"Dirty" looking bullets

[Mark]

Please help if you can. I casted about 15 lbs of 429244's today. I tried a mystery alloy mixed with my usual ww's. I guessed the mystery alloy was linotype but I have no way to be certain. I mixed about 2 pounds into with 20lbs of ww metal. I usually cast at about 700 degrees. When I did this, the finished boolit looks dirty like if if there were specs of dirt in the alloy or very small air bubbles. I turned down the temp to about 600 degrees to experiment and the problem seemed to be reduced. Any ideas?
Thanks,
Mark

[Blammer]

your pot may need cleaning.

[bigborefan]

I have been casting bullets for over 30 years and I too have experianced what you are describing for over a year now. I have seen the same situation come up in previous posts and the same suggested culprit as dirt in the mix. Well, I have come to the conclusion it is not from improper fluxing. I've fluxed my alloy numerous times with just about every flux material that you can imagine. It appears when using my bottom pour RCBS pot as a bottom pour but when using a laddle in the same mix, the bullets appear alright. It also appears to get worse the longer that you cast. It also does not appear early in casting when the mould and alloy are not as hot. I have a book on bullet casting that shows this condition as trapped gas but doesn't tell of a remedy for it. I will just keep using the laddle til someone comes up with a better theory. By the way, I am presently using an alloy of pure lead with enough tin to give me a 1/30 alloy and I still get this condition using the bottom pour of my pot.

[454PB]

This question came up just a short time ago. Was your mould absolutely clean and free of preservative and/or grease?

When hot alloy hits a oily mould, it can form gas bubbles on the surface of the boolit that look very much like sand or dirt.

[Mark]

No question that the mold was clean. I have a parts cleaner dip where I brush the entire mold. Then it gets sprayed off with non Clorinated Brake and parts cleaner thatleaves not residue and dried with compresses air. The pot was cleaned about two casting sessions ago. It is a bottom pur pot and I don't ladle cast. Funny BigBoreFan should mention that this condition got worse as he casts. I could probably say the same except that it got better by casting at a lower temp.
Any more input would be appriciated,
Mark

[montana_charlie]

What do you use to lubricate your mould?
CM

[Bass Ackward]

It is a bottom pur pot and I don't ladle cast. Funny BigBoreFan should mention that this condition got worse as he casts. I could probably say the same except that it got better by casting at a lower temp.
Any more input would be appriciated,
Mark


Mark,

This could be a volume related event as much as temperature. Could be a slightly clogged spout. Say that as things heat, you get a more turbulent stream that causes more sloshing inside the cavity. Try reducing the mold height or the flow rate if that is possible and see what happens.

Bottom line is that you are obviously going to have to experiment some here to decide what the answer is. If you decide that you need to clean the spout, drain the pot and use the correct size drill with a pair of pliers or channel locks or something.

[BABore]

How much distance do you have from the top of the sprue plate, to the bottom pour nozzle?

When ladle casting, I can get a nasty looking bullet if I trickle the alloy in from farther out. Moving the stream closer to the mold eliminates it.

[44man]

I have read 1,000,000 problems with casting here and all are related to the bottom pour! :mrgreen: Why anyone thinks it is great is beyond me. You take away my ladle and I will quit casting! [smilie=1: The time and labor required to cast from the abortion of the bottom spout will allow me to cast forever without a bad boolit using a ladle. All I hear is SPEED, SPEED, SPEED like it will make the gun shoot better. I would rather have 100 perfect boolits then 10,000 scrubs!
Talk and post all you want about how great it is and how many boolits you get in an hour, I don't care. If a casting session is only long enough to make 50 boolits, I expect 50 that are perfect.
Cast some good boolits from the bottom and tell me how often you have to stop and get things working right again, no lying allowed, you won't convince me, I have spent over 52 years fooling with it trying to make good boolits fast. I have wasted more time keeping it running then it is worth.
If you study casting with cast iron, brass and bronze, you see every mold has risers. We don't have them with a boolit mold, only the sprue. We also do not use the high temperatures so we must work faster. The only way to keep a boolit molten long enough to fill as it cools is with a ladle held on long enough for the boolit to draw lead from the ladle, not from risers or the sprue.
There is no dirt in lead that will not float to the surface to be skimmed off. The crud in a boolit is from slag in the bottom pour spout. That spout is NOT as hot as the lead in the pot and will have all kinds of stuff stick to it and in it. A pot must be designed for a bottom pour like the big commercial things. Don't expect great things from a Lee, Lyman Or RCBS pot. The spout is an after thought!

