Casting can be a pain, especially if you're casting for high precision or high power. It's also messy, smelly, and potentially dangerous. I only cast my own bullets for low- to medium-power stuff. Just .38spl, 9mm, 45acp, .45 Colt, and some (non-top-end) .357 magnum. I only use them for close to medium range shooting as well; mostly just clanging plates.
Because mine aren't intended for high-pressure stuff or high-precision stuff, I take shortcuts that some wouldn't. I don't worry much about hardness, just using it as-is; mostly from castoff wheel weights. I don't even size them after casting. I tumble-lube them using "Ben's Liquid Lube", which is just a home-made mixture I found online. IIRC it's 60% liquid alox (or generic x-lox) and 40% Johnson's liquid floor wax, but don't quote me on that as the ratios may be off.
Basically, after sorting through the wheelweights to weed out the zinc, steel & rubber ones, I just melt them in a pot on a turkey fryer. Scoop out the steel clips as they float to the surface and sawdust-flux a couple times. Not as big an ordeal as it sounds; pretty easy & basic, just be sure to do it outside, wear a face shield and don't breathe the fumes. Then ladle the molten lead into some dollar-store muffin pans to make ~1.7lb ingots. That's my stock. When I want to cast bullets from the stock, just melt an ingot or five in the pour pot, bottom-pour from the pot into inexpensive six-cavity lee molds, and dump them from the mold directly into a bucket of water. The sudden quenching is supposed to add hardness, but even if it doesn't, it cools them before they hit the bottom of the bucket, so they don't get banged up the way they can if you dumped them directly onto a hard surface while still hot.
After pulling them from the bucket & letting them dry, I just pour a layer of them on a cookie sheet or similar, and spray the Ben's Liquid Lube on them. Roll them around, spray again, let set & dry, and that's all I do. In my overly-simple uses, that works fine. This is 600-800 each of 124-grain 9mm stuff and 125-grain .38 stuff. Using the six-cavity molds, not final sizing, and the simplified lubing process makes it a lot less hassle than it would otherwise be.
For someone loading for long-range, high-pressure calibers, or true precision rifle stuff, you'd want to be a lot more meticulous. But for my purposes, these work surprisingly well. Frankly, I've even used the 125-grain .358 rnfp bullets for 9mm just out of curiosity and they work fine - again, for the short-range, low-precision stuff I use them for.
{edited for typo}