I'm about to start casting for the first time.  Before I bought molds and all the other gear, I bought a variety of commercial bullets to find out what works in my rifles.  Turns out my 38-55 is pretty picky and I have quite a collection of lubed bullets that fly sideways.

They are all 20-1 lead-tin, which is what I intend to use when casting.  Can I just put these in the mix as is or do I need to clean off the lube first?  If they should be cleaned, what's the best way to do it?

Thanks!

FEB

as you do not know what they really are use them for fishing wieghts but do not contaminate any good alloy you have mixed. with some oner else's junk.
irish

FEB:

As you say you know the alloy of the bullet and it is the same as what you intend to cast with, you can indeed toss them in the mix. It will make a lot of smoke though.

I used to use lubed bullets to flux with. They work just fine for that and is no extra work. Just keep them on the casting bench and when you need to flux just toss a couple in.

Glenn

I've placed the bullets on a couple of paper towels over some newspaper and then heated them with a hair dryer.  The paper towels will absorb the old lube.  Pick them up before the lube rehardens or they will be stuck to the paper towel.  I tried melting a bunch once in a cold pot but the lube messed up my pot for quite some time.  As Glenn says, using them for flux works great but may take a while to get rid of depending on how many you have.

As you were boiling them in the coffee can you could also skim off the lighter bullets that float to the top.

My thanks to everyone!

I have gone back over my various collections of bullets and sorted them by my confidence that the source really used 20 to 1 lead-tin.  The ones where I am confident of the supplier will go in the pot.  The others have been put aside and will end up as hidden car weights on my model railroad (sorry, I don't fish).

The good ones I have cleaned up using the hair dryer technique.  That really works!  Most of the lube ran right off when they got hot.  (The toaster oven sounds good, too, but we don't have one.)  After wiping them with paper towels, they still had a bit of a sheen on them, so I put them in a plastic coffee can with hot water and a dose of Simple Green.  After shaking them for a minute or so I dumped them in the sieve I use for brass coming out of the tumbler and rinsed them with hot water.  The lube is gone.

All this because my 38-55 Marlin Ballard has a fussy old 1 in 20 twist barrel, suppliers sell bullets in boxes of 50, few of the bullets I tried went straight, and I really, really wanted to get that old rifle to shoot.  Shooting these old rifles is a wonderful obsession, isn't it?

A friend has offered me lots of wheel weights for free.  I'll take your advice and keep them out of my rifles.

Again, my thanks for all your advice.  For a relative beginner, it's great to have somewhere to turn for help.

FEB

Quarter Bore,

First thing I had my gunsmith do when I bought the rifle was check it out and slug the bore.  It's a .380.  All the bullets that I have tried are .380 or resized .381.  I'll save the long version, but after many bullets and a shift in powder from Schuetzen 2fg to Swiss 3fg, I have a combination that shoots.  It's a 275 grain bullet with 48.6 grains of 3fg Swiss and a Walters fiber wad.  With the slow twist barrel, the real key seemed to be getting the velocity up with the Swiss.

Someday I may rebarrel it with a faster twist, but for now this works.

FEB