Sweating Bullets: The workingman’s guide to do-it-yourself bullet casting to beat the ammo shortage!
Over the past several months a lot of avid shooters have contended with shortages. You cannot find primers, and if you do they’re $50 to $80 per thousand.
Powder is in short supply, too. I can’t remember the last time I saw a pound of Varget on a gun shop shelf. Bullets, well, that has been crazy, too. If you’re trying to feed an AR-15, or heaven forbid, an M-16, it is short rations all around. I can’t do much about the short supply of primers or powder, but I set out to do something about my .224 bullet supply.
Cost Analysis
I’ve been casting bullets for about six years to feed several pistols and black-powder rifles, so it was an easy transition to making .22 caliber “boolits” as some of the more serious casters refer to them. It was only going to cost just a little more of my time to collect lead, cast and size bullets when compared to using jacketed bullets.
The cost benefits are pretty obvious with a little calculation. Today, if you can find factory loads they’re going for about 50 cents per round, if you buy them a thousand at a time. We’re comparing plinking rounds, so most will be in the 55- to 62-grain range. For example, Federal American Eagle 55-grain full-metal jacket ammo was $499.95 per thousand plus shipping. Privi Partazan’s 62-grain load was going for $490 per thousand, and Remington Express 55-grain FMJs were $830 per thousand, again, plus shipping. On the low end were the Wolf 62-grain FMJs at $333 per thousand.
Since the Wolf ammunition is steel cases and not reloadable they present a good comparison to reloading my own cases to make plinking rounds. By the time the budget ammo gets shipped the cost per round was about 67 cents each.
To load 1,000 rounds of cast bullets, my powder cost is about $80 for two pounds of powder. Primers are about $40 per thousand. It takes about 10 pounds of alloy to cast up 1,000 bullets, and my cost per pound average of my lead supply is 25 cents per pound. I keep meticulous records, so that even includes my vehicle mileage in my raw lead cost. My raw materials cost for lead is a whopping $2.50. Throw in enough gas checks to load a grand of ammo at $20, some bullet lube at $15, and you get a grand total of $127.50 spent. Using my own brass, my cost per round is less than 13 cents, or a little more than a third of what a thousand budget 5.56 ammo would cost.
I’m not announcing a revelation that reloading can save money over factory loads, so I’ll be the first to admit that the real cost savings is the projectile itself. On the low end, a thousand Armscorp 55-grain FMJs cost about $80 shipped from MidwayUSA, or their Dogtown economy bullets will cost about 12 cents each at that volume. Part of the satisfaction I get is the idea that I get to take one more step toward self reliance when it comes to feeding one of my guns. The value of that is priceless.
Ready To Roll
Velocity and the chamber pressure are the limiting factors when working with cast bullets. Simply put, most cast bullet loads need to be limited to about 2,200 fps for optimal performance and to prevent barrel leading. It is possible to push a cast bullet faster, but there’s no need to risk fouling the gas port on an AR for a few more feet per second.
The raw material for casting bullets is lead in many forms. Wheel weights are the most common, but not all wheel weights are created equal. The clip-on types are usually 95.25 percent lead, 4 percent antimony, 1/2 percent tin and 1/4 percent arsenic.
Stick-on weights are pretty close to pure lead. Linotype, the cast type used in old printing presses is 84 percent lead, 12 percent antimony and 4 percent tin. Antimony is what gives a cast bullet its hardness, with tin offering just a small bit of hardness. Tin’s primary purpose is to reduce the surface tension of the molten lead to make mould fill-out easier.
Since we’re discussing driving cast bullets at the top end of their practical range, a hard bullet is called for to load for .223 Remington.
It is possible to load down farther, but we need chamber pressure to reliably function an AR’s gas system. I have experimented with two alloys when casting center-fire .22 bullets. The first is straight linotype and the other is a 50/50 blend of stick-on wheel weights and linotype. Since linotype is more costly, I prefer to use less of it. Since there are a couple of hardening processes available to the caster it’s a simple choice to opt for the alloy with the least cost.
