Self Sufficiency, Part Two

It was unusually warm today for February, so I took advantage of that after getting home from work, and pan lubed and sized between 150 and 200 of the bullets I cast last weekend. These were cast from my Accurate 43-15C mold and will be shot in my Cimarron 1873 Sporting Rifle over black powder.

I use a hot plate that I got from Amazon for $14.95 or so to melt my roughly 50/50 mix of beeswax and mutton tallow. I recently picked up a .44 caliber Lee lube cutter off eBay, which made separating the bullets from the lube simpler than my previous solution. That was a .44-40 case with the mouth expanded a bit larger than normal and the flash hole drilled out so I can still a pin punch through it to poke out the bullets.

After separating them from the lube, I ran them through my Lee .429 sizer.

I still have about another 100 bullets to lube and size, which I'll try to get to tomorrow night.

The weather is supposed to be crappy this weekend, so I'm going to try to get some reloading in. I want to load at least one 50 round box of .44-40s using 2.2cc of Goex, to see how well this bullet works with it. I know it works well with Swiss black powder but I have a good supply of Goex on hand. The bullet was designed to carry enough lube to use with Goex in 24" barrels.