I need some help with casting bullets.

[Neo]

I am new too casting bullets I have followed the instructions that came with mould it's a lee .309 cal 170 gn flat point however i get a lot of bullets with severe wrinkles a Some look like the lead is in layers, it said to blacken the mould with a candle or a match to help with the wrinkles this dose not help I use a gas portable stove to melt the lead with a stainless steel pot and lee ladle. How fasts do I need to get the lead from the pot the the mould. And another thing I have noticed the the bullets weigh more the mould says it should it's supposed to be 170 gn but mine are around 178 gn to 180 gn the lead I used were old sinkers. But I have picked up some old wheel weights the other day but I have not tried them yet.hope someone can help me with this.

[Tatume]

There are a lot of things you need to learn, and I'm not going to try to tell you everything. However, I will point out that the advice from Lee to blacken the mold with a candle is bad advice. Candle smoke carrries unburned parafin, which will cause wrinkles in your bullets. Scrub your mold with hot water and dishwashing detergent and get it completely free of oil and wax (make certain it is completely dry before you use it again). That will help.

[ItZaLLgooD]

You're going to have to do a search for "wrinkled boolits" and "lead alloy". There is a lot of information here. To me, sounds like the mold or the lead or both was not hot enough or you have oil in the cavities. Those are the most common ways I get winkled boolits. If you try the wheel weights you'll probably get closer to the 170 grains on the scale.

[kbstenberg]

NEO welcome to the brotherhood of The Silver Streem! Both comments above are very good. Almost everyone that starts casting, starts with the mold and lead being at low of a temperature. Which is most likely your problem. More so with your mold.
Do you have some kind of a hot plate? It could be an exposed coil like most stove tops are. Or it could be a flat suffused one like a plate warmer. These devises are what most casters warm there molds and ingots on. They can usually be found at thrift stores for a few bucks.
With your starter setup you will also need a thermometer to tell you how hot your lead is. Ace hardware has them that reads high enough (600 to 800 deg. ) or there are many places on line they can be gotten.
I cast with a Bottom pour pot so I can't answer your question on timing.
Yes many times molds drop bullets either plus or minus there specific weight. Because what type of alloy you are using determines the finished weight. Your next question would prob. be will the bullet weight difference make a difference in reloading? The short answer. Only minimally. Kevin

[clintsfolly]

Neo fill in your profile and just maybe a local caster will take you under there wing and tutor you. A afternoon casting to gather may give you a big head start and maybe a new friend. Clint

[40Super]

You need to pre heat your mold, which is one big reason for the wrinkled bullets, another thing is you stated your using sinkers? That is pure or close to it, that's why the bullets are weighing more, the pure weighs more than the typical boolit alloys. Your boolits never really will come out to exactly what weight the mold states, they will vary depending on how much antimony and tin is in your alloy. WW will work great for what your casting, you may add 1/2 to 1% tin for better fillout plus make sure your pot temp is 700F +/- 25F. You'll get the hangof it and soon will have good looking slugs.

[Gtek]

What temp was the lead at? First thing to control- do you have thermometer. 1- Stable 700ish degrees. 2- Clean mold. 3- No hot plate? even if you have one, first couple usually are sacrificial. 4- Pour, sprue change, cut, dump. Fast as you can until you get frosty boolits (they shoot just as good) then throttle back. With different molds and different alloys I write down what worked last time as far as count. Ladle contact, roll, pour- 1,2,3, roll off ladle. Focus on sprue size and watch for change,1,2,3,4, sprue change, cut, drop. Keeping record of temp, alloy, timing, mold, has worked well for me. Like the first bike you had, when you went around the corner you are on your own! pay attention, pedal slow, learn, and if your casting in garage or driveway you may still need to look out for cars! Be Safe. Gtek

[mdi]

Lyman's Cast Bullet Handbook, 3rd Edition has pictures of cast bullet problems. Wrinkles are usually from a cold mold and the lead cools unevenly as it's being poured. Smoking the mold is an old trick to make bullets drop from the mold easier, but is usually not needed with a clean mold. Each mold can have different preferences like mold temp., melt temp., alloy, pour style and speed, etc. and you'll have to find what is best for your mold. But you can get good results (75%+ keepers) by running melt about 150 degrees over liquid, preheating the mold (some dip a corner of the mold in the melt, some rest the mold on top of the pot, some use a hot plate, some even use a propane tourch, carefully), and develope a rhythm for casting/cooling/cutting/dropping.

FWIW; if you're on a budget, I started with 1 mold, a 2 qt. stainless steel pot, a single burner Coleman stove, a slotted spoon and a Lee ladle. I had a bunch of wheel weights and fluxed with sawdust/wood chips. It took me quite a bit of practice (fun!) to get over 50% keepers 'cause temperature control with a Coleman stove was hit-or-miss, but I did! I cast prolly a couple thousand .44 SWC this way until I aquired a Lee 20 lb. bottom pour pot (that I've been using for mebbe 16 years) and upped my keepers to 90%...

[blackthorn]

The posts above have given you some very basic advice. This site has likely got more answers than you have questions. Spend some time reading the "stickys" at the top of the forums. Also, there is a free download book called "from ingot to target" that you can access that will provide a wealth of information. I see you live in Australia and I have no idea what literature you have access to there but if it is available the Lyman "Cast Bullet Handbook" (fourth edition), or if you can get it, the third edition (or get both) will give you a wealth of information. Anyway, welcome, good luck and have fun!

