shredder
01-21-2013, 12:05 PM
Greetings all!
Time to share a few stories about the last year of casting (my first!).
If you are brand new you will probably have the same questions and concerns as I did (and we all did) so buckle up and get ready for your own journey towards cast boolit success. Some of you will recognize yourselves in here, and hopefully for others I can spare you some of the idiot mistakes that I made.
Casting is one of those things I always wanted to get into. As I perused the various catalogs many years ago looking at all the rifles shotguns and reloading gear dreaming of the day when I would be able to get some of my own, I always had a fascination with the casting section. The thought of pouring your own boolits from a molten alloy appealed to my inner shooter. Like the buffalo hunters, I too wanted to load my own in a complete sort of sense.
Fast forward 25++ years. I got a bottom pour Lee production pot for Christmas last year so of course I quickly ordered up a Lee mould for my 30/06 and got a pair of heavy leather welder's gloves. I quick trip to my local gunsmith revealed a stash of 230 pounds of lead and wheelweight ingots that quickly became mine. After another order for gas checks and a .309 push through sizing die, and I was ready for action!
My first casting session was filled with overwhelming joy as I filled the little aluminum mould over and over again with bright shiney sliver aloy! I started casting with a 50/50 blend of WW and pure lead. What a fantastic feeling to see those little boolits fall freely from thier mould cavities. Of course I made a HUGE pile in my bliss. Barely had they cooled when I tumble lubed them with LLA and shoved them through the sizing die with a GC. One more tumble lube for good measure and onto the wax paper to dry. At that point I had given the boolits a very cursory once over to cull the real bad defects but that was it. Next day I did it again. And again.... and again. SOOOO much fun! Now I had a SUPPLY going!
Having many hundreds of boolits cast, lubed, sized, and ready meant only one thing- Time to load up. The only suitable powder at my local supplier was Herco so I grabbed a pound and started loading. I seated the boolits so the case mouth was right at the crimping groove but did not crimp. I felt sure that the crimping groove was there for a reason and confident the boolit designers had found the ultimate sweet spot for seating depth. The boolits seemed to load up OK but every now and then a sliver of lead in a crescent moon shape would roll off the edge of the case mouth after seating the boolit. I hardly paid any attention in my giddy excitement to load up some "one hole shooters" as my cast loads were sure to be. I felt that after lavishing all this attention to my projectiles they were sure to be much more consistant than factory bullets. I used Ed Harris' article "Casting for the military surplus rifle" as a guide and loaded 10 to 14 grains of Herco in 1/2 grain increments.
Off to the range and some disappointment! Some of you are already smiling knowing I was unlikely to hit the jackpot so early. You would be right! Most of my initial loads were shooting around 4-5 inches at 100 yards and of course the first loads were shot(wasted) just to get the scope on the paper. The trajectory of my first loads put the 160 grain RN boolit some 10-11 inches low on the target compared to a full house 30/06 150 grain load. Took me a while to find the holes in the backstop boards! Very little semblance of groups here, just patterns on the paper. Embarrassing, humbling and all that. I should mention that my rifle is a custom job on a military Mauser action with a cut rifled barrel. Free floated, glass bedded, and all that. With it and it's preferred jacketed bullet handloads I can shoot groups around 1 inch at 100 yards if I do my part. Most days, the rifle is better than I am.
Then I found this website! I already knew I had some quality control issues but where to start........
First I weighed a couple of dozen boolits and discovered that there were very occasisional boolits that weighed way outside the norm. Most would be within 1/2 grain or so, then 1 would pop up that was 2 grains under weight. So I sorted the whole pile! Hoo Boy! Talk about tedious! I kept those that were +/- 1/2 grain and anything above or below that got culled. Now I had a much smaller pile of boolits and a good pile of rejects. I felt so good about solving the problem, I loaded up another whack of sorted boolits and went back to the range.
Almost the same story. While the groups did shrink a bit, and I did settle on 14 grains of Herco as the most promising test load, groups were still in the 3-4 inch range with a couple of groups in the 1 1/2 inch range. Back to the website! Did I read somewhere about a case mouth flaring die or something like that? Of course! More reading, and more understanding of getting a perfect boolit loaded straight and without damage. Another order for a case mouth flaring die! At the same time I discovered an alternate tumble lube method from Recluse using the 45-45-10 formula of LLA-Paste Wax-Solvent. Big improvement in technique when I started using a little pail to float a few dozen boolits in very hot water to heat them up before lubing. Warm lube on warm boolits, very little lube and dry em up on a sheet of wax paper. Thanks Recluse!
