first time smelting/casting went really well have just one question

[dan-g]

I cast for my first time today and I have to say that this could be addictive. My first though looking at all those pretty boolits was, "I need to shoot more".

I do have one question, my lyman 35 cal mold developed a bit of a problem near the end. It started to have a small gap on the mold hole furthest from the sprue plate. This problem developed after dropping maybe 100 booits. It really pissed me off to have to throw away one out of two boolits for every drop.

What can I do to fix this? I squeezed the mold together after each drop and it didn't help. Any advise would be appreciated.

thanks

Dan

[plainsman456]

Check to see if there is some lead on the faces of the mold.
It might also have a burr os something keeping it from closing.

[357 Voodoo]

congrats and welcome

first check to see if there is any lead on the face of the mold.
second take the mold blocks and check if there is anything interfering with the alignment pins
if nothing is interfering with the pins they may need to be adjusted a littlebit

[dan-g]

thank for the advise, there was a tiny bit of lead in one of the alignment pin holes. The mold must have been not hot enough to melt it. Next time I will apply my map gas torch liberally to the face of my mold, to get rid of these stubborn deposits.

On another note, Im kind of shocked at how well this went. I was waiting for my smelted ingots to cool and decided to try casting from my smelting pot rather than waiting to plug in my electric casting pot. Im amazed that I only threw away about ten bullets, the rest were quite shootable. The propane torch really did help get the mold nice and hot so maybe that helped.

Thanks for all the advise, im sure I will be scouring this website even more when my two pistol molds show up.

thanks

Dan

[captaint]

Welcome Dan. You better believe getting that mold hot ahead of time helped. It's often the biggest mistake new guys (myself included) make. Gotta get that mold AND sprue plate hot enough to drop a good boolit. The more you do it the better you get. Don't go nuts with the torch, though. I use a cheap hot plate to heat up my molds prior to casting. So, what kind of mold are you using?? enjoy Mike

[snuffy]

first time smelting/casting went really well have just one question
I cast for my first time today and I have to say that this could be addictive. My first though looking at all those pretty boolits was, "I need to shoot more".

I do have one question, my lyman 35 cal mold developed a bit of a problem near the end.---------Next time I will apply my map gas torch liberally to the face of my mold, to get rid of these stubborn deposits.


Be darn careful with that mapp gas torch. In order for those to work, they have to be nearly wide open. At that level you'll be way too hot. If you'd ever use that on an aluminum mold, it would quickly MELT!

Propane is better, but they too can/will melt aluminum. Best bet is an electric hot plate. You can get one from wallgreens or wall-mart for under $20.00..

[dan-g]

Yea map gas runs pretty hot, I just ran it on the outside of the mold. Ive done some metal work in the past so It wasn't anywhere near melting. Im also pretty comfortable with torch heating from my old metal working experience and I have quite a bit of propane and map gas lying around. I will be careful with that torch.

The mold I was using was a lyman 204gr 35cal gas check two cavity. I just got my 358 140gr semi wad cutter 6 cavity Lee aluminum pistol mold today, (havent used it yet). I also have a MIHA 358 cramer HP 158gr brass mold showing up sooner than later.

I need to pick up more WW and lead though. My local scrapyard has WW but for 80cents a pound, i would prefer less and need to look at some picknpull auto yards for cheaper WW. The pure lead is available but for $1 a pound, (portland scrap prices are pretty high). Im also waiting for my tin ingot so I can smelt some 20 to 1 for the HP mold and the WW are just for plinking with the 140SW boolit.

Oh yea, I forgot to mention the smelting went great. I took 22lbs of WW and 22lbs of Monotype and I now have a vast supply of rifle ingots and 90 boolits to. Sure did smell bad and smoke a bit and fishing out all the clips and dross kinda of sucked; However I now have some nice looking ingots. A few ingots had a tiny purple sheen to them, i think I got it a little to hot for a few minutes.