Henry Rifle Forums

At last warm weather time for casting, I went to a friend of mine who is working with stained glass he always give me a yearly supply of scrap lead.


To start with I always wear a faceprotection mask and breathing through a breatingmask, protective clothing and welders gloves while handling lead both from scrap and when melting/casting. And I always melt/cast with wind blowing away from me and the pot.

So got my electrical stove and cast iron pot and went to work melting some ingots of stained glass lead. It was a little windy so I had lead cooling at the edges of the pot, started to thinking what I could use as a shield. And found an old aluminium lemonade maker that was in my "good to have storage". Started up the anglegrinder and cut out the bottom and placed it around the pot and it was a success. Working as intended



Some ingots:

Got a new mold for my 357 its a Lee 2cavity 358-158-RF that I got to try so later last week I casted some to try. Ive been using this alloy its pretty much lyman #2. Mixing up the stained glass lead (bhn around 8-9) with linotype lead I got, 2parts stained glass lead + 1part linotype lead gives a bhn at around 16 aircooled. Cast at around 400-420degrees celsius. Bullet drops at .360 from this mold and weighs around 157-158grain. I will try these bullets with magnumloads to see how it goes with leading since its a non gascheckbullet i Suspect I need to have higher bhn or gascheckbullets OR other loads with lower fps, but will try them and see, im sizing to .357 and lubricate with carnuba red.

Bullets


Loaded:


About gear, I pretty much use old stuff keeping it simple, trying to salvage things I already got using old candles for fluxing, stainless kitchenspoon and such. However when I cast the bullet I use a Lee Pro 4-20 pot and a digital termometer to keep everyting consistent.
Some older gear:
An old Lachmiller lubrasizer

An old Lyman Spartan

nice bullets !

BruniX wrote:nice bullets !

Thanks!

Nice bullets indeed. Good looking rounds when done to boot.

interesting process, well reported .... do you hunt with these rounds

Couldnt resist to make 20 of them powdercoated to try them out aswell if I get leading with ordinary lube maybe coating can make it work with this alloy. But I prefer the look of ordinary leadbullets. I just adda teaspoon of powdercoat in a bucket with a lid and add some bullets and shake it for a minute and then take bullet one at the time standing them up on a silicon baking sheet. Tjen put it in a deskowen with a timer in my garage and they get baked at 180degreee celsius for about 10minutes After this I size them in a Lee push through sizer.

JEBar wrote:interesting process, well reported .... do you hunt with these rounds

No I dont hunt with these rounds, it isnt legal to hunt with handguns here these bullets are for my Ruger GP100, but I do hunt with a 44magnum Henry Allweather but havent shot anything with my cast bullets. Mostly use 9,3x62 or 6,5x55 when hunting during mooseseason, 6,5x55 is the lowest caliber allowed on moose and bear beacuse of the limit of atleast 156grain at 2700joule or 144grain at 2000joule at 100meters.

I had some trouble when choosing top punch for my lubrasizer i bought lyman #429 but id didnt fit the wide meplat so good. So I made some changes I filled up the hollow in the top punch with epoxy glue and mounted it in the press and then greased a bullet and let it sink in the top punch by the weight of the handle and now its a perfect fit for the bullet. I will probably make an own flat top punch when I get near a turning machine.

looking forward to your range reports using your bullets and your hunting trips with your Henry 44

deskowen

First time I've heard that term.
Around here we call them toaster ovens. I like your term better.

Range Report:
https://henryrifleforums.com/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=6741