# Bullet Moulds?



## fusil (Sep 23, 2008)

Bon jour from across the big pond,
I am looking at buying my first mould, 38 wad cutter. 
LEE is the only one readily available here in France.
LEE ‘Micro Band Tumble Lube’ moulds, they claim you don’t need to size them after casting. Just tumble lube and load. What do you think?
Is it worth buying a Lube/Sizer kit?
For a first timer is a double better than a six cavity mould?
Does the hardness of the lead make much difference for paper punching at 25mtrs? Is it worth buy a hardness tester? 
And one more think……I’ve looked at a few website in the US and they don’t post international!!! LEE and other makes are so much cheaper in the US than here in France. Can you recommend someone?
Encore merci tout l’monde,
fusil


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## Steve M1911A1 (Feb 6, 2008)

I've only used Lee moulds for casting round balls for muzzleloading rifles.
Lee moulds are (or "were," in case things have changed since I last bought one) made of aluminum (aluminium), and are manufactured by compressing the soft metal around a very hard bullet shape (the "cherry") in a hydraulic press. Other moulds (Lyman, Hensley & Gibbs, _etc._) are made of iron or even steel, and are formed by closing the mould blocks around a "cherry" that is actually a high-speed cutting tool rotating on a fixed-position mandrel.
Iron (or steel) moulds hold heat well, and therefore seem to cast better-formed bullets in my hands, but as the cutting "cherry" wears, the mould-cavities thus produced get smaller and smaller. Therefore the resulting bullets need to be carefully sized before use.
The "cherries" that press-form aluminum moulds do not wear out, so the bullets from the first mould made are the same size as those from the last, and do not absolutely need sizing. However, aluminum does not hold heat well, and therefore I end up making a greater number of malformed (cold-cast) rejects with Lee moulds.

If you use a Lee mould, you probably do not need a sizing tool.
I am not experienced with lubricating bullets by tumbling them, but I find the concept intuitively troubling. Tumbling something as relatively soft as a cast bullet cannot be good for it, in accuracy terms. Bullets need to be pretty uniform, for accurate shooting, but tumbling would "ding" and nick them out of uniformity.
Tumbling clean bullets and lubricant in the same container in which you also tumble dirty cases and an abrasive cleaning medium seems to me to be equally deadly. I suggest that you could never get the container clean enough, when you go from one task to the other.
Maybe you should try either a spray-on bullet lubricant, or use the melt-and-dip method. (For information about these latter methods, ask me, or someone else, separately.)

Under no circumstances should you even contemplate buying a six-bullet mould! I even counsel against a two-bullet mould. Multi-bullet ("gang") moulds, particularly aluminum ones, demand a very experienced user, which you are not yet. Stick to the single-cavity setup.

Yes, if you are going to be using scrap metal, or making your own alloy mixes, I believe that you need a hardness tester. To achieve accuracy, you must seek uniformity at all costs, and that includes bullet hardness.
Bullets are made from the mixture (not truly an alloy) of lead, antimony, and tin. The bullet is lead, hardened by antimony, and the successful mixture requires some small amount of tin as a sort of catalyst.
You may have to find a source for the pure forms of these three metals, to add in various proportions if your scrap-metal mix is the wrong hardness.

Last, but (of course) not least...the actual shooting.
Someone who has never before fired a pistol, or who has very little pistol-shooting experience, really should not be starting out at 25 metres. It's much too far. Even seven metres is a stretch.
But if 25-metre shooting is what you are forced to do, prepare to miss the target quite a lot; and I do mean that you may well miss the entire piece of paper!
The way to beat that distance handicap is to practice _without ammunition_ (called "dry-firing") at home until you have achieved a steady hold and a controlled trigger-press.
Oh, yes...and always use two hands. Don't let anybody talk you into shooting at 25 metres with only one hand.
(If you'd like to discuss shooting technique, we should do it somewhere separate from this thread.)


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