I guess I caught the bug

[Deedurt]

First off I am very happy to have joined this forum and am looking forward to learning what all of you have and are so willing to share.

I am brand new to casting and am having trouble producing quality boolits. I purchased a Lee 2 cavity .452 - 255 gr RF mold. I cleaned, lubed, and smoked the mold as per instructions. My third attempt at casting (most successful) resulted in boolits that were hot enough with clean crisp grooves but out of round. Boolits that were cold, wrinkled, and shiny were round.

So here are my questions for the pros. Your help is much appreciated.

1: Are boolits that are goldish or slightly blue on top acceptable?

2: Why would I get out of round boolits with hot molds/lead but not with cold molds/lead?

3: Since I am casting strictly for cowboy action is .005" out of round a problem, could this be corrected by sizing?

4: I'm using anti seize with a melting temp of 1800, could that be a cause for misalignment?

5: I plan try "Lee-menting" my molds, will it help?

I apologize if my questions are trivial but I have yet to answer them by lurking around this forum, I keep getting side tracked on off topic yet very interesting threads for hours.

Any other advice would be a big help.

[Sweetpea]

Welcome, Deedurt!

1: Your alloy is too hot!

2: Which size is bigger, at the parting lines, or across?

3: I personally would toss those back at .005 OOR, what are you using to measure them?

4: What are you using the anti-seize for?

5: Lee-menting works, take it slow and easy.

6: Smoking is for meat and cigars, not molds.

Others with more experience will be sure to chime in, so listen and learn!

Brandon

[mrblue]

Welcome, Sit down some weekend, with a warm coffee in the morning, and cold drinks for the rest, there is a lot to read. But ask questions these guys know the answer.

[nhrifle]

Howdy and welcome aboard!

Couple things to do first. Take the instruction sheet Lee sent with the mould, put it back in the box and forget about it. Second, clean your mould again. I assume you are using the anti seize to lube the mould -- if so, make sure and get all that off too. Some spray carb cleaner should work.

Once it is clean and dry, get it hot again and lube lightly with either Bullplate (available from Bullshop, a member here) or 2-stroke engine oil. Follow the instructions for Bullplate and you will do fine.

Be sure your melt is fluxed well. Search the forum for information. Sappy pine sawdust seems to work best as it gets the good stuff back into the melt and all the junk out. You may also want to try adding some tin solder as tin can be a tremendous help in getting good results.

As for the oval boolits, I would recycle them. Be sure your mould halves are fully closed when casting. I usually give the handles a light tap when closing the mould just to ensure they close properly as they sometimes stick. It could very well be that the mould cavities are out of round, something that is actually quite common. There is information here about lapping the cavities and that may be the solution.

[Springfield]

Aluminum moulds tend to cast a bit out of round, especially LEE 6 cavity molds. .002 is the norm, no big deal as most of it will even out with sizing. For cowboy shooting they will be fine. If you bullets are larger opposite the parting line then maybe the moulds are no closing all the way. Hold them up to the light and see if you see any daylight between the mould halves. If so, find out why. Might be a burr or a piece of lead stuck to the face, happens all the time. Also, running the mould too hot will increase the out of roundness. Personally I think you just need to remove some of the burrs LEE leaves on the moulds. I like to take each mould half in my hand and with my sharp pocket knife run it along the far edge of the mould cavity and remove the metal there. Picture the cutter cutting the mould cavity. On one side of the cavity the cutter is cutting down into the cavity, so on the other edge the cutter edge is coming out of the cavity. The outer edge usually has a burr on the edge and this needs to come off or the mould halves will not close properly. I just drag the edge of my sharp small knife across this edge to remove the burr. Keep the edge of the knife flat against the mould surface as you don't want to bevel the edge of the mould cavity. I like to wear some 10x magnifying goggles when I do this also.

[mroliver77]

Yep, reclean the mold.
No smoke needed.
Preheat mold well.
Read and reread Leementing techniques and put to use.
Find a good clean flat metal plate and set mold on it before closing. It helps to align halves. I run my hinge pivot bolt tight enough to remove MOST play in it.
Very LIGHTLY lube alignment pins
Find out where your heat setting just keeps the alloy melted and run pot just a bit hotter than this.
Are you using "pure" lead? The colors sound like there is nothing added. You need some tin and/or tin-antimony added to pure lead to give it strength and flowability.

