifty yards.

I shoot many different modern and obsolete calibers, often at speeds near to or greater then 2000 fps and leading is not a problem.

I can't buy factory ammo for my 1881 manufactured Swiss Veterli rifle, but can easily form brass from another caliber and load up ammo with cast boolits that will shoot into 7 inches at 200 yards.
I have a number of nice antique rifles that I can enjoy shooting with moderate cast boolit loads and never have to worry about wearing out the barrels.

I can load my big bore guns down to lighter plinker loads so that the childern and wimmen folks can enjoy shooting them.

There is probably a lot more that I can't think of right now.

Jack

[jnyork]

I shoot thousands of rounds of centerfire ( 44-40, 32-20, 30-30, 32 Special, 33WCF, 38 special, 45ACP) every year. I would have to quit shooting if I had to buy factory bullets.

Life is too short to cast my own, I buy mostly Oregon Trail bullets with some others from a local commercial caster.

I cant believe your guy is a real gunsmith. That was a pretty shadetree comment.

[O.S.O.K.]

Well, I can only add that cast boolits are also very very kind to your gun's bore. You can literally shoot cast boolits for a lifetime of shooting in a given gun without significant bore wear with them. Now I'm talking about plain based boolits here. Gas checks will add some wear but not as much as jacketed bullets.

And I like to cast boolits because its just one more thing that I did myself. Not so much for any survival type function, but for fun and satisfaction.

Besides, there are lots of hunters and shooters that have very little knowledge of cast boolits and so I know I am among the few, the proud....

[Griff]

TERRRR....REE!!!!!

As others said... get a more knowledgeable gunsmith. He's "right", but, the details are in the devil. Plain base lead boolits are probably good up to about 1400 fps... Making alloys and tempering the lead will and can increase that.

[O.S.O.K.]

Oh and you know that cast boolits can be more accurate in some guns than the jacketed variety - because you can customize their diameter to fit the gun's bore.

Like SMLE's - mine shoot .314" cast boolits better than the .311 and .312" jacketed pills. Ditto for my old Win 95 30 U.S..

[Bill_Rights]

Wheel weight alloy? You mean like the kind the tire store balances my car wheel with after I buy a new tire?

[jnyork]

Wheel weight alloy? You mean like the kind the tire store balances my car wheel with after I buy a new tire?

Yup. That's the stuff.

[O.S.O.K.]

Yep, wheel weights - that's the alloy that I used to cast these:



44 Caliber, 310 grain gas checked boolits.

One of these took a nice little boar for me last weekend on the TX levergunner's hog hunt.

[TedH]

Air cooled wheel weights work just fine for 90% of what I cast. For high velocity rifle loads I'll add some linotype but it's generally not needed for anything under 1800 fps.

[Chuck 100 yd]

Friend Bill_Rights, If you have not heard of casting bullets with WW alloy ( probably the most common used alloy for cast bullets). I think you will find a lot of interesting and enjoyable reading on the subject at one of the Cast Bullet sites or pick up a copy of "Lyman`s Cast Bullet Hand Book".

You will come out with a lot of valuable info and probably be telling us a thing or two.

[vancelw]

I don't think this was mentioned, yet.

I use cast bullets to shoot at far off metal targets. Jacketed bullets would eventually destroy the target, but #2 alloy or softer splatters, making it easier to see the impact at 3, 5 or 800 yards. The lead collects at the base of the target and you reuse it.

[Bill_Rights]

Shazammm! Wheel weight alloy, eh. Well, I am the type of person that wants to know what the alloy composition is. Does that Lyman book tell it? 'Course, I have been around enough blocks to know that just knowing what the elemental make-up of the alloy is doesn't explain why it works so well, necessarily. And linotype? I guess that's the alloy printers used to use to make letters and numbers for some sort of printing press - man that's old stuff. I believe they have one from the 1770s at Colonial Williamsburg.

And "hard cast" I have heard of. Did anybody mention that? TedH mentioned "air cooled", which would be slow-cooled. If you quenched the cooling bullet, or any molten metal, that'll make for smaller grain size and more frozen-in defects. Those defects plus the greater density of grain boundaries will make the material stiffer. If it was only those things (and no impurities) you could anneal the metal back to "dead soft". If you alloy it, which is a kind of atomic impurity, it'll never quite get back to dead soft, for most alloying elements - the misfit of the alloy additive atoms creates built-in stresses, which stiffens the material.

