"Hawke" wrote:

I can understand the price of brass and lead going through the roof. They
are going through unreal amounts of ammunition in Iraq. The ammo producers
are having a hard time keeping up. I tried to buy 2000 .38 caliber lead
bullets from my regular supplier last month and they didn't have any,
haven't had any for a long time, and don't know when they will get more.
They blamed it on the war, which is probably right. I have seen the price
for .45 ACP lead bullets go up just about every time I reorder. A year or so
ago I was paying something like four or five cents a bullet. I just got a
1000 bullets last week and it cost me 90 bucks. It's getting to the point
where I am going to have to start casting bullets again. I go through a lot
of lead and the price is getting so high that casting is starting to become
a reality again. But it's so boring and time consuming I hate to have to
start doing it again.

Hawke


OSB prices went nuts after start of the war and are back to normal or at
least close to it.

Casting lead isn't that boring. Since you apparently reload already you have
some tolerance for repeated manual opperations. For pistol work cast lead
works just fine. I tend to watch tv (cspan) while casting so it isn't
totally dead time.

I gotta rebuild my 50 yard backstop next year. I made it out of 4' x 4'
panels of scrap osb from work a few years ago built into a box filled with
sand. The OSB has failed on one side. I'm going to use pressure treated
this time and it think it is time to sift the sand that fills it to get my
lead back.

Cast is good stuff for many applications. http://www.castbulletassoc.org/

If you are sold on jacketed, have you considerd swaging aka corbin?

Wes