I hold down my cost of raw materials by collecting wheel weights from a few local tire shops. Since I do a regular business with these suppliers, they give them to me free. Linotype, on the other hand, is harder to come by. The changes in the newspaper printing process over the past few decades have dried up most of the linotype supply. It still can be purchased with a little searching, though. I got my most recent supply of 700 pounds of “lino” for 35 cents per pound earlier this year.
After securing a supply of wheel weights they need to be smelted into a useful form. I separate the clip-on from the stick-on weights and save the stick-ons for use in casting for softer bullets. I smelt my lead in a 6-quart Dutch oven over a propane turkey fryer burner. The molten lead is then ladled off into ingot moulds, cooled and stored for later use.
HOT TIP #1
When scrounging for wheel weights, be sure to separate and remove the zinc wheel weights before smelting. They can play havoc with your alloy if allowed to get mixed into the melt. Keep your smelting temperature under 775 degrees and the zinc will float to the top with the other trash that will be skimmed off.
Once you have a supply of smelted ingots the next step is to begin casting. I use an RCBS Pro Melt pot that holds 22 pounds of molten lead. By weight, I add 10 pounds of wheel weight ingots and 10 pounds of linotype metal. Although this bottom-pour pot offers that option, I elect to ladle pour my .22 bullets instead. I find that ladle pouring these small bullets gives me better mould fill-out and more consistent results. The final bullets poured from this alloy yield a Brinell hardness of 15 when are air cooled.
A straight linotype cast bullet should yield a Brinell hardness of 22.
Note: Brinell Scale (BNH) is the most common hardness reference used in bullet casting. Pure lead has a BHN of 5 while other alloys, such as mono type have a BNH of 27 to 28.
There are two methods of making a bullet harder than an air-cooled cast. Heat treating can significantly raise a bullet’s BHN, but it is more time consuming. I prefer to water quench my cast bullets to raise their hardness. I simply sit a 5-gallon buck half full of water on the floor beside my casting bench and drop the bullets straight from the mould.
The next day after water quenching the 3:1 alloy of wheel weights and lino yields a BHN of 18. Since water-quenched cast wheel weights contain a small amount of arsenic and tin they get harder after ageing, so the final hardness will settle at about 22 BHN after three to four weeks.
HOT TIP #2
Knowing the relative hardness of your cast bullets is important. Once you find a good load combination with a particular gun it’s necessary to replicate the cast bullet’s properties. Testing for hardness will allow more precision. Lee and Saeco offer hardness testers. Recently, I purchased a CabineTree hardness tester, and it is now my favorite. It gives the most consistent readings and is easy to read. Check out www.castingstuff.com.
I opted for two moulds for my .223 loads; the RCBS 22-055 and the Lyman 225462. The RCBS mould produces an approximate 55-grain bullet and the Lyman a 58-grain bullet. The final cast weight will vary slightly with technique and alloy composition.
Fully formed bullets from the 3:1 wheel weights and lino alloy dropped from the RCBS mould averaged 54 grains with 0.6-grain variance. The Lyman mould dropped at 56.5-grain average with .6 grains of variance. The linotype-only bullets averaged 53.5 grains with .4 grains of variance from the RCBS mould, and the Lyman averaged 57 grains with .5 grains of variance.
Weighing In
The next step was to weigh each bullet and segregate into 1/10th grain groups for testing. It is possible that a certain specific bullet weight will score smaller group sizes, but that’s fodder for a later article. I wanted to mainly remove the variance in bullet weights from the equation when shooting groups at 100 yards.
Sizing and lubing bullets is the last stage in the casting process. I have learned that my Bushmaster XM-15 Varminter prefers bullets sized to .225 inch better than at .224 inch. It appears to give a better gas seal, less barrel fouling and tighter groups. I used an RCBS LAM 2 bullet sizer and an RCBS .225-inch size die.
Hornady gas checks were fitted to each bullet before sizing. I have used various bullet lubes, commercial and homemade, but had best results with Lars Carnuba Red (www.lsstuff.com/lube/). It does a good job of lubricating the bullet at the higher velocities needed to function in an AR. If needed, Carnuba Red is suggested for cast bullet loads up to 2,700 fps. The final weight of a sized Lyman 225462 with gas check and lube is 2.1 grains higher than as-cast weight. A gas checked and lubed RCBS 22-055 is 1.5 grains heavier than cast.
