Beautiful sunny day out today. So a perfect day to spend in the basement castsing bullets.
I'd run out of NOE 314210 for my 03 Springfield. I'm not a fan of casting bullets. Although the 4-cavity NOE mould has certainly improved my enthusiasm. Filled the pot and put mould on the hotplate and went up to have breakfast. When I was done, lead was up to temp and so was mould.
I cast about 766 bullets by weight, since I'm not counting that many. I timed myself and the average time to cast, cut the sprues, dump the mould, close it and have it under the spout for the next pour ran anywhere from 15 to 20 seconds, 20 seconds being driving by bullets not dropping out of the mould. So, casting 4 bullets every 17 seconds on average yields a rate of 847/hr. I took a break after about 45 minutes and cast some 303 grain Saeco bullets for my .38-55. Also, dumping the sprues back in, waiting for the lead temp to come back up and then fluxing all adds time. I figure my time just casting and the other steps removed was about 1 hour, maybe less. So, I'm happy with 766 bullets/hour.
Here's the finished jug-o-bullets. Should last me about 6 months or 12 centerfire matches. Probably longer since I figure 60 rounds/match but I rarely shoot more than 9 or 10 sighers for a 40 round match unless the conditions are brutal. So, I'll probably get a couple more matches from this batch.
Only cast about 130 of the .38-55 slugs. I have two missions for these bullets.
1. See how they do out to 500 yds. The 250 gr bullets I was using fall apart past 300 yds. Charlie says this one does very well out 500 with BP. But I'll be launching them with 2400. Charlie said to try a thin card wad under the bullet to act as a gas check. Said the Schuetzen guys do this since they all shoot plain base and smokeless.
2. See if the rifle is fun or abusive to shoot. It's a Browning Traditional hunter with a crescent buttplate. Looks nice, but sucks for shooting matches. If I decide the rifle is no fun, I'll probably sell it and look for an original High Wall in .30-30 or .32-40 or just find an action and built a rifle. I want a single set trigger. My shooting partner has one in .40-65 that he is willing to sell me. Has a single set but it stopped working. He bought a new Meachem at the time and just put the Winchester back in the safe. His friend has been making noise about wanting to buy the rifle, so he gets first dibs. If I get it, I'll just rebarrel it.