Tom Sawyer method of smelting

[crabo]

I had this big pile of roof jacks and lead pipe that needed to be smelted. One of my friends, who teaches with me, wanted to learn how to cast boolits and learn to reload. I told him he needed to learn from the beginning, and that started with smelting. He said "great, I want to learn it all".

Carlv, just got a new mold from Accurate. I told him to come over while we were smelting, and I would let him use my pot and lead, and teach him him how to do it. He'll have to give a report on that.

I also sweetened the pot by telling them I would fire up the grill for lunch. I had some boneless pork rib meat, marinated with tiger sauce, some Sloveck pork and venison sausages, and buffalo burgers.

Needless to say, they were sucked in. After a couple of hours, Carl remarked, so this is your Tom Sawyer method of smelting. I had to laugh because he nailed it.

At the end of the day we had smelted and poured into ingots, over 1500 pounds of pure lead. The lead was all stacked nice and neat also. My wife was quite happy with the whole day. We had a couple of friends stop by to shoot the breeze and one of them came back to eat with us.

When you need to smelt, remember that part of mentoring is starting them at the very beginning with the smelt. Don't let them help for a little while. Just keep adding the lead and pouring the ingots, till they can't stand it anymore. Then they'll take over.

We didn't get to the WWs, but I have at least one other friend that wants to help next time.

[watkibe]

I have used the Tom Sawyer method many times over the years, with great success. Good job, attaboy, and way to go !

[geargnasher]

Only one problem there, Craig: I think alll newbies should start with a Lee two-banger and be thoroughly educated in Leementing techniques, application of Bullplate, mould and pot temperature, and casting rhythm so they can really appreciate that Accurate Mold! It's kinda like teaching a beginning driver in brand-new Cadillac; if they ever have to drive a '64 Ford Galaxy wagon with manual brakes and steering and a three-speed column shift sometime in the future they will have big problems. :mrgreen:

Gear

[jsizemore]

Only one problem there, Craig: I think alll newbies should start with a Lee two-banger and be thoroughly educated in Leementing techniques, application of Bullplate, mould and pot temperature, and casting rhythm so they can really appreciate that Accurate Mold! It's kinda like teaching a beginning driver in brand-new Cadillac; if they ever have to drive a '64 Ford Galaxy wagon with manual brakes and steering and a three-speed column shift sometime in the future they will have big problems. :mrgreen:

Gear

Well, that's why they keep makeing Cadillacs.

[btroj]

But to really appreciate a Cadillac you must also at some time own a real ***.

I find myself agreeing with Gear on this. People need to experience the good and bad of things. Then they can really understand the value of a fine mold.

And I got to stop agreeing with Gear so much. It is starting to creep me out.

[bhn22]

Did you remember to collect your nickels from them?

[deltaenterprizes]

I am still looking for people interested in casting.

[geargnasher]

But to really appreciate a Cadillac you must also at some time own a real ***.

I find myself agreeing with Gear on this. People need to experience the good and bad of things. Then they can really understand the value of a fine mold.

And I got to stop agreeing with Gear so much. It is starting to creep me out.

Don't worry, there's ZERO chance that we'll be taking warm showers together in the wee hours of the morning :grin:

I don't think that the Lee moulds are necessarily junk, I have some that work very, very well with proper TLC, and a few that I just shrugged and tossed in the scrap recycle bin, no sense making yourself miserable with a mould that was defective in some way. For twenty bucks it isn't worth my time or postage to send it back. The point is if you can cast with a Lee two-banger and keep it maintained and functioning well, it will teach you every little trick you need to know about mould troubleshooting and maintenance, and you won't be surprised when, one day, you might have to do a little tune-up on a $120 premium custom mould. At least you'll know how.

It's all I can do to bribe, cajoll, threaten, beg, coerce, or otherwise get anyone to save lead for me, much less help smelt it. The kind of people that deal scrap around here aren't the brightest bulbs, one of them asked me once "you can't make bullets out of that stuff, but I have a bunch of clean copper if you want that." Sheesh.

Oh, one more thing Craig, NEXT time you do that, gimme a call! I'm a professional, I'll bring my smelting rig and only charge you 25lbs an hour! :kidding:

Gear

[btroj]

And he only seems to be able to smelt about 25 pounds an hour.

Sounds like a scam to me!

I agree about Lee moulds. I actually really like to 6 cavity ones. They actually have spoiled me as I expect a bunch of bullets fast any time I cast. I also feel that bullplate makes a world of difference with Lee moulds. It will certainly prolong the useful life of them.

[crabo]

Oh, one more thing Craig, NEXT time you do that, gimme a call! I'm a professional, I'll bring my smelting rig and only charge you 25lbs an hour! :kidding:

Gear

Gear, I'd go 25 pounds an hour. I could have worked you like a rented mule for that amount.

I did start carlv out with a Lee 125 rnfp 6 cavity, but I had already done all of the good stuff to it, so he had a good casting mold to start with.

He needs a sizing die that I don't have, so once he gets it from Lathesmith, we'll move to the Star. He's already talking about trying to come up with another mold for his 44 specials. I don't think he realizes that the cast boolit affliction is going to be as bad as his other gun addictions.

I used to think I could get a magic boolit for each caliber and I would be good to go.....

[carlv]

I really enjoyed crabo's Tom Sawyer School of Smelting & Casting.
I can't claim to be a 'victim' since I had previously seen the ginormous piles of lead that needed to be ingot-ized.
A sunny, 65-degree New Years Eve, good food, good company, and I learned something new - pretty much a perfect day in my book.

Casting my first bullets with crabo's already-Lee-mented mold is probably A Bad Thing. Now I have expectations that all Lee molds will produce perfect bullets quickly and effortlessly right out of the box.

My very first mold is from Accurate Molds simply because I could not find what I wanted off-the-shelf. I needed a 38 Special wadcutter to be seated flush with the case mouth in .355 or .356 diameter. Working with Tom at A-M was great. Thanks to his lightening-fast email response times, we fine-tuned the design in 24 hrs (mostly educating me about the limits of his tooling).
Tom shipped the mold only 6 days after I ordered it (and Christmas fell in between) ! The mold design is # 36-148B in his catalog.

After 20+ years of shooting, I'm only now getting started with casting.
I have a number of old guns that are accuracy 'problem children' (38 wadcutter semi-autos with small bores, 44 Russians & Specials with big throats, 455 Eleys with bores/throat dimensions all over the map, etc).
I tried a number of commercial cast & swaged bullets in 'ordinary' diameters
and only got mediocre to terrible accuracy. Hoping to get better results by making my own.

It's great to be able to tap into the collected wisdom of Cast Boolits, and to have crabo to show me the ropes.
Happy New Year to y'all !