And lubes. O.S.O.K., you think you got enough lube on those? They're positively dripping with it. I guess you gotta wipe them off. What lube oil, though? (don't tell me used motor oil, SAE 10W-40; I'll have to buy a car repair shop before I start to reload!!)

Several mentioned boolit diameter. I did notice, looking at Midway and a couple of other reloading sites, that component bullets (store-bought ones) for popular calibers come in two or three different diameters. And jacketed or plated bullets run one or two 0.001" smaller. I guess that is because the jacket is harder metal and the diameter needs to be smaller because the engraving depth by the rifling will be shallower.

OK, OK, OK. I kinda knew there were some reasons to cast custom boolits. I just didn't think there were enough of them to make it worthwhile. (I am sorta over-employed and under-paid right now, plus weighted down with family, so time is not my friend....)

[Don McDowell]

Might want to try some cast bullets . These folks are one of the better suppliers. www.montanabulletworks.com

[jlchucker]

You just may be missing something.....

I drive my cast bullets up around 1700fps to 2400fps with sometimes sub 1" 100 yard groups, depending on gun, and have been taking deer and elk almost exclusively over the past 40 years with cast only.

I can cast and reload 50 rounds of .44 mag for around $2.

Can't imagine needing jacketed stuff...........

Oh, and your 'Smith should stick with repairing firearms and not with that which he clearly doesn't understand.

2x22

Amen to all of that, 2X22! Especially the last sentence! My gunsmith is a shooter, and clearly understands the boolets he shoots at the velocities you mention. I don't have a chrony, but the gunshop I go to has a range, and does. My 44 mag loads were chronied at 1650 fps (Winchester trapper) and one of my 45-70 loads (385 gr gascheck bullet) was chronied out of my Marlin at 1890 fps. No leading in either one. I've shot carefully cast and loaded ammo for years and never had a problem with any caliber-including 30-06. What kind of gunsmith doesn't understand cast bullets?

[pdawg.shooter]

Wrap that cast bullet with a bit of paper and it will perform just as well, and sometimes better than a jacketed bullet. A 205gr 30 cal at just over 3000fps from a 300 RUM with MOA accuracy is nothing to look down upon.

[jlchucker]

Yep, wheel weights - that's the alloy that I used to cast these:



44 Caliber, 310 grain gas checked boolits.

One of these took a nice little boar for me last weekend on the TX levergunner's hog hunt.

Nice looking boolits, O.S.O.K! Ranchdog mold? I'll bet there's all kinds of game here in the USA and elsewhere that these won't bounce off of. I use wheelweights myself--mixed with about 1/2 pound of pure lead to a 10 pound potful. The lead that I add (one of those skinny bars that come from a Lee mold) seems to help the straight WW mix flow a little better, but isn't enough to soften the mix up much. I use that mix in everything. Some "gunsmith" somewhere must be really surprised that your boolets were capable of killing a boar.

[2X22]

My 44 mag loads were chronied at 1650 fps (Winchester trapper) and one of my 45-70 loads (385 gr gascheck bullet) was chronied out of my Marlin at 1890 fps. No leading in either one. I've shot carefully cast and loaded ammo for years and never had a problem with any caliber-including 30-06.

I agree with your agreement!

Like you I've NEVER had a problem with using cast in any caliber, from 22 Hornet to the .458, including some like the .308 and 30-06 @2400fps. I also find straight WW's a little hard for big game and tend to add about 25% pure lead. They tend to act about like a Nosler partition at 75/25 and that is no stretch. If I want more penetration I'll go straight WW's.

My Dad always cast much softer than even I do. He would go 8.5lbs pure lead, 1lb WW's and 1/2lb of tin. Darned if he didn't drive them faster than you would believe in his only guns, a 357 Ruger flattop and a model 92 in .357, and has since the early '50's. And performance on game was always spectacular

2x22

[mikld]

Casting and shooting lead boolits is more than just a money saver. I cast boolits because it's fun. I haven't saved any money yet (been casting for about 6 - 7 years) 'cause I buy molds, lead (wheel weights are no longer free), alloy stuff, lube, and lots of other stuff I "need" to make boolits. Talk about satisfaction; 50 lbs of dirty wheel weights, turned into "custom made" 265 gr. LRFN boolits lubed with my secret sauce lube, and shot through my favorite .44 mag. Good stuff Maynard....

