Bullet Molds

[Bob McDowell]

Okay, so here's what I'm picturing. Someone come tell me this is dumb and won't work:

Print bullets and sprues with a 'tray' on top for the unmelted lead. I'm thinking small blocks of decent quantities. Twelve, maybe? I don't know how well molten lead flows, but the basic concept is something like this (for eight Bullets):

[ tray1 ].....[ tray2 ]
||.||.||.||...||.||.||.||
B..B..B..B...B..B..B..B

Pour plaster over the whole mess, up to the top of the trays, and form a block. Burn out the plastic, blow out the ashes, and put lead in the trays. Put the whole block in the furnace and heat beyond lead's melt point. Let cool, then shatter the block, retrieving the lead. Trim the excess and save for the next block.

I'm picturing scaling this out by the number of blocks you can reliably heat in your furnace.

I am not at all versed in this, though, so if the idea is stupid, that's totally fine. Just brainstorming...

If the idea is not stupid, though, a guy could make a product out of the printed assemblies. You'd need one for each block of bullets you wanted to make, since they and the plaster casts are destroyed in the process.