Now I finally cleaned my rifle bore down to bare steel with wipe out. There was loads of black carbon and some lead flakes along with copper from jacketed bullets. Back to casting with an eye to getting properly filled out boolits. At this point my boolits began to get more consistent. I posted here about my great new knowledge and one of the old hands posted a reply that "Now you can cast good boolits, keep it up and someday you will cast great boolits!" I felt encouraged, but a bit chagrined that nobody saw the greatness! Ha Ha!
By now my little hobby was taking on a life of it's own. I had accumulated 3 moulds for my '06, 2 for my 8mm Mauser, and 2 for my .50 muzzleloader. I had cast up such huge piles of each I was having trouble finding places to put them all. Luckily I own a hardware store and I have loads of little snap top clear plastic boxes of various sizes that bulk screws and washers come in. Perfect for a couple hundred boolits each. Stacks of them all over my shelves...... I was also at this time shooting a lot of lead into the backstop at my local range and learning what my rifles liked. Boolit seating depth seems to have an effect on group size! Just like jacketed, what do you know!
Nothing can replace trigger time, and all your guessing is for naught if your rifle does not agree with you! All theories must be proven with a real rifle at a real target in real time, or it's just a guess.
Geargnasher put a big bug in my ear over lubrication issues. The extreme loob thread is EPIC! (Thanks, you crazy @^&*$#!!!) Once I saw all the recipies and the hoopla over lube I had to get in there too. Pan lube, hand lube ,tumble lube, lube sizers,lube heaters etc etc. Another whole world to explore! Luckily I had a 10 pound cake of beeswax I got from the local pollinators. First shot was 50/50 beeswax and Alox from the lee bottles. It sure mixed up nice and looks just like the NRA formula sticks. I made a couple of "cake cutters" from fired cases with the framing nail ejector from instructions on this site. Pretty cool. Messy, but fun. Then I tried a batch with high temp lithium wheelbearing grease, ATF, and Beeswax. Also very good but sticky.
As the -25 temps have really settled in here, I have not had a real chance to test any of my new lubes. Shot them all some, but not enough to do any kind of comparison until spring. At this point the range road is blocked with snowdrifts and I am out of luck for a while. I can say that the tumble lube is not the best in extreme cold!
Then this Christmas I got a cash gift that I used to buy a new Lyman mould with handles and a copy of the Lyman Cast Boolit Handbook. Now THAT is a boolit mould. I will not diss the LEE products as they perform very well for me and are very affordable. I would not have near the collection (or casting experience) if not for the affordability factor! I will not use the word "cheap" as it insinuates a lack of quality and poor materials in construction, I do not feel that Lee deserves that moniker.
I can say that the Lyman mould is heavy and had a very solid feel to it. The blocks mate so perfectly and the cavities are machined so well I could not wait to cast with it. Yesterday in -35C I was in the garage casting with my new mould and what a joy it was, except my feet got really cold standing on the concrete despite my boots.
I now examine my boolits under one of those magnifying lights with the circular light on a gooseneck and a great big lens. The difference in boolits falling from the Lyman mould was immediatly apparant under magnification. Also apparant was my casting technique. Under magnificatin I could closely inspect the boolit base to see if I was cutting the sprue too soon or if the sprue plate was a bit too loose leaving a small sheared off mound or if the bases were rounded indicating a lack of alloy to pull from as the boolit cools etc.etc.etc. Thanks to cast boolit handbook.
Looking over my old stash of boolits from my first few casting sessions made me want to return them all to the melter, and I will. Incomplete driving bands, voids, fins, all the novice mistakes are there in spades. Casting along willy nilly without the knowledge necessary to cast great boolits will result in this type of frustration. Casting, weighing, inspecting, sizing, lubing, gas checking, and finally tossing back into the melt! Try to avoid casting great huge lots of boolits in the beginning. Trust me it is very hard to stop when you are having so much fun! Though it is necessary to the learning curve, limit your casting sessions!
