I am looking at getting into making my own bullets. The California lead ban goes into effect soon, and I'm wanting to make my own non lead projectiles for hunting. I have a small lathe that I'm hoping to turn out some brass or copper monoliths with. Does anyone have experience designing monoliths?
I am also wanting to make my own molds for casting. I know this is possible on my lathe with a 4 jaw chuck. What material should I make the mold of? Brass, steel , aluminim etc. I'm also looking for advice on cast bullet design. Bullet swaging equipment is also expensive, would it be possible for me to make swaging gear for my reloading press on my lathe? Thanks /k
Look into casting brass bullets. You could scavenge rimfire brass from your local range for feedstock. It would probably be cheaper than machining your bullets. Molds would probably have to be cast iron.
Tyler Sanchez
>california lead ban haven't been paying attention at all lately, what is this?
Xavier Perez
July 1st, all rounds used for hunting must be 1% lead or less.
Lincoln Morales
Brass is too hot to be casted at home really. Turning brass bullets on a lathe is doable, and several companies do right now.
Joseph Cox
sounds fucking gay
Gavin Smith
You can make swaging dies on the lathe. Surface finish is important, swaging copper monoliths would put a lot of strain on your press.
I would assume if you don't have cnc you would want to make a form tool so you can make consistent shapes fast. If you can have lead I don't know what you can reasonably cast at home... Making molds means making reamers. There's like one good video on YouTube about it. Aluminum is standard.
Luke King
same, Im also unaware as to what this is.
Jason Harris
Okay very cool. Not planning on swaging copper monoliths, hopefully I can machine them accurate enough to not have any need to resize.
I can still target shoot with lead, so casting and swaging pure lead and copper jacketed rounds is still and option.
Carter Russell
CNC lathe conversions can be done pretty cheap if you got the know how. The motors and bracketry can be done for just a few hundred bucks if you buy import shit and make it all yourself. If I were seriously considering switching to lead free I would go that route so you could make hundreds all the same and make micro adjustments on the fly until you find what works. Otherwise every little change requires a new mold, new form tool, basically a do-over.
Lincoln Jones
That's a good point. I was hoping to start out just learning the basic of bullet design, and start with rounds that are O.K., the cnc conversion is undoubtedly the better route however. I'll start looking into it. Thanks
Leo Nguyen
Charcoal will give you temps over 2K degrees. That’s plenty for casting brass. You’ll need to build a backyard forge. If you’re going to recycle rimfire brass, I would do it in 2 stages. First burn to melt the brass into useable ingots, second one to cast ingots into bullets. You can use subsequent burns to anneal previous batches.
Turning bullets out of round stock will give you more uniformity and precision fromm round to round. The downside is, production time per round is astronomical. If you make yourself a series of molds, you could run off 20 or 50 rounds at a go. Make the mold adjustable depth so you can cast different bullet weights. Keep it simple, cast slightly oversized brass cylinders. Make a cutting tool similar to a pencil sharpener, use that on your lathe to make the ogive and to trim to final size. Doing it that way significantly reduces your machine time per bullet.
Kevin Williams
Why not move out of cuckfornia?
Jonathan Jackson
My concern isn't not being able to actually melt the brass, its that any mold i pour it into might deform from the high heat.
Jonathan Ramirez
>July 1st, all rounds used for hunting must be 1% lead or less wtf is there to hunt in California? It's just a desert shithole full of foreigners and liberals. oh....wait a minute........
Oliver Richardson
Eh fuck off. The state's got plenty of natural beauty and lots to hunt
Jose Morgan
Cast iron can handle it.
Lincoln Morales
>wtf is there to hunt in California? Waterfowl 3 species of elk Boar Javelina 6 species of deer Bighorn sheep Pronghorn antelope Black bear Dove Quail Chukkar Plus a few things that I can’t remember off the top of my head. Oh, and you have your head up your ass about our geography, too. The top 2/3 of the state is forested mountains, valleys, and plains. Immigrants and tourists all seem to get stuck in the desert part. Good. Let em die there.
Robert Wilson
Fucking thank you
Brody Martin
When you look at what people are doing it's overwhelmingly machining copper bullets. That would suggest to me that "just cast brass lol" is about as unhelpful as it gets, you don't think people would do that if given the option? I don't have first hand knowledge of casting copper but I have seen many indications that it's not as easy as just getting the metal melted and a cast iron mold.
Angel Cox
Too bad those desert dwelling migrants and faggots also control your bootlicking asses, otherwise this thread wouldn't have been made.
Ayden Moore
Yeah, casting brass or copper is pretty much infeasible. I'm looking to get into bullet making, not blacksmithing
Michael Murphy
bump
Aiden Jackson
Thanks?
Luis Carter
Machining bullets is more expensive because you need tools and dyes. If you can drop $500 onto a dye/tool aka a mold with a furnace while maintaining property in the countryside than go for it, but it takes time. You can make pretty cheap furnaces from clay even.
Its not a weekend project. Its a trade plane and simple. I'm not saying knowing how to cast bullets isn 't useful in dire times.
I am asking though if casting bullets is a full fledged skill you need in years to come incase of emergency?
Is there even going to be someone like kids of your own to pass this skill down to?
Serious food for thought.
Evan Gonzalez
I don't plan to have kids, but I do plan to settle down somewhere with land. Maybe someone else will want to learn from me, I don't mind teaching people about what I know.
I recognize it's not going to be an overnight thing. I want to start trying to make my own tooling, and maybe start casting my own design in the next six months. I hope to have several successful designs, and a good ability to machine and create new tooling as needed in about seven years.
Most of my hobbies are slow learning, and I hope to be around for the next few decades, so I would like to start.
