Cast Some .38-40 Bullets

This afternoon I cast some bullets using the Ideal Number 6 reloading tool for my .38-40 1892 Winchester. I have a small Lyman electric lead pot and filled the mold with a dipper. The alloy is ~20:1 tin:lead, which gives me a soft bullet but the tin helps the molten lead fill out the mold.

They dropped from the mold at ~0.412" and sized down in the Ideal tool to ~0.401".

If you look closely you may see some flashing on some of the bullets. The mold blocks do not meet perfectly. This will be cleaned up during sizing and if necessary, with a fine cut file. If I can keep these on an 8" plate at 50 yards I'll be happy. I'll be ordering a modern mold for sure.

My plan is to shoot these over black powder, so I lubed some up with Crisco and ran them through the sizer on the Ideal tool.

This shows a bullet ready to be sized:

Even with the soft alloy your hands get a real workout. I did about 25 and will do another 25 later. I am going to order a Lee sizing die to use in my reloading press.

Using a tool like this for molding your bullets and loading the cartridges really makes you appreciate modern reloading tools. Even a Lee Hand Press is a major step up.