[leftiye]

I feel like the proverbial guy with the one track mind. Oh well. This phenomenon plagued me most of my casting life. I made boolits that were 99% perfect, and it didn't stop me from making accurate ctgs..

However, about a week ago I fluxed my pot- the same alloy that has been giving me this problem with inclusions and bubbles- and without emptying the pot and cleaning it- with STEARIC ACID (also known as Ivory soap - kinda, Ivory is about 2/3 stearic acid). I went from wondering if I had enough tin to experiencing a smooth almost buttery casting experience. No more crap coming out of the bottom pour and showing up on the surface of the boolit, no more little voids on the surface either ("bubbles" referred to earlier). Since then my boolit perfection has gone to a higher level- better than I've ever done with anything except linotype.

Just for info, certain types of oil in your cavity will also case the pinhole surface voids, but generally they will burn off if you heat the mold up enough to get severe frosting.

P.S. Stir with a stick when fluxing. No comparison.

[Mark]

Thanks for the input. I am using NEI Lube. The mold is about 1/2 inch away from the bottom pour spout. In the past, that is the distance that aways worked well for me. I also "pour" pretty fast. Trickling the molten alloy always gave me poor mold fill. I will experiment and report back.
Mark

[targetshootr]

My ingots are never what I'd call dirt free but I've never seen dirt in a boolit. The top of the pot looks nasty half the time like it does when smelting so my theory is that the dirt rises to the top and leaves the spout clean. Just a theory.

:castmine:

[leftiye]

It's some kinda specially hard to reduce oxide, I think. You're right though about dirt etc. rising (we hope) to the top. Stirring with a dowel which has some Stearic acid on it (inserted through the SA floating on top) will both reduce oxides, and loosen crap so that it can float.

[GLL]

44man:

I am also a big fan of the ladle and do not own a bottom pour unit! I have nothing against them (other than price) but have never used one so cannot comment on the problems they may or maynot have.

I do know I can make a couple hundred perfect (or nearly so) bullets per hour and am very content with that rate. If I want speed/quantity I simply use a 6-cavity mould and my ladle. Working off of the top of the pot precludes most (or all) of the crud in my bullets. Start with very clean alloy, flux, and skim periodically and all goes smoothly for me. Each of my moulds has its own sometimes strange idiocyncricies and I find I can adjust to those with a ladle.

I have retired and getting older so the speed is no longer any great concern !:) :)

Jerry

[montana_charlie]

GLL, those are some nice-looking bullets.

Specifically, the shine shows they were obviously cast at the right temperature, and the surface of each bullet accurately mirrors the interior of the cavity it came out of. The only imperfection I see is a nick on the upper corner of the base on the far left bullet.
(But, we kinda expect imperfection from the far left...no?)

Now all you need to do is toss those pretty things in a plastic tub and swirl them around to dull the corners while getting coated with brown goo, then pour 'em into a coffee can...or Ziplock bag...so they can really get beat up.

Of course, if you were gonna treat 'em that way, there wouldn't be any need to make 'em perfect to start with...huh?

