So with the upcoming elections and the semi panic buying after the Orlando incident, I was thinking about lead casting bullets to be a little more self reliant. I'm an avid Ulua Fisherman so pouring lead is nothing new to me. I have the equiptment, several hundred of pounds of clean raw lead and have been pouring fishing lead for 20 years. I prefer to shoot plated bullets but if SHTF, was considering to be prepared to cast my own.

With that said, what are your thoughts on lead casting? Recommenadtions on molds,dies, lube and techniques. With the casting, gas checks, sizing and lube is it worth it? How is the lead buildup in the barrel rifle and pistol? Easier to just trade some raw lead for ready to load bullets?

So with the upcoming elections and the semi panic buying after the Orlando incident, I was thinking about lead casting bullets to be a little more self reliant. I'm an avid Ulua Fisherman so pouring lead is nothing new to me. I have the equiptment, several hundred of pounds of clean raw lead and have been pouring fishing lead for 20 years. I prefer to shoot plated bullets but if SHTF, was considering to be prepared to cast my own.

With that said, what are your thoughts on lead casting? Recommenadtions on molds,dies, lube and techniques. With the casting, gas checks, sizing and lube is it worth it? How is the lead buildup in the barrel rifle and pistol? Easier to just trade some raw lead for ready to load bullets?

i have no experience, but i would think that of you already no how to pour lead, it would be easy to learn how to make boolits

I learned casting from some veteran 2700 shooters about 36 years ago.
But I have only made pistol bullets. It sounds like you want to do rifle bullets.
I actually prefer to shoot my own cast bullets instead of plated or jacketed bullets.
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You would need to pay attention to your alloy for casting bullets.
It would be good to know where your scrap lead came from.
In most cases, you would just need to add a small amount of bar solder to increase the tin content slightly.
I have a little computer program that I made up to help calculate the composition of your alloy as long as you have some idea where the lead came from.
I recommend using LEE aluminum molds because they are cheap, and aluminum is an ideal material for making bullet molds. I do own many high-end steel molds but I've settled down to the LEE molds because they just so easy to use.
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In my particular case, I only do 45acp bullets since that is my fav.
For lubrication and sizing I use a STAR sizer with my own proprietary grease blend formula.
The machine is now made by magma engineering here...
http://www.magmaengineering.com/magma-star-lube-sizer/
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Other less costly lube and size methods are available today.
I would investigate the LEE products.
Also available are the new generation of polymer coatings.
I am unfamiliar with these new products.
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The question of whether or not it is worth the effort is dependent on your needs and your free time.
Some instances require soft lead bullets, different diameters, etc.
As an example, if I were to resume serious IPSC shooting for prizes, I would make nothing but Saeco #456 bullets.
https://www.midwayusa.com/product/637566/saeco-4-cavity-bullet-mold-456-45-caliber-452-diameter-225-grain-round-nose
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Here is my video project from 4 years ago.

I shoot a lot of lead in most but all of my rifles. The lead bullets I get are cast quite hard and come with copper gas checks and I load them down in velocity. I don't have any leading issues and since lead is softer than steel it minimizes wear on your barrel.

The bullets themselves make up a bulk of the cost of making your own rounds so if you can make your own, you will save a lot of money. Whether you actually save a lot of money, however, is a factor of how often and how many rounds you shoot. For me, calculating the cost/round was simply an excuse to justify my purchasing of bullet making equipment. In actuality, I'm a nut when it comes to doing new things and got into it simply to expand my knowledge or reloading. 

Lee Precision makes relatively inexpensive molds.  If you buy Lee, I recommend getting the 6-cavity molds as the rate of making bullets increases 200% over the dual-cavity ones.

If you trade bullets for lead, I recommend you try a sampling before you buy in bulk. Some bullets are screwy and will keyhole or fly in all sorts of directions in your firearm.

Haven't tried making rifle rounds with lead yet. Rifle rounds present a who new layer of complexity due to velocity limitations and the addition of a gas checks and I do not shoot a whole lot of rifle rounds.

