Recently I got to thinking about why I started casting and shooting lead alloy bullets. For the life of me I couldn’t remember, possibly a factor of advancing years, then the penny dropped; I bought a muzzleloading rifle and began casting round balls. There had always been small amounts of lead around the family home whether it was in the form of sheet lead from roof flashings or lead head roofing nails so the source of material for balls was not an issue. In addition my brothers and I had cast sinkers for fishing well prior to the idea of taking up shooting.
Coming from a family of non shooters (yes, go work that out) I was incredibly lucky to grow up a few houses away from a gentleman who took me under his wing and fostered my interest. Jack shot blackpowder rifles a lot in his earlier years and had a fantastic library of shooting material that he was only too happy for me to borrow and read. I lot of the material was from the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s when bullet casting was still very popular so along with the running of ball for the front stuffer the seed was planted for casting projectiles for centrefire rifles as they came along. Now firmly ensconced into cast lead alloy bullet casting I am often intrigued about the motivations behind like minded folk entering into the fray also. Indeed we are very small part of the shooting population and when explaining the pursuit to non shooter/casters I compare our sport to beer. Stay with me people; I’m heading somewhere with this one.
As a beverage beer is consumed by a large part of the population (but not me, long story…). The vast majority of the beer drinking population purchase commercially available products most of which come from large organisations with smaller boutique operations on the peripheral. Think of this as the bulk of shooters who only ever buy factor ammo. I very small percentage of the populous brew their own beer using commercially available kits and products. This is the reloading crowd. Then you get the hard core brewers who make their own mash and really get down to grass roots level to make beer from scratch; that’s us. The cranks. Probably an overly simplistic analogy but I’m sure you get the gist. In essence we are a small part of a small part of the shooting community and I believe increasingly so when you consider the popularity of AR type platforms the vast majority of which will only every shoot factor ammo.
I enjoy the challenge of producing a projectile myself whilst tailoring it to a specific firearm to produce the best accuracy possible. With some rifles I have shot this goal has been very easily achieved eg: my .30-30 bolt gun. Other firearms have required a significant amount of persistence (bloody mindedness?) like the .380 Rook single shot I briefly owned or my 6.5X52 Carcano. All follies and foibles aside I have yet to be beaten by a rifle and have managed to get them all to shoot well with lead alloy of some sort. Oh how many times I have left the range completely satisfied after producing groups that made shooters of modern rifles shooting jacketed bullet sit and take notice.
In addition to the challenge there is also an aspect of self sufficiency. For my reloading all I buy these days are primers and powder. I make my own bullets, gas checks and lube and as the vast majority of my handloads run on reduced charges of powder a pound goes a long way. As we saw with the rimfire ammo shortages of a few years back the ability to make your own ammunition be it for hunting, target or plinking is not to be overlooked.
Cost cannot be overlooked either. Depending on the cartridge, load and source of bullet metal it is not difficult to produce centrefire cast bullet ammo for less than the price of rimfire fodder. Take the middle of the road .38 Special with a wadcutter bullet and nominal 2.8gr of Bullseye and you have a cartridge that costs very little to shoot. Even .30cal cartridges can be loaded to duplicate the deer cartridge of days gone by such as the .32-40 and still run the same cost as the .22RF. As much as I enjoy shooting rimfires I sure like shooting my centrefires at least as much or more.
So what about you? Tell us on the forum why you belong to this elite group of galena chucking cranks.
Coming from a family of non shooters (yes, go work that out) I was incredibly lucky to grow up a few houses away from a gentleman who took me under his wing and fostered my interest. Jack shot blackpowder rifles a lot in his earlier years and had a fantastic library of shooting material that he was only too happy for me to borrow and read. I lot of the material was from the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s when bullet casting was still very popular so along with the running of ball for the front stuffer the seed was planted for casting projectiles for centrefire rifles as they came along. Now firmly ensconced into cast lead alloy bullet casting I am often intrigued about the motivations behind like minded folk entering into the fray also. Indeed we are very small part of the shooting population and when explaining the pursuit to non shooter/casters I compare our sport to beer. Stay with me people; I’m heading somewhere with this one.
As a beverage beer is consumed by a large part of the population (but not me, long story…). The vast majority of the beer drinking population purchase commercially available products most of which come from large organisations with smaller boutique operations on the peripheral. Think of this as the bulk of shooters who only ever buy factor ammo. I very small percentage of the populous brew their own beer using commercially available kits and products. This is the reloading crowd. Then you get the hard core brewers who make their own mash and really get down to grass roots level to make beer from scratch; that’s us. The cranks. Probably an overly simplistic analogy but I’m sure you get the gist. In essence we are a small part of a small part of the shooting community and I believe increasingly so when you consider the popularity of AR type platforms the vast majority of which will only every shoot factor ammo.
I enjoy the challenge of producing a projectile myself whilst tailoring it to a specific firearm to produce the best accuracy possible. With some rifles I have shot this goal has been very easily achieved eg: my .30-30 bolt gun. Other firearms have required a significant amount of persistence (bloody mindedness?) like the .380 Rook single shot I briefly owned or my 6.5X52 Carcano. All follies and foibles aside I have yet to be beaten by a rifle and have managed to get them all to shoot well with lead alloy of some sort. Oh how many times I have left the range completely satisfied after producing groups that made shooters of modern rifles shooting jacketed bullet sit and take notice.
In addition to the challenge there is also an aspect of self sufficiency. For my reloading all I buy these days are primers and powder. I make my own bullets, gas checks and lube and as the vast majority of my handloads run on reduced charges of powder a pound goes a long way. As we saw with the rimfire ammo shortages of a few years back the ability to make your own ammunition be it for hunting, target or plinking is not to be overlooked.
Cost cannot be overlooked either. Depending on the cartridge, load and source of bullet metal it is not difficult to produce centrefire cast bullet ammo for less than the price of rimfire fodder. Take the middle of the road .38 Special with a wadcutter bullet and nominal 2.8gr of Bullseye and you have a cartridge that costs very little to shoot. Even .30cal cartridges can be loaded to duplicate the deer cartridge of days gone by such as the .32-40 and still run the same cost as the .22RF. As much as I enjoy shooting rimfires I sure like shooting my centrefires at least as much or more.
So what about you? Tell us on the forum why you belong to this elite group of galena chucking cranks.