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OFFICIAL: NES BULLET CASTING SEMINAR

OK I didn't mention this on the Saturday because people look at me strange when I mention. Quick and easy ingot mold. Take a 4"X4" length of wood Drill a hole every 3 or 4 inches with a 1 1/4" to 1 1/2" about 2 to 2 1/2" deep, cut 4X4 length wise in half dry the wood in an oven. Spray the open areas with light coating of WD 40 or rub with Vaseline or both. Let dry, clamp it together. The first couple of times it will smoke and then it will get a char, and you will be good to go. It wears out but it does last a while. Just my $.02 :)
 
Wood does work well for a while.
Any decent metal pan will work well. Check the dollar store. Yard sales are the best. You can get pans for pennies usually.
Cast iron works well but hard to find at the right price.

There is a thread on cast bullets about ingot moulds. Some good ideas for DIY


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If you have a Christmas Tree shop near you. I got these small cast iron loaf pans. They were on clearance and I got them for $.25 a pan. You just can't fill them too much or they will not fit in the small melting pot.
 
Bill what are the dimensions on that pan? Looks pretty nice. Especially for .25 cents.


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At the large point 5" long, 2 1/4 wide, 1 3/4 deep. I got them a while back but the Christmas Tree shop has a lot of cast Iron.
 
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Boomer76 said:
Hey guys, my stash and supplies are growing at a good rate. I've been looking around shops for ingot molds without any luck and also been looking in stores for mini muffin tins but all I find is what looks like two parts soldered together. I remember Anthony saying that those ones will fall apart from the heat melting the solder. Aside from going to Shooters Supply later after dinner (and being a little better than an hour away) do you guys have any suggestions? Thanks
Click to expand...

Try a used restraunt supply house , I found several nice pans there cheap. No camera at the moment.
I also use stainless steel cups I got from Wal-Mart. They call them condiment cups. They are not ideal but work. Almost any container works just avoid very straight walled vessels. Like tuna cans.

I also have a mold made from angle iron. It's approx 2" I cut it in to 4 5" pieces then cut 2 pieces to weld to the ends to form handles...
 
I'm not sure if it's the heat melting the solder or just beating the crap out of the cheesy muffin tins that does it. Restaurant supply is a good place so I've heard but I've actually never been in one. If it looks like a cheesy muffin tin, it will yield 2-3 ingot pours. If it looks solid, it will last a lifetime.

Boomer, if you can't make this yourself, let me know. http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?67273-Angle-Iron-Ingot-Mold

Hopefully you or someone can light a fire under our butts. I'll do all the welding and I have the tools to cut it. Just haven't made the time.

Mike and I have been talking about doing a batch of these for ourselves for about 2 years and it keeps falling behind. Can you be the motivation we need? Please and thank you.

F Mike. He's hunting and backpacking in Idaho right now. I'm not jealous at all.
 
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Anthony my Daughter is having a yard sale at the house today and maybe tomorrow. If you are around swing by and I'll give you the tappers for you and Mike.
 
Sorry, was putting replacement windows in a house yesterday... I'll catch up with you maybe today? I have the day off and some errands to run.
 
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I saw this at Christmas Tree shop. It was a heavy cast aluminum It will heat up kind of fast and I don't know how long it will last I looked around and they don't have cast Iron there now. That sucks.
 
My 40 SW barrels slugged at 0.4027 so it would seem I would need something close to 0.404 diameter. The Lee sizer is at 0.401 so it doesn't make sense to size.
The Lee 401-175-TC I am guessing throws above 0.401 (maybe 0.402?)

How do I get close to 0.404? I see comments about casters using this Lee mold and not having leading issues in the same barrels.

And then wondering if the 40SW dieset I have (Hornady) is going to have issues with "fat" lead.
 
A thing called "Beagling" named after the guy with the handle "beagle" on cast boolits who came up with the idea is the easiest solution to get the mold to drop bigger. See here: http://www.castpics.net/subsite2/MoldMods/BDE.pdf

Other solution is lapping out the mold. (more work, not reversible)

You might have to/be able to omit the sizing process.

The die set might have issues with the fatter bullets. Most likely that the expander won't expand enough and the case neck tension can swage down the bullet, resulting in something too small for your gun.

.40 has been a royal PITA for Mike and I. We kind of just gave up and moved on to things that weren't so frustrating. Hopefully you have better luck than us. It's been a while, but I think we may have had issues with it with the Hi-Tek coating too. Is your mold a flat or bevel base? Ours was bevel. Can't imagine that causing any issues, but we never did drill out the bevel on one cavity just to try it. I'm definitely curious to hear how you make out.
 
BillNed said:
View attachment 148435

I saw this at Christmas Tree shop. It was a heavy cast aluminum It will heat up kind of fast and I don't know how long it will last I looked around and they don't have cast Iron there now. That sucks.
Click to expand...

Only problem with that is the ignores might not drop out easily because of the ridge in the bottom?
The smoother the better and the containers should have at least a,little taper to them. Straight walls make for difficult removal of cooled ignot. My friend used old heavy duty aluminum ice cube trays.
Small ignot but it's what he found for free.....part of the casting game is finding as much stuff as possible for free.
 
Hardwired said:
Can I get small quantities of 403 and 404 lead or plated to try with the reloading dies as a 1st step?
pm if out of state.
Click to expand...

Sorry, I can't remember where you live, but you're welcome to make the trek down to my house to use my .401 mold and beagle it. Problem is that I have a busy couple of weeks coming up, otherwise I'd offer to just make 100 or so for you. I think your best solution is to find a way to make them yourself and start trouble shooting, even if it means a $14 2 cav Lee mold.
 
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Sorry Bill!

I've been all out with the new house. Anthony is gone for the next week on a work trip. Lets try to plan something next week.
 

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