Myths, Legends and Half-Truths about Lead Bullets

We've been casting, selling, and shooting lead bullets for over 20 years. During this time, we've heard a lot of wrong information about shooting and loading lead bullets. This is an attempt to dispel some of these myths.

• Loading lead bullets is more dangerous to your health.
  Ingesting lead is not conducive to your health. Lead can be transferred through your skin. However, bullets aren't the only place that you can get exposed to lead. Since your primers contain a lead-based compound (lead stefanite) even loading jacketed bullets doesn't make you safe from lead exposure. This is why we always recommend that you wear latex or nitrile gloves when loading ammunition.
• Lead is too soft to push to very good velocities.
  Depending on the hardness of the lead, this may be true. Slash K's Hard Cast Lead bullets are hard enough that you can push them to a decent velocity. Between the alloy of the lead, and the lube we use, we have been able to push some of our bullets to upwards of 1800fps without noticing any leading.
  As a local shop, we have noticed that often times, a customer will have a bad experience with lead, but not ours. He bought bullets from some guy at a gunshow, who cast them in his garage, out of random things he thinks are lead.
  
• Lead bullets require me to clean my gun more often.
  Shooting lead bullets will sometimes require you to clean your pistol more often, but not by the margin that people seem to think. I tend to clean the pistols I shoot lead through every 500 rounds, whether it needs it or not. I also clean my pistols I shoot exclusively jacketed bullets through every 500 rounds, whether it needs it or not. I don't notice a significant difference in accuracy between the first round and the 499th round.

What are other incorrect assumptions that people make about shooting lead bullets? Let us know in the comments.

How do You Make Your Ammunition?

We have been in the business of supplying customers with reloading components, supplies, and information for almost 20 years. During that time, we have learned that are two ways to look at the process of building ammunition: handloading and reloading. Both have their place in the world of shooting, and neither one is better than the other. In fact, most people who reload will often handload as well, and vice versa.

Slash K's bullets and brass can be used by someone who reloads or handloads, and Slash K has numerous ways to help you do either one.

Reloading

Reloading is simplest of the two. We define reloading as building ammunition efficiently, quickly and most importantly safely. While accuracy and consistency are important, they tend to take a backseat to the other being able to make ammunition quickly. When reloading, you have often already done all of the necessary work involved in handloading: you know what powder charge works best with your bullet, and your seating depth.

Handloading:

Handloading is a slow, deliberate process. When handloading, you are painfully crafting each individual round, ensuring that the powder charge is as close to identical as possible. The each bullet is set to as near the same depth as possible. Each piece of brass has been trimmed, sized, swaged, reamed, and uniformed to the greatest of your ability. By tightening your groups by a thousandth of an inch at a time, you are ensuring that the only thing that will be wrong with the round you fired will be the nut behind the trigger.

How Slash K Can Help:

In addition to our components, Slash K offers some tools that will work well to assist in either type of loading.

• The 550b Turbo Bearing: Our Turbo-Bearing helps significantly in both types of loading. For reloading, it allows a smoother rotation of the shellplate. This smoother rotation makes it easier to make ammunition faster.
  This will also help in handloading. Because you can get the shellplate tighter than you can with the factory indexing sprocket, you will notice less variation within the bullet seating and primer seating.

• Redding Reloading Dies: Redding's dies are precision engineered to exacting specifications. If you are handloading, these dies will assist you in getting the absolute best results available from almost any other dies on the market. Between neck-sizing, precision seating, or a taper-crimp, these dies will give you the best results.

Welcome!

Welcome to our new blog! Here we will give you technical articles about reloading, firearms, and shooting in general. Please check back often for more information, including sales at our online store.