Any Advice on Casting from Spent Ammo from a Homemade Pellet Trap?

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Hit up Goodwill, Salvation Army or yard sales and buy an old Hickory handled shovel. Cut handle to 12” lengths. Works great for a mold mallet to dislodge projectiles after they are cast. Don’t tap the mold but rather tap the mold pivot bolt or mold handle arms with the Hickory handle.

I cut my sprue off the mold and dump it immediately and directly back into the pot.

Smelt outdoors in a separate pot using a turkey fryer. Flux 2-3 times with clean sawdust to purify the lead. Ladle clean lead into ingots. Muffin times work BUT don’t use tins that have a seam around the top of the individual tins. They seam will suck in lead and make removing the ingots very difficult.

Cast within an air stream with a small fan at your back blowing any potential lead fumes away from you.

Cabine Tree makes an excellent lead hardness tester. The Lee Hardness Tester is darn near impossible to read the scale unless you have super x-Ray vision to read the tiny print.
 
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I bought a Lee mold for 1 lb ingots really cheap, I think it was less than $10. No need for a muffin tin. I have over 10 lbs of lead from my pellet trap to turn into ingots. Isn't hard, won't take long, I just need to do it. I use a Lee melt pot and a Lyman ladle.

I only have one pellet mold and my two 25s were unanimous in their opinion on those pellets (negative, unfortunately). I don't think cast pellets are different from purchased pellets. Some guns like them, some do not. Pretty hard to predict in advance what your gun will like. If you can possibly beg or buy some pellets from a mold you are interested in to shoot it may save you buying a mold that isn't terribly useful.

I will try both recycled and pure lead next time I decide to do some pellet casting. Recycled may not shoot as well or might shoot better. If it shoots poorly I also fish and could use some more jigs and sinkers.
 
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@JimD What weight are those .25 pellets that you cast?

I’m pretty close to being ready to rock and roll. I only need a couple more things. I’ve seen a number of mold prep regimens. What’s worked for you to break in a new aluminum mold? Can someone provide a link to a reliable quality micrometer that you’ve used for at least a year?
 
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Wood matches to smoke to mold cavity. A hot plate to preheat the mold. I use Stihl Ultra HP chain saw 2 cycle oil on an old rag to wipe the top of the mold and on a Q-tip to lube pivot points, guide pins and cavities.

Mititoyo “dial” calipers are hard to beat but pricy. Mine are 20+ years old and still as accurate as they were on day one. $20 Harbor Freight digital works OK for ball park measurements but accuracy is a bit flaky to rely on For precision. I rely on a Mititoyo 0-1” micrometer for precision.
 
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If you get oil in the cavities it will cause wrinkles on your boolits. A few casts and the oil is gone. Just keep dumping the wrinkled ones back into the pot.

Some guys use candles to smoke the cavities but wood matches work faster IME. Just open the mold with cavities facing down, light the match and hold under the cavities and allow the smoke to turn the cavities black. The smoke carbon helps to release the bullets on the first few casts. After the mold is hot and up to temperature the boolits will drop easily and you no longer need to smoke the cavities. I also wipe the mating mold faces with the oil damped rag as it keeps lead from sticking, which is its purpose.

After filling the mold and as soon as the sprue frosts over, cut it, which is only a couple seconds. Don’t dilly dally around. The longer you wait the harder the lead becomes and makes cutting the sprue more difficult. Keep moving to keep the mold holt which is key to maintaining the size of the boolits and keeping them falling free. When the mold is cold, the boolits are smaller and tend to stick in the mold cavities and the boolits tend not to fill out completely.

When you cut the sprue, hold it over the pot and allow the sprue to fall into the pot. Tap the mold handle pivot bolt (NOT the mold itself), with your wood tapper to make the boolits release and fall out. I allow my boolits to fall into a small, shallow (2” deep) box. The box is lined with three layers of cardboard and covered with an old towel doubled over. The cardboard and towel provides a cushion for the soft boolits to fall onto. Keep that distance short to minimize damage to the VERY soft boolits.

I wipe everything down, mold, handles and sprue plate, with the oil rag, after the casting session. It helps to keep steel from rusting and helps to season the mold, just like a cast iron skillet. It will smoke when the molds hot so just don't snort the smoke.
 
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@igolfat8 I want a pair. I tried measuring slugs and pellets with digital calipers and it was pain. Measurements were all over the place.
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@Ezana4CE The problem is that slugs or boolits dropped from the mold will never be perfectly round and your measurements are meaningless since you are in essence measuring an oval object, as you have learned. You must run the boolits through a sizing die, after they are cast and usually, but not always, the die will reshape and round the projectile to the dies inside diameter.

If you buy a mold that is say .217" the mold will drop them smaller when cold (~.215"-.216") and then drop them larger and larger (~.218" - .220:-ish) after the mold heats up to proper casting temps. The size will also very depending on your alloy mixture too. Hence the need to post size slugs to your desired final diameter. Then you can measure the slugs more accurately and your barrel will thank you for it.

Sure, you can try to chamber those under and over size slugs and allow your barrel to re-size them but there is a VERY good chance you will bend your pellet probe when you try to push an oval oversized object into a round hole. Don't ask how I know that tidbit of information... :eek:
 
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I would try this with as little investment as possible . First just melt the lead and pour billets , a muffin tin mold . try this a few times see how this go's
I found at first there are a lot of hassles to overcome and your output is low volume . setup and cleanup after times are the same whether you pour one muffin or 10 muffins
Not trying to discourage just posting what i learned
 
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Ezana4CE said:
I’m looking to recycle the spent ammo from my pellet trap. I’ve been sitting through it and collecting various projectiles. My question surrounds the fact that I’m extracting JSB, FX, NSA, H&N, Crosman, and a couple of other brands I’m probably forgetting from this trap. I have no idea about what ratio of lead, tin, etc the mixture would be if I melted these projectiles down together. When I read about other members casting pellets and slugs I’ve read many questions about the lead content. I’ve read a couple of you saying that you cast slugs from recycled pellets, but I didn’t want to derail the threads where I read those comments as some were tangential. So I thought I’d ask here.

Simply put, which method has worked for you in casting pellets and slugs from a melange of recycled lead? Keep in mind that I have no casting experience at all. Thanks in advance to all of the experienced casters that respond.
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Not really a major issue. If you're using nothing but crosman that may have higher levels of antimony which make harder pellets. I would recommend to get some pure lead and a little bit of pure tin. A ratio of 40 to 1 allows better flow and nice shine. Use the old trap ammo a little at a time or pour ingots. Look for diy lead hardness tester on the tube. I used a hammer and drop it 8 inches and see it's dent. Compare to NSA or other brands will be close enough to get an idea. Softer is better than harder (⁠✷⁠‿⁠✷⁠)
 
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My one mold is the NOE 25 caliber 27 grain "hunter" flat nosed pellet. The mold seems to be very well made and the pellets look good and are more consistent in weight than some JSB pellets I had on hand but they just didn't shoot well in my guns. I thought at first the mold was inaccurate because the diameter was not exactly as described but I don't think that is what happened. I think some guns just don't shoot some pellets well while others shoot them great. I have a new barrel ordered (from SPA) for my P35 and I'm hoping it likes these pellets better.
 
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