If you decide to use a ladle to pour your lead, make sure you buy a ladle large enough to hold a sufficient amount of lead like the RCBS ladle.  I started off with the Lee ladle. It was barely sufficient to pour lead into a double-cavity mold. If you use a 6-cavity mold with the Lee ladle, you will end up double or triple dipping and with partial pours which may lead to abnormal bullets.

RCBS Ladle and Lee 6-cavity mold:

~F

Just lubrisized a bunch.
Now loading for my 4th of July range session!

The bullets themselves make up a bulk of the cost of making your own rounds so if you can make your own, you will save a lot of money. Whether you actually save a lot of money, however, is a factor of how often and how many rounds you shoot. For me, calculating the cost/round was simply an excuse to justify my purchasing of bullet making equipment. In actuality, I'm a nut when it comes to doing new things and got into it simply to expand my knowledge or reloading. 

Lee Precision makes relatively inexpensive molds.  If you buy Lee, I recommend getting the 6-cavity molds as the rate of making bullets increases 200% over the dual-cavity ones.

If you trade bullets for lead, I recommend you try a sampling before you buy in bulk. Some bullets are screwy and will keyhole or fly in all sorts of directions in your firearm.

Haven't tried making rifle rounds with lead yet. Rifle rounds present a who new layer of complexity due to velocity limitations and the addition of a gas checks and I do not shoot a whole lot of rifle rounds.

If you decide to use a ladle to pour your lead, make sure you buy a ladle large enough to hold a sufficient amount of lead like the RCBS ladle.  I started off with the Lee ladle. It was barely sufficient to pour lead into a double-cavity mold. If you use a 6-cavity mold with the Lee ladle, you will end up double or triple dipping and with partial pours which may lead to abnormal bullets.

RCBS Ladle and Lee 6-cavity mold:

~F

Thanks for the reply. I do have the equiptment to melt lead as I pour for fishing. We usually do well over several hundred pieces of 10 oz pieces in a session. My lead comes from roofing flashing, x-ray equiptment and various construction jobs, I do have quite a bit of wheel weights but fof fishing, these are low quality due to the babbit and other fillers used.

I try to think of casting (and reloading in general) as letting me shoot more rounds, and custom rounds, for the same amount of money rather than a method to save money.

Lee molds are great for the money. There's stories online of people getting bad molds but I've never had problems. I think they're also easy to learn on when you're getting the hang of temperature control and casting speed. They are also significantly cheaper than steel or brass molds.

Sizing is a must, above all else. For cast bullets you'll want a bullet diameter slightly larger than the bore diameter, which is why you'll see, for example, 0.309-0.311" molds marketed for use in 30 caliber rifles which would normally use 0.308" jacketed bullets. Ive had success with keeping my cast bullets 0.001-0.002" above bore diameter. The cheapest way to size cast bullets is the Lee lube & sizer dies. You can even find guides online on how to open them up to a larger diameter if they don't make a size you want. I use a Lyman 4500 back home and it was worth every penny.

Lubrication is usually needed, especially if you want anything with a velocity above the speed of sound. The simplest method is pan lubing, I've had great results with it, but it's messy and time consuming. With this method you still have to size the bullets after cutting them from the lube cake, and I do this for calibers where I only have the Lee lube &size die sets. Then there's combo lube/size units which do both at once. You can also do tumble lubing with just Lee liquid allow and a container to shake your bullets in like a mayonnaise jar.

If you want to buy commercial lube there's all kinds available, and if you want to make your own it's also very easy. Lots of recipes call for beeswax and I have yet to find a suitable substitute for it. Something about it just makes the lube the right balance between tacky and firm.

I've never used gas checks. I never had the need for them when I was only casting low velocity pistol and 300 blackout bullets, but I did start paper patching once I wanted faster rifle bullets. It's a little tedious but dirt cheap to do. Basically you make a parallelogram shaped wrapper and glue it around the bullet. There's a lot that goes into this, with some parts of it a science and some parts of it more an art.

As far as alloys, I'll say this: you need some tin, but probably less than you'll think you do. I probably shot a enough tin in my bullets to have lasted me 20 years if I'd known I was just wasting it.