CM

[Lloyd Smale]

sorry guys but i say hogwash. I can cast just a good of a bullet with a bottom pour as i can with a ladle. With 6 cavity molds especialy. You have to have a pretty big ladle to pour all 6 cavitys of a mold and im sure the lead comming out the bottom of my pot is a more constant temp then start to stop for a 6 cavity mold using a ladle. A bottom pour does need some occasional attention but ive done enough both ways to know that you can have your cake and eat it too. A bottom pour run by someone that knows what there doing can produce just as good of bullets an do it alot faster. Another downfall of a ladle is that as you move from cavity to cavity theres less lead in the ladle and because of it less staic pressure that the cavity is getting filled with. If i run two pots and use one to keep the other full my pressure is the same every cavity. I casted many years with a ladle and preached the same hogwash but i would never go back to ladle casting again.

[anachronism]

I'm glad it works for you Lloyd. I gave up on bottom pour too, and now cast exclusively with the ladle. I suspect Mark may be seeing air bubbles, I used to have a problem with my alloy getting aerated during bottom pour. A quick run at pressure casting may tell if that's actually the case here. I dislike pressure casting because it can cause "spout freeze", but if the bullet comes out without the flaws, it'll be an indicator that he's headed in the right direction.

[GLL]

Lloyd:

Like I indicated I have never used a bottom-pour so am really not able to compare. Every time I save enough money to buy a Magma bottom-pour I either spend it on more moulds or they raise the price of the unit ! I have not been casting for very long but do know the ladle works pretty well for me for both fill-out and low crud problems. The bullet on the right came out of a 6-cavity mould filled with a modified RCBS ladle. I am not in to pressure casting so the static head is of no concern. I am very happy with the bullets I get using the ladle but would like to try a nice bottom-pour.

It does seem that crud gets trapped at the interface between liquid alloy and the bottom of a pot and this could get "sucked" down the pour spout and into bullets. Even with a lot of stirring and fluxing I find debris at the bottom of my smelting pots when I mix alloy or when smelting raw alloy components. If alloy ingots contain any of this debris it seems some of this might be trapped in a bottom-pour pot near the orifice. Does this actually happen?


Jerry

[Lloyd Smale]

I guess i should back up a little before i rasise to many hackles. If i was casting for a long range rifle that used very large bullets and was casting a single cavity mold i would agree that ladle casting might be the way to go for benchrest quality bullets. But most of my bullets done with a bottom pour come out plus or minus a grain and thats plenty close enough for me. Alot of bottom pour casting is experince too. You not only like with ladle have to get a feel for temperatures but also have to get a feel for lead flow out of your bottom pour orfice. Yes i get freeze ups especially when casting softer alloys but a propane torch near by makes short work of that problem. Ive Use the same 3 pots a 10 lb lyman and 2 20 lb lymans for well over 10 years and have never had crud plug my orfice. I do make sure my ingots are very clean when i put them in and dont flux much after that if ever. When you flux your acutally putting contaiminants in your alloy and id guess that thats where alot of bottom pour casters run into trouble. there is very little need to flux a bottom pour pot that your not allowing to get empty. I also one a month or so let them get empty and tip them up and scrape any residue off the bottom and walls of the pot. This works for me and im far from a casual caster. My pots are going at least 4 days a week and casting sessions are rarely less then 2 hours so these pots get USED! I have maybe one time each pot had to take the valve out and relap it as they started to drip but i blame that on just wear and tear not crud. I do know for a fact that i had more crud in my pots and more trouble with inconsistant bullets when i used to flux every half hour or so. I firmly believe one of the biggest problem causers in casting is overfluxing. If you doubt it cast 20lbs of bullets out of a pot that wasnt fluxed even once then do another batch and flux every 15 minutes and weight your bullets. I about guranatee that your unfluxed lead will give you more consistant weights and thats another problem with ladle casting. You about have to flux your lead or your going to get contaminants in your bullets. About the only fluxing ill do anymore once my ingots are made is to stir the mix with a wooden stick any crud on top just gets skimmed off and thrown in the smelting pot.

