Making .50 BP bullets, 00 Buckshot

[line052]

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.

[GoldenLakePete]

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.

[boogaloo]

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

[MikePal]

I want to get the oven and dies for 00 buckshot and .50 cal and start making them.

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.

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

[line052]

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

[huntaway]

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

[line052]

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.

[Fox]

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.

[jaycee]

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 .
Over the years there have been a fair amount of men suffering from lead poisoning due to the inhalation of lead fumes .

[Fox]

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.