| Posted: Mon Oct 12th, 2009 03:23 AM |
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1st Post |
Harvey57
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| Joined: | Tue Sep 22nd, 2009 |
| Location: | Bowie, Maryland USA |
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I have been to several cast bullet web sights and pricing their bullets. For me, I must run the bullets threw the comercial sizer and lube them first. Then can swage the gas check on. This is labor intensive and produces a nice bullet.
I wonder how they can afford it, and how do they get the job done. In my price shopping it seems that some makers charge a heffty fee for thier plain bullets. This would allow for only a modest increase in price for the gas checked bullets. Other makers have priced thier plain bullets more to my reconing and increased the price of thier gas checked ones. Even at cost of materials, 3-5 dollars goes into a bag of one hundred checked bullets.
I wondered if it was a machine that puts them on or is this performed by hand and press?
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Yours, Harvey
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| Posted: Mon Oct 12th, 2009 04:09 AM |
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2nd Post |
miestro_jerry
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My small casting company is pretty much all hand work. We use a Star Sizer for stizing and lubing, which is put the bullet in the die, put the gas check on, pull handle down, then put bullet in the die, put the gas check on,......
The problem that I and many other small casting business have, is changing things out, that is down time. If we are running 50 to 100 pounds of bullets and some one wants a custom run of 50 bullets in another caliber, where do we put that customer in the schedule?
Plus currently, if we have anything extra, they are sold before we can get them delivered to the local shops. We have about 200 different molds, I have many incremental sizes in the dies for the Star, such as for .308 bullets, we have .308, .309 and .311 We try to make bullets that work for people and their rifles. Plus we don't use WW lead for CBs, we take WW lead and measure it's hardness, the add between 3% and 10% more tin. We carry a soft alloy for gas checked hunting bullets, and different alloys for different speeds in various guns.
If you want to shoot cheap, you can do that by casting your own, where you have the time to do that. I have to buy up materials in bulk, do the basic engineering of the alloys, set up the Star and then get people to come and do their work.
The bullets I make for myself are really tailored to my needs, but I have to wait in line to get mine done, but mine are extremely well crafted. Worth the price.
Jerry
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| Posted: Mon Oct 12th, 2009 04:37 AM |
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3rd Post |
fryboy
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| Joined: | Sun Feb 24th, 2008 |
| Location: | Close To Home , Middle Of America, USA |
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i see quite a few commercial bullets that have a gas check shank but no gas check ( midway currently has a bunch of these in close out) when i go to the gun show's anymore if i see very many bullets it's usually lead ones,and of those rare is it to see gas checked ones ...when they are they are substantually higher ( at least the ones i see)i'm not sure how the places do it , i understand jerry's approach totally ,myself often when i make boolits i wiegh and sort them and then i putthe gas checks on but usually do not lube until i'm ready to use them , i have made small batches tho that i lube with a hard lube and store ( those are usually for 38 & 357 wadcutters for the kids)
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(happy shootin'-the best way to get empty brass!)
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