Hassle-Free Accuracy
My objectives for loading cast bullets in an AR was to put together loads that reliably function the action, shoot cleanly, and provide respectable accuracy at 100 yards. Several powders will work to produce modest velocities in a .223 and provide enough pressure to cycle the action. I had ample supplies of IMR 4198, IMR 4895 and 2400, so I elected to use what I had on hand. Other powders will work, and I’m especially interested in learning more about how IMR 4227 will perform at the range.
Light charges of some powders can create detonation, which is a dangerous situation, since pressures spike. It can be easily remedied with a fiber-type case filler material. Dacron batting is a good case filler, but I decided to go low-tech and use dryer lint instead. All of my IMR 4198 loads used filler material. No matter which filler material you use, a piece of coat hanger wire is all that you need to push it into the case to hold the powder charge against the primer.
HOT TIP #3
Any time you go below 80 percent case capacity it’s time to consider a filler material.
When seating some bullets you may get a small amount of lead shaving. To remedy this problem I used a .243 Winchester RCBS resizing die to flare the case mouths slightly. I removed the primer punch pin and adjusted the case mouth expander button to slightly contact the .223 case mouth. I’m not sure if the slight ease in bullet seating is worth the trade-off in bullet-holding neck tension, though. More experimentation with this slight case mouth adjustment will tell in future tests.
Bullet seating depth varied for these loads. I wanted bullet seating depth to just touch the lands without engraving the bullet’s nose. The Lyman bullet was seated to an overall loaded length of 2.109 inches. The RCBS bullet was seated most often to an overall cartridge length of 2.130 inches. One batch of bullets was seated out to 2.151 inches overall length, but extracting an unfired round caused the bullet to be slightly pulled from the case neck. All cases used in testing were WCC once-fired, and primed with CCI 400 small rifle primers. Case necks were slightly crimped into the bullets used.
Several loading manuals list fast powders like Bullseye and Red Dot for use in the .223, but the AR needs the residual gas that slow powders produce. With powders much faster than 2400, by the time the bullet passes the gas port too little gas volume remains to cycle the bolt.
HOT TIP #4
Adjustable gas blocks are available from various AR aftermarket parts companies. This writer’s favorite is found at RifleSpeed.com. Shooting reduced loads with an adjustable system will allow you to tune your rifle for reliable functioning.
Range Work
Throughout the range testing the RCBS 22-055 bullets outperformed the Lyman 225462 by a slight margin. Ten shots with each powder and bullet combination were fired over an Oehler 35P chronograph. Although the 2400 loads reached an average of 2,137 fps, they didn’t cycle the action and were removed from the test. Overall, loads with IMR 4895 showed greater extreme spreads when compared with IMR 4198. The best load was 14 grains of IMR 4198 with either the RCBS bullets cast from linotype or the 3:1 alloy of clip-on wheel weights and linotype. The 3:1 alloy average was 55 fps slower than the linotype bullets, but had a smaller extreme velocity spread of 49 fps compared to the linotype bullet’s 66 fps ES. The linotype loads had an average of 2.05 inches for five, three-shot groups.
The same load with the wheel weight and linotype alloy averaged 2.15 inches. The smallest 3-shot group was recorded from the 3:1 alloy at 1.36 inches, with the smallest linotype group measuring 1.41 inches center-to-center.
The RCBS 22-055 with a 3:1 alloy of clip-on wheel weights and linotype and 14 grains of IMR 4198, and some filler material, will be my go-to load for now. The bullet’s 0.153 B.C. at 2,250 fps indicates a drop of 3.13 inches at 150 yards with a 100-yard zero. At 200 yards the bullet will fall 9.85 inches, indicating that this load should be great for plinking out to that range with slight optics adjustments.
Bullet casting is an enjoyable aspect of the shooting sports, and is a viable approach to economic AR shooting fun. Give it a try and it will either save you money or help you stretch your shooting dollar more to allow you to put more rounds down range for the same investment.
Check out www.castboolits.gunloads.com for a wealth of information on all aspects of shooting cast bullets.
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