thanks, jeff. i am getting to the bottom of my bottle of pyrodex. will try the black powder next.

as for projectiles, i cannot buy (locally) what i want. therefore, i am going to start casting my own. i may even list some for sale and see if there is any interest.

i will check out the lyman's plains bullets.

again, thanks!

This has peaked my interest.
Back in the day (in the 80's) we used to cast our own lead hammers.
Kinda like plastic dead blows but much more effective.

With use they'd get smaller and eventually fall apart so we'd cast new ones.
We'd use a large rosebud on an oxy-acet torch to heat up a crucible and pour it into a mold, and we did it inside the shop. I later wondered if that was a good idea or not.

The guys who work for me now asked if they could do the same thing, I said no way.
I wasn't going to let anyone get lead poisoning but they argued that it was safe.
I said if they could get written approval from our health and safety department I'd say OK, knowing full well that the health and safety department would have kittens and ban all lead in any form if they knew we used it and we'd all be out getting blood tested for lead poisoning.

See, where they work is probably the safest place they'll ever be. Statistically much safer than them being at home.
We haven't had a recordable injury at work in six months with close to 1000 employees and our recordable injury rate is historically under .06, yet in 6 months we've had one employee fatality, one loss of limb, one employee became a paraplegic and one became a quad. All away from work.

In the mechanical and machine shops I've run over the past 17 years we've had one recordable injury, a guy got a cut lip.
And we report everything. Get a cut finger or a bruised fingernail and don't report it? Termination.
Of all the things I brag about, that safety record is prolly one that makes me swell up the most. oops, got off track.

As a safety dweeb, congrats Sammy. 17 years with one recordable with 1000 people, is remarkable. We get 1 every year or two, and they are for stupid stuff like someone tripping over a lowered lift gate in the dark and breaking their nose. We try and have our shows put work lights around lowered lift gates at night, but it happens. Believe it or not, 99% of accidents in filming happen behind the camera.

Casting bullets and shooting black powder is a big adventure for sure. I have working on loads for my 45-70 Rolling Block and 45-70 Sharps for about 6 months and got them figured out pretty well. I am working on shooting off-hand and that is a bir harder than an AR-15 or even an M1 as there is nothing to really grab onto plus both guns weigh right at 12 lbs. To cast for black powder you would want soft (pure) lead so the bullet will obturate and seal the barrel as it travels to the crown. To help seal the bullet a good soft lube is best also. A very good source is roofing lead or isotope lead or sinker lead as they are nearly pure. Linotype is hard and many use 1lb of linotype to 5lbs of pure for rifles. For handguns such as wadcutter bullets, wheel weights will work but they are getting hard to find.

If you want to buy black powder, Coonies in Hobbs New Mexico is the best that most of the shooters I know of in the San Diego deal with. You have to buy a case but at 70 to 90gns a shot, a pound will disappear quickly! It is shipped UPS ground. For cleaning, I have found black powder easier to deal with than smokeless as long as I blow into the barrel after each shoot to keep the fouling soft. As for safety, black powder is no more of a hazard than smokeless so keep it locked up away from kids, heat, fire, etc. Here is a link showing a static electricity test as I had heard lost of talk about static electricity blowing us up.... http://www.ctmuzzleloaders.com/ctml_experiments/sparks/sparks.html

Probably the best website for casting is:
Cast Boolits - Dedicated To The World Of Cast Bullets!
and you will see forums for everything remotely associated with casting. Good luck

LOL, it's not quite that good. It's been 17 years with one recordable in a department I ran, not in the entire plant.
Figure an average of 20 or 30 people I was responsible for, mechanics and machinists etc.

The plant averages one or two recordables a year which is still pace setter performance.
We consider a recordable anything that requires medical treatment.

On a slightly related note... why would one carve an "X" into the tip of the bullet? I've seen it done in movies. ;)

expansion, i think.

Noooo, for the same reason you see someone put a silencer on a revolver......

because they are an idiot? but think they will get some expansion?

Actually....

YouTube - Silenced 1895 Nagant revolver (NFA)

YouTube - Silenced 1895 Nagant revolver

<iframe title="YouTube video player" width="640" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/BGoPE7VQ9GY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

<iframe title="YouTube video player" width="640" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Z8qCz1clA0U" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

The 3rd video seems a bit louder than the first two.