[44man]

Jerry, yes it does. I find a lot of dust looking stuff in the bottom of an empty pot and can't figure why it doesn't float. It sure is not heavier then lead! It must stick to the bottom. As much as I flux and stir, it will still be down there.
Lloyd, when using a ladle, as I wait for the sprue to set on the first cavity, I dip the ladle for more lead, keeping the level the same. However, I think a 6 cavity mold just might need the bottom pour and if done right and all of the work is done to keep a steady stream, I don't see why it won't work but I can't do it even with a single cavity. 50 or 100 good boolits and the trouble starts again. Clean the spout while lead pours out or dump the pot, clean it and start all over. Then the lead level has to be kept even which means pre-heated ingots ready to go. No thanks, I can dump a pot until I can't get any more in the ladle without a bad boolit. I will not be converted! :drinks:

[Dale53]

I can get excellent bullets by EITHER ladle casting or using a bottom pour pot. I haven't ladle cast bullets for years. I have cast commercially (for a rather short time) and while I haven't kept exact records I have cast probably 500,000 bullets over many years.

Bottom pour casting is like many other things. You have to do a bit of it before you learn how.

While I wouldn't quite go this far ("if I had to ladle cast instead of bottom pour, I would quit") it would be close.

On the other hand, if you prefer doing things the hard way, then ladle cast:mrgreen:.

The important thing is, whether you ladle cast or use bottom pour that you are CASTING. That is the important thing.:drinks:

I have many friends that do one or the other. They are still my friends[smilie=1:.

Dale53

[anachronism]

Wow. I use the same pot Lloyd uses, and cannot get consistent bullet weights to save myself. With my magic ladle, I can usually hold weight variances under 1/2 grain, even with 400+ gr bullets. But only with the "magic" one. :)

[Lloyd Smale]

Dale you and 44 man hit on some good points. ITs all personal preference. If i only casted a 100 bullets at a time id have to cast 3 times a day just to keep up with my shooting AT LEAST! People have differnt ideas about casting. Some cast to make the best possible bullet and care about nothing else. I cast because i love to not only cast but even more i love to shoot A LOT!!!! If i didnt cast i couldnt afford to shoot like i do. Its as simple as that. I kind of feel that if i had to cast an hour to get a hundred bullets it would be cheaper in the long run just to buy them. I cast bottom pour. I run 3 or 4 molds at a time i size in a star and load on 6 different dillon presses. If i took any one of the 3 out of the equation my shooting time would defineatly suffer drasticaly. Some guys dont shoot like i do and if a guy only needs to shoot a 100 rounds a week or only has the abiltiy to, whether because of time or availabilty of a place to shoot or because of money then casting a 100 bullets, sizing them on a lyman and loading on a single stage press is all he needs. Personaly 95 percent of my cast bullets are shot out of handguns and if a 300 grain bullet even varied 5 grains it would make a pinch of ### differnce in how they shot. That doesnt mean i dont go for quality. I dont weight every batch of bullets buy I ran three molds this morning a 120 9mm round nose rcbs a 98 grain 32 wadcutter rcbs and a 270saa rcbs and just for grins i weighted the 270s. Dont know why, i used a new alloy and just wanted to check the weight against the #2 that id been using and started weighting them. Dont know how many but i emptied a 20 lb pot just with the 270 (no it didnt freeze up or plug up) The average weight was 273. I use a digital scale (cause its faster) and decided to throw any away that were under 272 and over 274 and when it was all said and done i threw away 12 bullets. One of the went under 270 and im guessing that one had a void. Would it have been a flyer if i wouldnt have sepearted them. I doubt it but its possible. So I ended up with somewhere between 3-500 bullets plus about the same of the 32s and 9s in an hour and a half. To me that was much better use of my time then casting one mold with a dipper and comming up with a 100 perfect bullets. I spent another hour and a half sizing and loading the 45s. never did count them but im sure they will all be blasted up tommarow and ill have to theroreticaly start over. ( I have about 6 coffee cans of bullets allready done and sized out of that mold) Granted i get carried away. I have proabably a 1/2 a milion bullets sized and lubed on shelves in the barn. I laugh as some have been there for probably 5 years. But i get nervous as a guy never knows when something could happen and you couldnt cast for a while. Ive been going through hell with my back and it seems to be gettting worse and it feels good to know that if i needed i could get by for a couple years without casting. Dont think for a minute that my bullets are quick casted junk though. I take alot of pride in my casting ability. Im a much better caster then shooter!!! Theres no doubt theres a few on here that know more and can make a better bullet but mine have been all over the country and ive yet to have anyone complain. I just couldnt go back to ladle casting again. My time is more valuable then that. If anything id love to go to franks house and steal one of his magma machines and fill it up turn it on and go shooting and figure a way that it would dump right into one of his automatic stars so theyed be sized too. Then while im dreaming lets motorize a 1050 and turn them all on at the same fricking time. Ill have to wait a few years though as heaven is still hopefully a while away!!!!!!
PS ill put a standing offer up to you guys that fight those crappy lyman and rcbs bottom pour pots. Ill take them off your hands adn buy you a brand spanking new lee dipper pot and even a brand new dipper :)