I now cast in small batches, striving to cast only 100 good boolits at the most. I will discard the first 10 or so casts from the mould until perfect boolits begin to drop. I have reduced my alloy temperature as I used to just set the melter 6 or 7 and get at it. After much experimentation, I have found that 3 is more like it. No more frosting(pitting under the scrutiny of the magnifying lens) and much better fill out. I am also letting the mould sit a bit longer before cutting the sprue (like 10-15 seconds) and leaving the open mould a few seconds after emptying before casting again.
I have also begun to improve and maintain my alloy. Fluxing with sawdust is one of the best tips I got here. I also got some linotype from a fellow caster here, and started using a blend of 2 pure lead to 1 linotype with a couple of ounces of tin added to the 10 pound pot. Getting better results all the time. I will also try the Lyman #2 blend now that I can make it.
I see a hardness tester in my future.
What a hobby! All the intellectual challenge you could want, very hands on precision work, and the smug satisfaction that you can make something for your self that is virtually unobtainable any other way.
My initial goal was to get lots of trigger time with my "big boomers". 30/06, 8mm Mauser etc. will not scare a lot of folks off the firing range, but nobody considers 50 rounds of full throttle 180 grain hunting loads fun off the bench. Now I shoot almost endlessly. Low velocity loads in the 1200-1500fps range are what I enjoy most. The first time I watched through my scope as a cast boolit made contact with a water filled gallon jug at 100yds I was hooked! Never seen that before! I always saw the moment after impact, as I was in the process of having the snot kicked out of me as the rifle recoiled skyward with full power loads. Now I practice with my rifles. Really practice, like lots!
I feel like I am at the end of chapter one in my persnal journey, and ready to start really getting into it. This could be a lifelong obession if I let it get away on me! I am no one hole shooter, but I have improved my shooting technique more in the last year by getting so much trigger time than in any other previous year. The Lyman cast bullet handbook is full of great information as well. I am starting to absorb the bits and peices learned here into my own knowledge base of what works for me in my rifles, in my climate, with my criterea to judge by. It may not work for you, but only you can find out what works for you and your rifles. That is what I enjoy the most about this boolit casting. The unique and highly individual journey towards great loads.
Good casting takes time to learn. Good thing too, I seem to learn slowly.....
Cheers! - AL
Time to share a few stories about the last year of casting (my first!).
If you are brand new you will probably have the same questions and concerns as I did (and we all did) so buckle up and get ready for your own journey towards cast boolit success. Some of you will recognize yourselves in here, and hopefully for others I can spare you some of the idiot mistakes that I made.
Casting is one of those things I always wanted to get into. As I perused the various catalogs many years ago looking at all the rifles shotguns and reloading gear dreaming of the day when I would be able to get some of my own, I always had a fascination with the casting section. The thought of pouring your own boolits from a molten alloy appealed to my inner shooter. Like the buffalo hunters, I too wanted to load my own in a complete sort of sense.
Fast forward 25++ years. I got a bottom pour Lee production pot for Christmas last year so of course I quickly ordered up a Lee mould for my 30/06 and got a pair of heavy leather welder's gloves. I quick trip to my local gunsmith revealed a stash of 230 pounds of lead and wheelweight ingots that quickly became mine. After another order for gas checks and a .309 push through sizing die, and I was ready for action!
My first casting session was filled with overwhelming joy as I filled the little aluminum mould over and over again with bright shiney sliver aloy! I started casting with a 50/50 blend of WW and pure lead. What a fantastic feeling to see those little boolits fall freely from thier mould cavities. Of course I made a HUGE pile in my bliss. Barely had they cooled when I tumble lubed them with LLA and shoved them through the sizing die with a GC. One more tumble lube for good measure and onto the wax paper to dry. At that point I had given the boolits a very cursory once over to cull the real bad defects but that was it. Next day I did it again. And again.... and again. SOOOO much fun! Now I had a SUPPLY going!
Having many hundreds of boolits cast, lubed, sized, and ready meant only one thing- Time to load up. The only suitable powder at my local supplier was Herco so I grabbed a pound and started loading. I seated the boolits so the case mouth was right at the crimping groove but did not crimp. I felt sure that the crimping groove was there for a reason and confident the boolit designers had found the ultimate sweet spot for seating depth. The boolits seemed to load up OK but every now and then a sliver of lead in a crescent moon shape would roll off the edge of the case mouth after seating the boolit. I hardly paid any attention in my giddy excitement to load up some "one hole shooters" as my cast loads were sure to be. I felt that after lavishing all this attention to my projectiles they were sure to be much more consistant than factory bullets. I used Ed Harris' article "Casting for the military surplus rifle" as a guide and loaded 10 to 14 grains of Herco in 1/2 grain increments.
