Casting Lead Ingots From Range Scrap Lead

Bullet casting is a segment of reloading that I have thought of trying out for many years.  I kept putting it off, thinking that the equipment, time and finding lead would be a hassle.  The last few years, however, have shown me that the shooting market is fickle.  Any number of political influences can and have thrown the supply of guns, ammo and reloading supplies into disarray.  While I don't plan on discussing the political side at length here, I started looking for a way to become more self sufficient.

Reloading already provides some insulation to ammo shortages, as long as you maintain enough brass, primers, powder and bullets.  I decided to take up casting as a way to provide my own bullets for certain calibers.  I looked into getting wheel weight lead, but found that hit or miss, and decided I didn't want to pay for lead. 

Eventually I decided to try picking up range scrap from my local range.  The efficiency of this method will depend on how much you shoot and cast at a time.  I tend to take a coffee can or two with me to the range and when I am done shooting I spend some time picking up bullets from the backstop.  I typically just pick them up by hand from the top layer, but you could build devices to sift the soil to speed up collection.  As it is, my method works fairly well and the coffee cans tend to add up.

I picked up an inexpensive Bass Pro fish fryer to melt the lead and bought a steel pot, some utensils and other items from Goodwill to get started on the cheap.  Check out the video below:

Once the lead is smelted and clean it can be made into ingots, or cast directly from the pot.  My first few batches of smelting were before I bought molds and I cast them all into ingots for later.  I have since started using a 45 caliber six cavity mold and more recently a 30 caliber mold for my 300 Whisper/ 300 Blackout.  

Check back for some more posts and videos on bullet casting and even some info on trying cast bullets in the AR-15.  If you have any tips or suggestions for how to load cast bullets in AR platform rifles, let me know in the comment section below.