Lee Loader

Ohio3Wheels wrote:A brief mention of something I was told a lot of years ago by an old time printer about scape/used linotype. He told that most of it that go scraped instead of reused was because the tin had "burned" out of it and it stopped making good type. The last I had was from a salvage yard in a chunk a little smaller than a bowling ball, yah heavy. To reduce it to pot size I smacked it with a 3 pound sledge and it broke. So far I've found that about 2 lbs of it mixed with 20 pounds of cable sheath makes pretty good leading free boolits.

Cable sheath is said to be a good source of antinmonial lead but I don't know the precentage or if it was even standardized among cable makers.

Thanks Curt and that is similar what Steelbanger has passed on to me over the years, he worked in print shops where they used the linotype.

Had a really good run reheating bullets today! Bullets for the 300 Savage, 308 Win, 32-20 Win, 32 Win Spl, 35 Rem, 357 Mag, 375 Win, 41 Mag,, 44 Mag, 444 Marlin, 45 Colt, & 45-70 Govt! I've done a conservative estimate of my needs for the next three years and just reheated what is necessary. I have huge quantities of some such as the 32-20 Win, 32 Win Spl, and 357 Mag. I will just store the excess to be heated three years from now. I realized today, that I have so many of some of these that I will never cast the molds again, just reheat the remaining stock as needed.

Wish I could get close to that far ahead.

Make smoke,

I think I have a 3 year supply of most of mine and some a 10 year supply but those need to be soft for cat sneeze loads.

Just need .380 bullets but that will end soon.

Many years ago when I got into casting,good wheel weights,roofing lead,an other assorted lead alloys like Lino and Monotype were fairly available. I took full advantage of all the free lead I could get my hands on an having friends and family in various forms of employment that came in contact with those types of lead as well as me being in the printing industry for the past 35+ years helped out a lot.

In general about once or twice a year me and my reloading and casting buddies get together and have a full weekend of melting down various forms of lead into large lots so when we cast or want to blend different types of lead we know pretty much what we are starting out with. It's pretty much worked out as planned as I bought a tester a couple years ago just to see if what I though I had BHN wise was actually that and I was pretty much within 1 or 2 BHN of what I originally thought it would be,it's probably more dumb luck but I'll take that.

For the most part I generally AC all my bullets as I try and cast them at the BHN I need but thats not always possible. I do WQ bullets on occasion if I need them a bit harder and I know I will use them in the next year or so. The grain structure of the WQ'ed bullet is more loosely bound together thus it breaks down faster than a heat treated bullet which breaks down much slower over time. So for long term storage of ammo with bullets that I want to keep fairly hard I always heat treat those or I can just grab some AC'ed bullets and treat those on a as needed basis.

An old pic of some Lee .312"160 gr. TLRN bullets I'm heat treating for my SKS & Mosin rifles. I also shoot this bullet sized to .311" in my Sav. 99 in 300 Sav.