Casting season started for me today

[quickshot]

Well the weather is starting to get a little cooler and since I got a new mold yesterday I figured I'd just kick off my casting season a little early this year. Dusted off the casting pot, hauled out some ingots, prepped the mold and got started. The mold of the day?????? My new lee 309-150 fp! Well after about 5 hours of fussing, fighting,swearing,and head scratching I finally got this damn thing to spit out some good boolits. For reference this is my first Al. mold. I cleaned it, smoked the hell out of it, loved it, wispered sweet nothings at it, threatened it with the scrap bucket, whacked the hell out of it with the plate knocker, alloy temp up, alloy temp down, started from a cold mold, started from a hot mold, speed cast, sloooow casted, and I finally figered this thing out. My trick: start with a cold mold and the pot set to about 5.5 in the temp range and just start casting as fast as you can. Cull the first 20ish casts and then get after it. After all that I have 150 boolits ready for loading. Now that all that is over.........here are some ?'s I have. Is all this trouble I had today with this mold common with lee molds or am I just not doing something right? Anyone have experience with lar45's carnuba red and or 2500+ lube? Am I just longwinded and crazy? As you may tell this is my first journey into cast rifle land.

Well there you have it! The good, The bad, and the ugly!!! sorry for the long post but I guess I needed to spread some love this morning!!!


Quickshot :castmine:

[mto7464]

Getting the itch myself with this cool weather. I have three New Lee molds to try out. I think as much "fun" as they are I will take them one at a time.

[leftiye]

Quick,
The last Lee mold I broke in was just about like that. Wouldn't work for spit! Eventually, the durn thang started making boolits at a real hot temp. The good news is that on subsequent sessions it got to casting cooler and cooler, and is no problema now. My guess is that there is something real obnoxious that Lee leaves on their molds that has to burn /wear off. Yes, I did clean it before using it FWIW.

[Dave C.]

leftiye:

I believe that the reason it casts at a lower temp after several
uses is that the surface of the cavities grow a slight film of native oxide.
This in turn slows the heat transfer to the mould block.
What does this mean? The more you use them the better they get!

[Crash_Corrigan]

I pretty much use lee's 6 bangers as I usually shoot 45 Acp or 45 LC. I have a dandy mold that makes a 200 gr swc round for my 1911 and another Lee that makes a dandy 250 gr Flrn boolit for my Ruger BH. They are both vets and cast very easily. I keep my Lee 4-20 pot at about 750 or so and bottom pour and fill from back to front. I dump 'em into a 5 gal bucket of water covered with styrofoarm peanuts and about every 3 casts I cool down the mold on a wet sponge before cast number 4. They don't get real frosty and they dump out the mold real good. If I do not cool down the mold then the boolits slump and get bent really easy as I use Dan's Bullshop Sprue Plate lube on the top of the mold, botttom of the sprue plate and the alighment pins. This prevents galling the top of the mold and lets me keep up a hectic pace of casting but I still must cool down the mold from time to time. After cooling down I immediately run 'em thru my Saeco Lubrisizer and use Lar's Carnuba Red with a heater. If I wait too long then the boolits get too hard to size easily so I do it the same day. I cast just straight ww's and I include the strip lead also. They make a good boolit and do not lead if I keep the velocity below 1000 fps usually. The price is right and it is easy to do. I use Pat Martins Calfiornia Flake Flux when I smelt and do a little fluxing when I add ingots to the casting furnace. I use two Lee 4-20's at the same time and use the older leaker to feed the caster with a piece of angle iron of about 35 inches in length from a higher location . This way when I am on a "Bruce B" roll and everthing is working well I can put out a outrageous amount of boolits in a short rate of time. I need a cool day, some Tecate (cold of course) a couple of cigars and a big supply of ingots, some electricity, my favorite molds and a bucket of cold water. It is almost as good as sex!

[454PB]

Quickshot, you said "5.5 temp. range". Is this a Lee pot?

All my Lee pots cast best set between 7 and 7.5, depending on the alloy used.

[shooting on a shoestring]

Quickshot,

Yep. This last year I've bought 2 new Lyman 2 cavities and 2 new Lee 2 cavities. The Lymans both cast great boolit the from the first time they got hot. The Lees took about 3 to 4 casting sessions to get good. Now I can pick up either of the Lees, get them hot and drop pretty boolits without much fuss. I'll bet in a few more casting sessions, about the time you give up on them, your Lees will start working well.