Hi again,
Yes, I'm new to bullet casting so these are probably really stupid questions so please bear with me.
As I mentioned in another post, I inherited a boatload of lead, allow, precast (homemade) bullets etc. So I went out and bought a Lee casting furnace and bunch of Lee bullet moulds for my various pistol calibers in the tumble lube type. My question is, if I keep the lead pretty soft, do I have to size all of the bullets anyways? That's one messy and time consuming task I'd like to skip. I've also read that if I drop the cast bullet directly from the mould into a bucket of water that the heat quench will harden the bullet. Does this make them too hard?
Thanks!

1. you donot have to size any of your bullets, they do have to fit in your gun however.
if in a revolver .001-.002 over your cylinder throat size is preferable, if in a pistol .001-.002 over
bbl size is usually best,making sure it will chamber.

2.water quenching will turn wheel weights into a bhn of @18 really not necessary unless using in a rifle
up to @ 2000fps, regular ww's will be 10-11 bhn and can be used up to about 1500 fps if your lube
will hold up.

3 if you are using the lee lube [alox] and are gonna size. the best way to do it is
to take a bit of it and thin it out with mineral spirits and lightly coat, then size then another coat.

fivedog is giving you good advice. You need to slug the bore of the guns you plan to shoot lead in and then mike the bullets you cast. Most of the problems shooting cast comes from having the front part of the cylinders smaller than the bore diameter so you need to slug each cylinder to see if that might be a problem and have a smith open them up if it is.

I shoot strictly bullets from Lee molds now and both my 38 special and my 41 mag shoot the Tumble Lube bullets fine without sizing. Do lube with the liquid alox everything that is going down the bore and if you do have to size follow fivedogs advice, that's how I've been doing it for years and it works exceptionally well.

If you have a friend that works in the medical field have them snag you a box of the thin rubber gloves they wear at the hospital. A box will last near forever and keeps the mess off your hands. Kind of like eating m&m's.