[txpete]

ranch dog 265 gr at 2000 fps marlin 444.




these do double duty in my 375 win and 375 ouch and ouch (H&H)


find a different gunsmith

[O.S.O.K.]

Those boolits I pictured are standard Lee 310 44 Caliber gas check boolits. Two - chamber mold.

Lyman no. 2 alloy is very similar to wheel wieghts - lead, tin and antimony.

The lube shown on my boolits is what I use on all of my cast boolits for smokeless loads - Lee Liquid Alox. You put the boolits into a container, squirt some Liquid Alox on them and then roll or tumble the container to coat them - I then put then in the container shown to dry prior to loading. Works good for me!

[Cimarron Red]

Some shooting competitions require the use of cast bullets, such as black powder silhouettes and black powder target rifle. Below are some 542 grain bullets cast from a Paul Jones Creedmoor mould of 20 to 1 lead/tin alloy:

[Cimarron Red]

I should have noted that the bullets in my previous post are for the .45-70.

[txpete]

good looking bullets

[Otto]

Strange. The general tone of this thread seems to be radically different from the one I started a couple days ago.

[O.S.O.K.]

Strange. The general tone of this thread seems to be radically different from the one I started a couple days ago.

In what way?

Both threads are essentially pro-cast boolits...

[Leverdude]

Next time you go in ask him how fast 22LR's move. When he says about 1200fps ask him why their not jacketed.

The biggest reason I shoot lead is cost, even buying commercial cast bullets is often about half the cost of jacketed.

[Cimarron Red]

Thanks, txpete.

[KCSO]

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/index.php

Everything you ever wanted to know about cast BOOLITS

My first real rifle was a Trapdoor carbine and I got the nutcracker tool and bullet casting stuff with it. I carry cast and a nut cracker with my 30-30 to every camp.

[Modoc ED]

Bill_Rights - I've been following your threads with some amount of interest. I don't know if you're shining us along acting the "don't know anything about shooting" and "don't know anything about reloading" novice or if you really are experienced at shooting and reloading.

I just hope that at the end of this coming Spring and Summer you have all your fingers, your dominant eye is still good and that your nose hasn't been broken by your thumb during recoil.

I don't mean anything negative about this post at all. Just wondering.

Please get a couple/three good reloading manuals and technical manuals. They have a lot of good information in them.

Good luch with your shooting and reloading.

[anachronism]

People buy bullets?




Really?



You need a new gunsmith, this ones hopeless.

[Bill_Rights]

Modoc ED,

Bill_Rights here. I probably should have posted an introduction when I first joined the forum, but I didn't know it was customary to ask to sit by the campfire. I just kinda came on over and started jabbering. And listening.

I have been shooting since I was 4 years old, and hunting from some years after that. My background is kinda interesting, due to my father (God rest!) who favored sporting shotgun hunting for small game and birds. I grew up in southern South Carolina, in the transition lands between the sand hills and the low country. We had plenty of deer and turkeys, but I never happened to get either. The deer hunts in those days were "dog drive" hunts, with hunters posted every few hundred yards along roads and field lines where it was expected the dogs might drive the deer. We'd walk 30-50 yards INTO the woods, post ourselves looking deeper into the woods, and the deer would be driven from deep in the woods outwards. In any case, a slug in a birding shotgun was considered all you needed for the distance of shots expected. The upshot is, I grew up with ONLY shotguns. Well, we had one .22 slide pump rifle, but that was purely for plinking fun. [Not exactly true - we tried it for squirrel hunting one time, then went back to shotguns with #5 shot.] Even for snakes during fishing season, we had a sawed-off .410 shotgun with home-made pistol grip in place of rear stock. [It was "illegal" in those days too, but no one knew we had it so no one cared.] We were successful small game hunters. Dove, quail, rabbits and squirrel; occaisonal duck hunt. Dad's policy was, we had to clean, cook and eat everything we killed (or caught and didn't throw back, in the case of fishing). Dad was an old-style sporting gentleman. Didn't care what he hunted - it was mostly about the pass-time but also about the sporting challenge. He enjoyed eating anything we killed. Preparing this game to eat was just more challenge (think of shoe leather when you think of squirrel), and getting my mom to go along with it was even heap big more challenge.