Off to the range and some disappointment! Some of you are already smiling knowing I was unlikely to hit the jackpot so early. You would be right! Most of my initial loads were shooting around 4-5 inches at 100 yards and of course the first loads were shot(wasted) just to get the scope on the paper. The trajectory of my first loads put the 160 grain RN boolit some 10-11 inches low on the target compared to a full house 30/06 150 grain load. Took me a while to find the holes in the backstop boards! Very little semblance of groups here, just patterns on the paper. Embarrassing, humbling and all that. I should mention that my rifle is a custom job on a military Mauser action with a cut rifled barrel. Free floated, glass bedded, and all that. With it and it's preferred jacketed bullet handloads I can shoot groups around 1 inch at 100 yards if I do my part. Most days, the rifle is better than I am.
Then I found this website! I already knew I had some quality control issues but where to start........
First I weighed a couple of dozen boolits and discovered that there were very occasisional boolits that weighed way outside the norm. Most would be within 1/2 grain or so, then 1 would pop up that was 2 grains under weight. So I sorted the whole pile! Hoo Boy! Talk about tedious! I kept those that were +/- 1/2 grain and anything above or below that got culled. Now I had a much smaller pile of boolits and a good pile of rejects. I felt so good about solving the problem, I loaded up another whack of sorted boolits and went back to the range.
Almost the same story. While the groups did shrink a bit, and I did settle on 14 grains of Herco as the most promising test load, groups were still in the 3-4 inch range with a couple of groups in the 1 1/2 inch range. Back to the website! Did I read somewhere about a case mouth flaring die or something like that? Of course! More reading, and more understanding of getting a perfect boolit loaded straight and without damage. Another order for a case mouth flaring die! At the same time I discovered an alternate tumble lube method from Recluse using the 45-45-10 formula of LLA-Paste Wax-Solvent. Big improvement in technique when I started using a little pail to float a few dozen boolits in very hot water to heat them up before lubing. Warm lube on warm boolits, very little lube and dry em up on a sheet of wax paper. Thanks Recluse!
Now I finally cleaned my rifle bore down to bare steel with wipe out. There was loads of black carbon and some lead flakes along with copper from jacketed bullets. Back to casting with an eye to getting properly filled out boolits. At this point my boolits began to get more consistent. I posted here about my great new knowledge and one of the old hands posted a reply that "Now you can cast good boolits, keep it up and someday you will cast great boolits!" I felt encouraged, but a bit chagrined that nobody saw the greatness! Ha Ha!
By now my little hobby was taking on a life of it's own. I had accumulated 3 moulds for my '06, 2 for my 8mm Mauser, and 2 for my .50 muzzleloader. I had cast up such huge piles of each I was having trouble finding places to put them all. Luckily I own a hardware store and I have loads of little snap top clear plastic boxes of various sizes that bulk screws and washers come in. Perfect for a couple hundred boolits each. Stacks of them all over my shelves...... I was also at this time shooting a lot of lead into the backstop at my local range and learning what my rifles liked. Boolit seating depth seems to have an effect on group size! Just like jacketed, what do you know!
Nothing can replace trigger time, and all your guessing is for naught if your rifle does not agree with you! All theories must be proven with a real rifle at a real target in real time, or it's just a guess.
Geargnasher put a big bug in my ear over lubrication issues. The extreme loob thread is EPIC! (Thanks, you crazy @^&*$#!!!) Once I saw all the recipies and the hoopla over lube I had to get in there too. Pan lube, hand lube ,tumble lube, lube sizers,lube heaters etc etc. Another whole world to explore! Luckily I had a 10 pound cake of beeswax I got from the local pollinators. First shot was 50/50 beeswax and Alox from the lee bottles. It sure mixed up nice and looks just like the NRA formula sticks. I made a couple of "cake cutters" from fired cases with the framing nail ejector from instructions on this site. Pretty cool. Messy, but fun. Then I tried a batch with high temp lithium wheelbearing grease, ATF, and Beeswax. Also very good but sticky.