Keep reading here!
J

[snuffy]

Except you left out a couple of things. What's your alloy? What temp was the lead at, do you have a thermometer? Did you pre-heat the mold? What's your pot, IE, who made it-- capacity?

Lots of us have a hotplate right beside our pots. Set the mold on there while the lead/alloy comes up to casting temp. Otherwise, you can dip the corner of the tightly closed mold in the molten lead until the lead no longer sticks to the outside on the blocks.

The secret to great boolits is; hot mold, not-so-hot-alloy. To do this correctly, you need to KNOW your alloy temp. Not what number the thermostat is set at, but the real temp. I seldom cast above 725 degrees, most of the time I'm at 675 with wheel weight metal or the equivalent.

Smoke is for signalling other indians, or to hide in. Lee is stuck on some idea that all molds need to be smoked. The real reason is; most of those lee molds have some tiny burrs on the cavities, smoking them acts like a band-aid to allow boolits to drop free better.

[462]

Instead of putting the mould instructions back in the box and forgetting about them, toss them in the trash and forget that you ever read them. After you've done that, follow the advise listed above.

[nhrifle]

Instead of putting the mould instructions back in the box and forgetting about them, toss them in the trash and forget that you ever read them. After you've done that, follow the advise listed above.

I suggested that in the hopes that we could keep hazardous waste out of our landfills

[MrWolf]

Welcome and good luck. As you can see from the posts these guys know their stuff. I just keep reading and trying to absorb while I accumulate what I am going to need to start casting myself.

[Pakprotector]

While y'all are on the topic of smoaking( and pardon the slight hijack ), and mention the ability to cover for itty-bitty burrs, is it possible to fine-tune the size of the boolits slightly with a solid smoaking? And now for the why, first I am shooting an air rifle, and second it is a choked pellet barrel. It seems with just the right size I can get really good performance out of it, but deviate very far and it goes to heck in handbasket.
cheers,
Douglas

[454PB]

Though it's not a popular idea, I don't lube my Lee moulds at all. The purpose of lubing them is to ensure block alignment, and I do that by positioning them with my sprue knocker. Some of my Lee moulds have cast over 10K boolits, with no smoke, no lube, and they still work just fine.

[462]

"
Quote Originally Posted by 462 View Post

Instead of putting the mould instructions back in the box and forgetting about them, toss them in the trash and forget that you ever read them. After you've done that, follow the advise listed above.

I suggested that in the hopes that we could keep hazardous waste out of our landfills

Well, there is that nuclear waste site in Nevada.

[Wayne Smith]

You have a very good start and good advice. Please realize that your ultimate sizer is the barrel of your gun. As long as what goes down that barrel is initially larger in all diameters than the barrel you can shoot it. This is particularly true of revolvers and Cowboy shooting.

[chboats]

Deedurt - beware of this forum. It can do serious damage to your bank account. It is full of "I needs" and "got to haves"

Guys I think we hooked another one.

Enjoy. The casting can be as much enjoyment as shooting, well almost

Carl

[Deedurt]

Thanks for all the tips guys/gals.

I am using almost pure lead thinking that it will be okay with an estimated C.U.P. less than 9,000. I am using red oak sawdust for flux in a Lee Pro 4. I am preheating the mould on top of the pot and dipping the corner for about 30 seconds before I start. I have used a bright flash light to find a gap between the mould plates but have found that they are fully closed. I am using dial calipers to measure the boolits and found that the out of roundness is next to the parting lines. My smallest measurement is .450 and my largest is .454 or .455. It seams like the plates aren't lining up lengthwise.

Does that info give you a better idea of what might be wrong?

I will thoroughly clean again and try using some two stroke oil instead of anti seize for lube. If that still doesn't correct my out of roundness I will re-read the Lee-Menting instructions and give it a shot.


I sure appreciate all the advice and in hopes of being successful I will try to utilize it all, there nothing worse than a rookie that won't listen to the pros.

Thanks again

[454PB]

A micrometer is always better than a caliper for accurate measurements. Pure lead (no antimony) will always cast the smallest diameter boolit. I've checked most of my moulds, and with the Lee moulds, it's normal for them to be .002" out of round. In fairness, many of my Lyman and RCBS also cast out of round.

If you're going to use lube on the mould, use it sparingly. Any lube migrating into the cavities will cause problems.