After a while, when I was an early teenager, Dad wanted to make it even more sporting, so we trained up a Brittany spaniel pet, from puppy-hood, to be a pointer, for quail hunting. [Pet = Hunting Dog = Challenge] That first one got pretty good, but then got killed by a car, so we started over with another one. Amidst all this challenge of of trying to shoot quail flushed out of both good and busted points, Dad decided we needed to become better wing shots, so we took up shooting clays [not at all competitively, in any named event like "skeet" or "trap", but just to kill birds more effectively]. Well, wouldn't you know, that got expensive with factory ammo, so we started RELOADING shotgun shells. Between my brother, Dad and I, we'd generate 100-200 empty shells after an afternoon of hunting doves over cut corn fields, so we'd reload those for doves and skeet. I have reloaded (and shot) thousands upon thousands of shotgun shells, in bird loads.

It wasn't till I was in my forties that I shot a "real" rifle, a bolt gun in a caliber bigger than .22. I never even remotely came close to seeing a lever gun in that corner of South Carolina. No one had one. It just ain't culturally acceptable, least wasn't in my day.

Well, 'long come the current President, a known and sworn gun-grabber, with a like-minded (or at least cowed and wimpy) majority in both houses of Congress. And I'd become citified and familified and hadn't hunted in years, and I took at look at my old shotguns [didn't have the .22 rifle 'cause, after he got too old to mess with dogs, Dad kept it to shoot coons with and keep them away from the goodies around his house] and said "You know, I bet they got much better technology in guns now, and, besides, I need some serious pistols and rifles." So I re-joined the NRA, found the VGOC (Virginia Gun Owners' Coalition) and started lurking around gun forums to figure out what to buy new. At that point, a year and a half ago, I was interested in only one thing: maximal deadly firepower (against people) + training myself and my family to use it. No sporting. No challenge. Just raw, functional capability. (And, of course, gun safety, about which my dad was a fanatic).

I became an FN guy and still am to this day. FN = Fabrique Nationale de Herstal (FNH) based in the town of Herstal, a suburb of Liege, Belgium, "The City of Gun Steel" for the past 500 years, incorporated in America as FHN USA with much of their inventory manufactured in Fredricksburg, VA (just south of where I now live) or Columbia, SC (just north of where I grew up). I won't go through my "herd", and I don't want to say that every FN gun is unique, but the FN line of law enforcement (LE) firearms is a) recently engineered b) using the latest materials c) fabricated on state-of-the-art machinery with d) marvelous fit and finish (for plastic stocks, but it's darn good plastic!) and e) is utterly, no-nonsense, all-business reliable and f) costs about 2/3 what a US "name brand" would cost. An example would be the FNAR (FN Autoloading Rifle, pronounced F-N-A-R, each letter spelled out). This is a semi-auto in .308 Win, with 20" hard-chrome-lined, fluted "bull" barrel, that is heavy and fast-cycling for minimal kick in a full-power rifle round, to allow rapid, repeat aimed fire; uses 5-, 10- or 20-round quick-change, drop-box magazines to support that sustained rate of fire. The thing is so good it's cheating, which is exactly what I wanted.

So now, after a year or so shooting these FN guns regularly, and getting my family trained up, I am edging back to wanting a challenge and a little sport in my shooting. The FN professional killer guns (that is literally what they are) are too good and too easy to be much fun. They are boring (in an excellent way). Not to say I do my part perfectly all the time, and there's no such thing as too much practice. But they're not meant to be fun, just functional (excellently so, however).

Now that I am back into shooting, I love it, and like I said, I want more fun in my shooting. So that's what brings me, at last, long-windedly, to level guns. I just tonight got the E-mail from my local FFL that my first one arrived today and is ready to be picked up. A Rossi M92. I can't wait to home-shop rework it according to the Nate Kiowah Jones DVD and begin shooting it. Actually, I'll probably reverse that order. Then maybe figure out some upgrade iron sights for it.

But, you know, even choosing a lever gun is a sad comment on the fact that I am still concerned (not worried, mind you!) about the current President (who shall remain nameless) and his brown shirts. I could'a chosen an air rifle or a bolt gun, if I just wanted to have fun. But I chose a lever gun carbine in a pistol caliber because (I hate to say it, Dad) it has deadly potential as a high-mag-capacity repeater for self-, home- and perimeter defense.

For sure, if I already had a "herd" of high-power rifles and big bore pistols, I never would have gone the way I did, presuming I felt competent and confident in my ability to use them effectively in defense roles. And my family could be trained to use them well. You can see that I went the path I did because of the combination of a) dropping out of the shooting sport for years, b) our current wanna-be tyrant President coming in [not that he, personally, is any different than thousands of other politicians who think the same way - just that he, by a fluke, could get elected at the time he did] and c) me needing to upgrade my firearms "wardrobe" quickly and seriously.