As the -25 temps have really settled in here, I have not had a real chance to test any of my new lubes. Shot them all some, but not enough to do any kind of comparison until spring. At this point the range road is blocked with snowdrifts and I am out of luck for a while. I can say that the tumble lube is not the best in extreme cold!
Then this Christmas I got a cash gift that I used to buy a new Lyman mould with handles and a copy of the Lyman Cast Boolit Handbook. Now THAT is a boolit mould. I will not diss the LEE products as they perform very well for me and are very affordable. I would not have near the collection (or casting experience) if not for the affordability factor! I will not use the word "cheap" as it insinuates a lack of quality and poor materials in construction, I do not feel that Lee deserves that moniker.
I can say that the Lyman mould is heavy and had a very solid feel to it. The blocks mate so perfectly and the cavities are machined so well I could not wait to cast with it. Yesterday in -35C I was in the garage casting with my new mould and what a joy it was, except my feet got really cold standing on the concrete despite my boots.
I now examine my boolits under one of those magnifying lights with the circular light on a gooseneck and a great big lens. The difference in boolits falling from the Lyman mould was immediatly apparant under magnification. Also apparant was my casting technique. Under magnificatin I could closely inspect the boolit base to see if I was cutting the sprue too soon or if the sprue plate was a bit too loose leaving a small sheared off mound or if the bases were rounded indicating a lack of alloy to pull from as the boolit cools etc.etc.etc. Thanks to cast boolit handbook.
Looking over my old stash of boolits from my first few casting sessions made me want to return them all to the melter, and I will. Incomplete driving bands, voids, fins, all the novice mistakes are there in spades. Casting along willy nilly without the knowledge necessary to cast great boolits will result in this type of frustration. Casting, weighing, inspecting, sizing, lubing, gas checking, and finally tossing back into the melt! Try to avoid casting great huge lots of boolits in the beginning. Trust me it is very hard to stop when you are having so much fun! Though it is necessary to the learning curve, limit your casting sessions!
I now cast in small batches, striving to cast only 100 good boolits at the most. I will discard the first 10 or so casts from the mould until perfect boolits begin to drop. I have reduced my alloy temperature as I used to just set the melter 6 or 7 and get at it. After much experimentation, I have found that 3 is more like it. No more frosting(pitting under the scrutiny of the magnifying lens) and much better fill out. I am also letting the mould sit a bit longer before cutting the sprue (like 10-15 seconds) and leaving the open mould a few seconds after emptying before casting again.
I have also begun to improve and maintain my alloy. Fluxing with sawdust is one of the best tips I got here. I also got some linotype from a fellow caster here, and started using a blend of 2 pure lead to 1 linotype with a couple of ounces of tin added to the 10 pound pot. Getting better results all the time. I will also try the Lyman #2 blend now that I can make it.
I see a hardness tester in my future.
What a hobby! All the intellectual challenge you could want, very hands on precision work, and the smug satisfaction that you can make something for your self that is virtually unobtainable any other way.
My initial goal was to get lots of trigger time with my "big boomers". 30/06, 8mm Mauser etc. will not scare a lot of folks off the firing range, but nobody considers 50 rounds of full throttle 180 grain hunting loads fun off the bench. Now I shoot almost endlessly. Low velocity loads in the 1200-1500fps range are what I enjoy most. The first time I watched through my scope as a cast boolit made contact with a water filled gallon jug at 100yds I was hooked! Never seen that before! I always saw the moment after impact, as I was in the process of having the snot kicked out of me as the rifle recoiled skyward with full power loads. Now I practice with my rifles. Really practice, like lots!
I feel like I am at the end of chapter one in my persnal journey, and ready to start really getting into it. This could be a lifelong obession if I let it get away on me! I am no one hole shooter, but I have improved my shooting technique more in the last year by getting so much trigger time than in any other previous year. The Lyman cast bullet handbook is full of great information as well. I am starting to absorb the bits and peices learned here into my own knowledge base of what works for me in my rifles, in my climate, with my criterea to judge by. It may not work for you, but only you can find out what works for you and your rifles. That is what I enjoy the most about this boolit casting. The unique and highly individual journey towards great loads.
Good casting takes time to learn. Good thing too, I seem to learn slowly.....
Cheers! - AL