My First Casting!

[Michael J. Spangler]

so i spent a few hours yesterday and made my first batches of boolits!

i had some clean pure lead and clean ww from the last casting seminar that dukeinmaine hosted.

i fired up the lee pro 4 20# pot with a 50/50 mix and set my MP 200 grain 4 cavity .45 cramer on the hot plate.

once the mold was up to temp it was dropping beautiful boolits. very happy with that
they dropped at .4525

the round pins work beautifully and the pen at pins needed a little persuasion at first

once that was all done i loaded the pot up again with pure ww alloy. that cast much cleaner boolits, no doubt a combo of the alloy and the mold heating up nicely by now.
those dropped at .4535 and once i had a good rhythm all of the boolits dropped off the pins perfectly.

i'm addicted. i'm going to the workshop today so i can smelt a bucket of WW and be ready for next weekend.

i also dug out some pewter and can't wait to mess around with some 20:1 to see how those hollow points expand!

woohoo. thanks to all of you for your help in getting the addiction rolling. :mrgreen:
especially dukeinmaine, lathe smith, whitelable lubes, NOE and Miha for the great products and services.

p.s. pics will be up when i'm done making breakfast for the family. i'll snap pics of the finished product, and i'll take some pics of my casting bench later today.

[Michael J. Spangler]

WW top and 50/50 on the bottom

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll105/MJSpangler/257b018b.jpg

WW

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll105/MJSpangler/98fa4d77.jpg

50/50

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll105/MJSpangler/339546c3.jpg

[Rockchucker]

Very nice, especially for the first time. Those are some nice looking boolits and yes, you're hooked now for sure.

[jlm223]

They look real nice, hope to be casting soon, keep up the good work.

[Duckdog]

Nice hollow points! What mold did you use?

[Shiloh]

They are dropping plenty big to be fit to your needs.

Shiloh

[Michael J. Spangler]

MP 4 cavity .454 200 grain cramer HP

my bore slugs out at .452.

any suggestions on what size sizing die i should get?
i figured the .453
or get the .454 and basically use it to lube the as cast WW, and hopefully for the softer alloy i can just add some tin to the whole deal and it should fill out to where i need it.

[Bullet Caster]

Nice casting job. Those boolits would make anyone proud to be shootin' 'em. Nice hollow points too. Welcome to the addiction. BC

[Duckdog]

I'd shoot those as cast, if your slugging out at 452 and these are 453.5, but only if they chamber freely. If not, I would probably go with a 453 sizer. Thanks for the mold info.

[Michael J. Spangler]

thanks duck.

so you think .001" over bore is fine?

i loaded up a dummy of each size and they seem to chamber fine, they're loaded at 1.190 and it seems like a lot of guys load these at 1.160" which would make sense because they're .090" shorter than a typical LRN boolit that is normally seated at 1.250"
i'll seat them at the 1.16"0 and see how they chamber, i did the barrel "thunk" test at 1.190" and they passed fine.

[**oneshot**]

Very nice. I did notice that some of your hollow points look like allen screw heads. They look like they will open up really nice.

[Duckdog]

I always go .001 over, or more, in everything I cast for. There are different trains of thought as far as sizing goes, but if they chamber good, you can go more then .001 and be in good shape. The barrel will size the bullet just fine!

Are you tumble lubing these?

[Michael J. Spangler]

i have to order a die from lathe smith. we're discussing sizing options right now. them i'll use my star sizer to lube and size them or with the smaller ones it would be more of a pass through with lube

[Cherokee]

Congrats on your first batchs of boolits. They look fine. You got to get out and shoot them now, then tell us how that went.

[kappy]

Those look beautiful. I'll PM you my address. ;)

[Michael J. Spangler]

i can't wait to shoot them.
i'm going to do some pan lubing at first i think. just so i can load a handful of each and see how they shoot.

i have a .453 die on order, that should do the trick for me for the ww and 50/50 as long as i add some tin next time.

i really want to make some lead tin alloy nice and soft to see how the expansion is. i saw a thread with some results and it is too cool not to do. at least once

thanks for the support guys. i'm hooked. smelted another 80# or so of WW yesterday, 60# of which went in to ingots and some left in the pot and some left in a small 10# cast iron pot to heat on a hotplate and add to my lee pot while casting (at least thats what i have for an idea for now)

i'm so happy that i can cast boolits for practically free. i can't get over the fact that 60# of alloy can make 2100 boolits. thats way too cool. all for free!

[mfraser264]

Look great, keep up the good work and enjoy!!!

[Grandpas50AE]

Great job of casting especially for the first time. Great looking boolits, and they should shoot really well. I have that same mold and cast my first HP (been casting solids for close to 40 years), and have a big box full from Saturday. Welcome to the addiction, and let us know how they shoot.

[Michael J. Spangler]

thanks!

i'm dying for my die to come in. i can't wait to start sizing some of these suckers and loading them up

now i need to look in to some cast load data. i usually use bullseye but i just picked up some WST and some 231 to mess with.

time to do some more research!

[geargnasher]

You'll like 231 in .45 ACP with those boolits. Well done, it took me a few years to be able to cast boolits that nice, and you hit it the first time!

Gear

[Michael J. Spangler]

i doubt it had anything to do with me. i'm sure it was all the mold.
and the great guidance from the people on the forum. i owe it all to you guys

[Michael J. Spangler]

alright so i did some more casting and measuring.

seems like me calipers were off a bit. i measured some .308 and some .224 jacketed rounds and realized i needed to adjust the dial a bit.

so now my measurements one 50/50 and COWW are more like .4545 and.4555 respectively. i cast up 14# of COWW boolits yesterday.

i found that being more comfortable i was getting a good rhythm and keeping the mold very hot, which resulted in some frosty boolits.
i had switched out the pen at pins for all round HPs and i spent a lot less time with the mold open trying to get the boolits to release. that sped up the pace.

i'm starting to learn where my temp control is too. when i added in more boolits or my sprues i cranked it up a bit to get the temp back to where it needed to be. then i think i need to keep it around 3 on the dial to keep casting at a lower temp to help keep the mold from getting too hot and be able to keep up the pace.

i also used a big aluminum block to rest the mold on every few casts which helped suck out some heat and regulate temp.

i'm really loving this guys. i can't wait till my lathe smith die comes in so i can start lubing these suckers!
i also ordered a lee taper crimp die so i'm not seating and crimping in the same station. it doesn't seem to cause much of an issue with some test rounds i was putting together, but why not go the extra mile?