And finally, to touch on a point Modoc ED seems to be curious about: Yes, I am a long-time shooter, and I am very safe around firearms (and an excellent trainer and amateur gun-mechanic, to boot) BUT, in my absence, you guys have taken this sport to a WHOLE NEW LEVEL. Back when I was reloading 40 years ago, NOBODY knew squat about powder dynamics or anything else - we just went by a manual and fooled around a little bit. To this day, I don't know a single person who actually owns a bullet-speed chrono, but about every other one of you guys has your own personal one (none of the ranges I go to even offer them). I am a practicing physical chemist and a materials scientist, and I can tell you that the depth and breadth of the technology you guys (and girls) have plumbed, and in some cases, mastered, is HUGE! I do have what to compare it to. It is no small field. So when I ask newbie questions, I usually don't know the whole answer, but in any case I also want to hear your reasoning and experience leading up to the answer. And the alternate answers and ways of doing things. I think this forum and the goings on here is/are very healthy and fascinating. As a professional scientist, I have undertaken gunnery as a field of science (amateur, for me). (And NO, I don't work for the government ! - I would love to work for FN, though ).

[2X22]

But I chose a lever gun carbine in a pistol caliber because (I hate to say it, Dad) it has deadly potential as a high-mag-capacity repeater for self-, home- and perimeter defense.

BEAUTIFUL!

I've been shooting pistol caliber leverguns for 40 years and they just happen to be MY cabins defensive cowboy assault rifle(s)!

2x22

[Modoc ED]

Bill_Rights -

Thanks for the report and background information.

Sounds like you had an interesting time in SC and sounds like your Dad was quite a guy.

I'll tell ya, there are a lot of knowledgeable guys/gals on this forum and I've never known one of them that wasn't happy to help a fellow/gal along.

I hunt, reload, have a chrony, and shoot quite a bit and I can tell ya that I'm still learning and discovering new things on a regular basis. It's kind of an old cliche (sp?) but "there aren't any dumb questions" when it comes to shooting/reloading.

Good to have you here. Enjoy yerself.

[Halfbreed]

aaaaaaaa,,,,,daaaaa.......whatsa booooolitt...???

It's they use to shoot ghosts.

[anachronism]

aaaaaaaa,,,,,daaaaa.......whatsa booooolitt...???

It's they use to shoot ghosts.

Only the little ones.

[KirkD]

Your gunsmith doesn't know tweet about cast bullets. I shoot nothing but cast bullets, and at velocities up to 2,200 fps with no leading. However, you do have to adjust your alloy to the velocity, and at higher velocities, I use gas checked cast bullets. The main reason I use cast bullets is that they are practically free since I make them myself out of used wheel weights that I collect from a few local garages.

[jlchucker]

Your gunsmith doesn't know tweet about cast bullets. I shoot nothing but cast bullets, and at velocities up to 2,200 fps with no leading. However, you do have to adjust your alloy to the velocity, and at higher velocities, I use gas checked cast bullets. The main reason I use cast bullets is that they are practically free since I make them myself out of used wheel weights that I collect from a few local garages.

Read all of Bill-Right's posts, Kirk. It seems that there may be no "gunsmith". Modoc ED questioned Bill_Rights earlier, and it seems that Bill is "a long-time shooter...(and an excellent trainer and amateur gun mechanic to boot)". I shoot mostly cast bullets myself, and agree with your statements about velocity, leading, and alloys--not to mention bullet diameter for given rifles. Apparently Bill now says he has little modern experience in casting, and wants to find out more, albeit in a strange, roundabout way.

[Landric]

I just started casting last year. I lived in a series of apartments over the course of my adult life, so I never had anywhere to cast. I've been handloading for sixteen years and casting was the next natural step. When I bought a house in 2008 I decided it was time. So, in about the middle of 09 I started learning to cast. I'm still pretty new at it, but I enjoy it and it both reduces my cost to shoot even more and allows me to shoot bullets (boolits) not available at a reasonable price, or simply not available, on the market.

I'm mostly a handgun shooter, and I shoot nothing but lead in my handguns. I shoot mostly lead in rifle as well, though I will load jacketed bullets now and then in rifle. I'm still working on a cast load for my 5.56mm AR that is satisfactory, until I get that perfected, I'm still shooting jacketed bullets in it.