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Hi All, does anyone make there own BP sabots? I want to get the oven and dies for 00 buckshot and .50 cal and start making them. I have 250pds of lead ingots from wheel weights all clean and fluxed already. Higgson in Hawksbury is selling the ovens and dies, as well 7lbs jugs of powder. Planning a trip soon for some loading supplies, just has to be worth the drive.
I sincerely doubt that you'd be able to successfully make your own sabots. We are talking about the plastic sabots that hold under-calibre sized bullets, right? i.e. so that you can shoot .44 or .45 cal conical bullets out of a .50 cal, for instance.
I have MMP green plastic sabots which I use with my own cast lead .44 cal 205 gr bullets.
The only home-made sabots I've heard of were made out of wood for shooting a smaller diameter ball out of a smoothbore musket.
You may find that if you're using wheelweights the balls might be too hard and not give as good accuracy as pure lead would (if you're shooting patched round balls or full calibre conicals).
If you want to shoot OO buckshot out of a black powder shotgun you can use plastic shot cups. I've done it and it works OK.
I have to agree with GLPete, wheelweights are full of antinomy (sp.)?? and therefore are very hard. They will not swage well in round ball form, nor will they expand properly if used for hunting..............Boog
I can't imagine the value gained by making your own Buckshot....Higgins sells the Hornady Buckshot in 5 lb boxes. I picked up some '0'..'00' and '000' a few years back and it served me well. I use them with shot cups in my ML 12ga barrel.Quote:
Originally Posted by line052
Pete...I had a buddy holding on the wheel weight bucket at his garage for me....I thought it was soft enough. I see lead ingots for sale all the time on Ebay that says it's from wheel weights and is 'soft' for making bullets.
Maybe I'll look at something like this...cheap enough:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/161209039243...84.m1423.l2649
Really, I see on gunnutz the guys making them, think I need to do more research of the lead in wheel weights and the composotions of the lead. I have lead slugs make from them for shotgun from the last run we made a year. Used hulls and WAA12 wads and they worked fine in shotgun.Attachment 24286
Attachment 24285
Take the wheel weight and drop it on the concrete floor of your garage. A lead weight will sound dead while the weights with antimomy will have a ring to them.
HA
When sorting the lead we did the pliers test, and the "other than lead" were discarded. Pretty neat to watch all the crap float to the surface. Once all the junk was spooned off we fluxed the molten lead with dollar store puck candles, I am pretty sure it is all pure lead, but will try the drop test tonight with lead bar and take some pictures.
Just don't breath too deep when you hang your head over the lead pot, ventilation is a good idea when melting down that stuff.
If you do melt down a lot of lead and do a fair amount of casting, it is a good idea to see your doctor and have your blood levels checked for lead counts .Quote:
Originally Posted by Fox
Over the years there have been a fair amount of men suffering from lead poisoning due to the inhalation of lead fumes .
Dad used to work as an electrical technologist, they would eat over their soldering irons, really dumb with what we know now.
There are lots of ventilation systems that work well, casting is fine, just have an exhaust fan pulling the fumes away from you and out of your house.
What do you use those slugs for? Are they very accurate? How heavy are they?
Well I decided to buy some lead off eBay....this guys professes that it's pure..and it looks like it. For $25 (including shipping) for 10 lbs what the heck.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...E:L:OC:US:3160
Quote:
Originally Posted by Fox
I would not cast in the house. In the garage with the big door open and a big fan sucking that crap out is the way to go. A respirator doesn't hurt either.
HA
The slugs I have here are from a LEE cast die. We used for fun shoots, pumpkin, watermellon. Don't think I would try for big game, I would buy proper deer slugs. These casting take some work to shave off the lines left over from lead forms.
The more I read on the making boolits, the more I realize how dangerous and wrong we were doing it... Glad we parted ways and I found this group, prior to this I was always taking former buddies advice and ways. Great guy, but jesh...now I know and did my own research... I will be getting the higgsson molds in LEE brand for now.
Part of the reason for massive cleanup (leads SG slugs) was the improper molding techinques....man can save some real time here.
No kidding, lost of great advice here...I was going to spend the afternoon boiling down a bunch of dirt old wheel weights for some lead...read a few posts here and no, not the best idea.
I picked up my 10lb lock of soft lead Mon in the US....man is it soft, I can score the surface with my fingernail. The 'X' you see (right hand corner) I did with the tip of a screw that was laying there. Much better product for bullets than trying to recover it on the cheap....not to mention well worth $25 instead of sweat equity and damaged lungs :)
http://i125.photobucket.com/albums/p...ps75e5225a.jpg
Where did you get? And how much, I go to Syracuse and Watertown a lot in the summer.
I ordered it off ebay (see link in previous post) ...delivered to my PO box in Ogdensburg.