[Wayne Smith]

First of all, NEO, welcome. There is a wealth of information here just for the reading. The stickies are there for a reason, each has significant information buried in them.

I'm guessing your fishing weights are close to pure lead. Pure has to be run at a higher temperature to cast well. When you combine wheel weights 50/50 with your lead you will have an alloy that, when dropped into water direct from the mold, will harden significantly. At the same time it will retain much of the ductility of the lead. This hardening takes time, weeks to months, so don't be in a hurry to shoot them. They will cast well at a lower temperature to boot.

Read here and learn. Go out and cast some, read some more, and cast more. The combination will be the fastest way to climb this particular learning curve.

[runfiverun]

the pure lead is also not going to produce the results you expect in the rifle.

take some time and read around the sight more.
making boolits truly is as easy as pouring lead into a mold.
if the mold is heated up,clean,and free from burrs.
you will want something else in the lead to help it make the trip down the barell successfully.

[DrCaveman]

Neo, welcome to an awesome activity and prob the best website on the entire Internet! Yes, better than any site with beautiful women scantily clad, despite what the popularity numbers may say...

My initial investment in casting was: $5 for hotplate at thrift store. $2 for 5" cast iron sauce pan. $22 delivered lee 358-158 TL mold. Done. Rounded up some sawdust for flux (free) and a steel slotted spoon I snagged from the kitchen (free) for crud removal.

Oh yeah, I needed lead. Found a tire shop over the hill willing to sell them for $.75 per pound, and they poured generous. Got $20 worth that first time.

I just dumped the wheel weights in til the pan was brimming, turned it to high, and sat there, mold in hand, ready to make some boolits! 15 minutes later my butt was sore and I was no closer to casting. Got up, did some shop cleanup, came back and finally there was a pool of molten something with a bunch of clips and dirt floating on top.

Dropped in some sawdust, stirred it up with the spoon. Wood started to char, and smoke a little. I began skimming off all the junk with the spoon, being very careful to conserve every last gram of lead back into the pot. The mix would cool a bit every time I stirred it, so it was kinda slow.

Eventually (30 minutes or so later) I was looking at a smooth surface of molten silvery-stuff that immediately reminded me (and my friends that I showed it off to) of terminator 2. Ready!

The sauce pan had little pouring lips on the edge like a pitcher, so that was to be my method of lead transfer into the mold. Oh yeah, my mold was supposed to be hot! So I set the mold on the edge of the pan (as per lee instructions) and waited again til my butt got sore. Patience was running a little thin so after about 8 minutes I figured it must be good. Oh yeah, I had cleaned it, smoked it and lubed it according to lee instructions.

Poured ( yeah spilled a bunch on my driveway) and cut the sprue. For some reason I couldn't see the base of the boolit. Opened the mold and I found a pathetic little nugget, looked like a shriveled worm. Back into my pot it immediately went (dont do that). Tried again, this time boolit at least was full length but still a pathetic little shriveled useless lump.

Kept at it, and apparently went fast enough for a few boolits to come out fairly sharp. But they still had major wrinkling, and I noticed the mold looked fairly wet and shiny (I know now thatci used waaaaay too much oil to lube the mold). Just kept plugging away, and after about an hour at it, I got a few boolits that I thought could be keepers. Today I would throw them straight into the reject pile, but was happy to see some success that day.

All told, I probably dropped about 200 pours that day, and got about 50 boolits I thought were acceptable. Oh yeah, every time I poured from the pan into the mould, the entire batch of lead would cool back down so I had to give it a minute or so to become properly molten again.

It got dark, I put everything away, and said to myself: 'that was fun, but there must be a better way'. Hopped on the old Internet, searched for "casting bullets". Most of the hits on page 1 were referring to something called 'boolits'. I figured that must be something different than what I was doing.

Well, I was wrong and stumbled upon the biggest resource in the known universe for humans trying to turn lead alloys into suitable high-speed projectiles. Now, I cast for 6 calibers, own about 20 molds, and they feed 9 of my guns, with 9mm to add one to the gun list, since I cast for it but don't yet have the dies to load!

I go cheap, lee all the way, including my furnace. Actually not quite true as I own 2 Lyman molds which account for about half my overall mold expense. Still, I've put about $500 into the tools, and maybe $100 into lead. Garage sales have been a cool resource for old fishing weights and solder rolls. Neither of those provide any alloy alone: they both just help the WW mix to ideal ratios.

I tell this story partly because it's fun to reminisce about the past year, but more so to illustrate the positive effect that this site, and the members upon it, have had upon casting. I haven't yet asked a meaningful question regarding casting that hasn't been answered here... With enthusiasm!

I have even taken to bringing most of my reloading, gunsmithing, tooling, and shooting technique questions here. Wisest bunch in the shooting world that I have found.

[BruceB]

On the rare occasions when I find it necessary to smoke a mould, I use one of the long-nosed butane barbecue lighters. The smoke coating is very thin, and DRY....and that type of lighter doesn't burn one's fingers.

I have experimented with pure-lead bullets on a limited basis. My .416 Rigby fires ten-shot groups at 100 yards that are under 2" with pure lead, which certainly qualifies as a deadly big-game load with its muzzle speed of over 2000 fps. In smaller diameters, I think a cast soft-point will do better.

Keep reading, and keep casting with an OPEN MIND to all the advice you will receive. Also, keep us informed on your results, because one never knows what might come to light in your trials and we are interested....