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Sharpshooter USA #1 Buckshot Mold


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Id been looking at those and the lee 18 bangers. Since #4 is my load though, it didn't seem to be time efficient. Even with a fast moving 1 oz load 21 or 22 pellets takes more than one pour, and the trimming operations. #1 buck takes 16 pellets for a standard load, and most people say they get 18 or 19 good pellets per pour most of the time. So around every 15 pours you get a free shell. It is still going to be a lot of work.

 

Some have said that if you cast hot and let them fall into a cardboard box a fair number of the sprues will break loose- at least with the lee type clusters. This might help speed up your trimming time.

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i have one...love it. i recomend opening up the top ports with a grinder. it speeds up the pour process. instead of pouring each cavity seperately you just pour once each side. as to the trimming i found that it was easier to just twist off the pellet, which illiminated the sprue. i use the #1 as well, and i do a 12 pellet load msrdiver worked up.

 

Some of us have more time than $ . i can get a good (small) coffe can full of pellets in an hour. ive literally loaded thousands of buckshot rounds using this mold.

 

1 down side the wood handles are held in by small wood screws. mine popped loose after around a 100 casts. so i ran a small machine bolt with nut into it (down side to that bolt gets hot) and wrapped with leather.

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People say that the Lee 18 Cav molds produce pellets faster. I think the handles look much more comfortable on the lee style.

 

My long term plan is to make something like a powered magma master caster with stepper motors and a lee 4-20 pot. I've been speccing out the components in my spare time. I am pretty sure the machine could be made for under $300 in components. Then it would just be a matter of filling it up and letting it clank away in the background while I work on other projects. Whenever I get around to makeing it the first thing will be to get someone to make me a 2 cavity #4 Buck mold so that the sprue plate cuts the sprues clean and the shot are water quenched ready to go with no cleanup needed. That will be the way to go. If it works out well, I might make a bunch of them and build up a vat of shot. Then just get a basic FFL and sell my surplus.

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People say that the Lee 18 Cav molds produce pellets faster. I think the handles look much more comfortable on the lee style.

 

My long term plan is to make something like a powered magma master caster with stepper motors and a lee 4-20 pot. I've been speccing out the components in my spare time. I am pretty sure the machine could be made for under $300 in components. Then it would just be a matter of filling it up and letting it clank away in the background while I work on other projects. Whenever I get around to makeing it the first thing will be to get someone to make me a 2 cavity #4 Buck mold so that the sprue plate cuts the sprues clean and the shot are water quenched ready to go with no cleanup needed. That will be the way to go. If it works out well, I might make a bunch of them and build up a vat of shot. Then just get a basic FFL and sell my surplus.

That sounds like a plan. eventually it would pay for itself, and youd be helping alot of reloaders out. I have no experience with the lee, what are they going for? i got my mold setup for 26.00.

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"Some of us have more time than $ ." <--- This.

 

If this were not the case I'd just buy what I need. I'd like to get at least 1K or so shells done in reserve. I figure with the Lee pot I'll just open it up and pull the mold across rather than opening up at each spot and then closing til the next spot. Might have extra sprue this way but it won't go to waste.

 

I'll be very interested in seeing GF's machine.

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People say that the Lee 18 Cav molds produce pellets faster. I think the handles look much more comfortable on the lee style.

 

My long term plan is to make something like a powered magma master caster with stepper motors and a lee 4-20 pot. I've been speccing out the components in my spare time. I am pretty sure the machine could be made for under $300 in components. Then it would just be a matter of filling it up and letting it clank away in the background while I work on other projects. Whenever I get around to makeing it the first thing will be to get someone to make me a 2 cavity #4 Buck mold so that the sprue plate cuts the sprues clean and the shot are water quenched ready to go with no cleanup needed. That will be the way to go. If it works out well, I might make a bunch of them and build up a vat of shot. Then just get a basic FFL and sell my surplus.

That sounds like a plan. eventually it would pay for itself, and youd be helping alot of reloaders out. I have no experience with the lee, what are they going for? i got my mold setup for 26.00.

 

 

The Lee mold is about $40 normal non crazy time price. Titan reloading would probably be the cheap source. You also have to buy handles which are $11. So normal price would = about $51. I have the handles for my pistol molds, so it is more a question of overall utility. if you look at the design, it has 6 strings of 3 touching pellets. What people say is that if you tune your temp right, the sprue cutter cuts off the sprue and when you drop the shot into your catch bucket, many of the strings will break up. You still have to cut some of them with dykes and you still get some bad pours, but overall production volume/time is better.

 

 

The machine is made of vapor and unicorns at the moment and probably for a long while yet. If I can get my little brother to mill out the pieces that will make a big difference.

 

here is a guy in germany who bought a magma caster (~$750 + ~$95 per mold) and made a complicated chain drive.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0TWNmgEMnM

 

That is complicated and basically has fixed timing relation to the components. I want to use a stepper motor to move the mold and a servo for the pour valve. I can set the delays in fractions of seconds that way very cheaply and adjust them as needed. I could also make it go like this at start: fill, pause, dump stroke, partial return, dump stroke, return, fill.... That could knock loose sticky bullets if needed. So far using an existing pot would cost $80 + a stepper motor for around $45, a controller for around $30, a solenoid for about $20 for the pour, a power supply for $?. So the parts that hold the mold is going to be the tricky part. I havent looked into cost, but if I can make them myself or get my brother to cnc them for me... I don't expect 7k bullets an hour. I expect it to just be steadily clanking away any time I am working around it. It could be sped up with a larger casting pot and a fan to cool the molds faster. Most people using the hand powered model claim 2-3K per hour, so automated would be in that range, but quality would go up since cooling would be more consistent, and you could optimize drop time into the coolant for temper.

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I have that mold thanks to awesome people here on the fourm. after it gets hot enough most if tnot all the shot breaks away from the sprew. O built a tumbler to smooth out and wax the shot. it makes them slip in and stack in the wads a lot beter. I just put a little laquer thinner and a few chunks of a candile in the tumbler with the shot and let ig go for a while. it is loud as hell but makes the shot real nice. even if there is a little nub they reload just fine. I make 9 pellet loads

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Deadeye has mentioned that tumbler before. It sounds like a good idea. I think the wax is also important for trapping lead dust.

 

I've also thought it could be cool to make some kind of machine which would punch out chunks of lead from lead rods or wire. If it could punch the wire straight into a swaging die, then a clever person could make a mold with a router that would make lead rods pretty efficiently.

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I have a mold like the one pictured, but in 00. I found that no matter how hot I got it, I could only get at most about 2/3 of the cavities to fill out adequately. Also, trimming the sprues is a royal PITA. I decided that for the time involved, I was better off to buy swaged buckshot. This is what I bought last time:

 

http://www.precisionreloading.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=PRE&Product_Code=SHBUCKRM00&Category_Code=BUCKSHOT

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  • 3 years later...
  • 2 weeks later...

I used to kick out a LOT of 00 buck using a sharpshooter mold, my brother built a shear that would clip both pellets in a single cut. We opened up the pockets to allow a larger head of lead to help fill out the mold.

 

One thing we did near the end of the molds life was to open all the pockets into a single cavity to allow a modified bottom pour lead pot to fill the mold in a single pour, then we would shear the pellets off and melt the spur again..

Currently my mold is sitting in a drawer, the pivot pin wore out after about 1000 lbs of shot.

 

I never played with the lee mold but at one point I was intending to make a shearing tool that would break the strings apart, never got around to it.

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