[montana_charlie]

PS ill put a standing offer up to you guys that fight those crappy lyman and rcbs bottom pour pots. Ill take them off your hands adn buy you a brand spanking new lee dipper pot and even a brand new dipper :)
Lloyd, it's a good thing you included the word 'Lee' in that standing offer.
Without it, I would soon be the owner of a Waage pot, and you would be looking at a Lyman antique...with a bottom spout that only gets used to drain the pot.

Heck, I would have even let you forget about the new dipper...
CM

[Lloyd Smale]

Heck charlie i could buy me a new magma for the price ferguson gets for one of those waage pots! and then id be in heaven.

[44man]

Lloyd really hit on it! :Fire: I just can't afford the powder and primers to shoot as much as I like. Instead of pouring lead down range, (Which I would love to do.) I spend more time testing boolits, working loads for each, shooting long range to learn what each boolit will do and getting what I want to hunt with. Sometimes I only need 50 boolits of a new one to try. Once I have a load I like, I will make a bunch.
This retired thing sucks for money! :-? If not for the gracious, great guys that send me some test boolits, I would not learn as much as I have about what shoots best.
No sense for me to make 1000's of boolits, I could not load them! Those days are gone for me, no more overtime!
Then the other thing some of you don't know about yet. :mrgreen: There are not enough hours in the day once you retire to do all the work around the house that used to get done when you also had work all day. I wake up at dawn, spin twice and the sun is setting. I haven't even changed oil in the cars that needed done months ago. [smilie=1: The wife gripes about me spending an hour a day on this goofy computer too while the leaves pile up in the yard, there are 58 trees in my yard! :-D I need a real windy day.

[Cherokee]

I'm with Lloyd ! I started ladle casting 1969 and switched to Lee bottom pour when they came on the market - never looked back. Sure they drip when the moon isn't right but no big deal. I have three 20# pots now that work great and I get fine bullets from my casting sessions, often even the first ones cast are keepers. Majority are used in pistols but some in 30/30 & 30/06. I'm not competing at long range so my rifle bullet requirements may not be as high as others but pistol requirements are high - and I keep 99% of what I cast.

[Sundogg1911]

I agree with Lloyd. I have also had the dirt problem and it trund out to be a blob of crud/dross near the spout that couldn't be knocked loose with my spoon. Once I removed it, the problem was solved. Bottom pour furnaces need to be cleaned. That said...where does the dross go when you stir and flux? right to the top. The cleanest of the alloy is at the bottom, so if clean the pot on occasion you should end up with better bullets, at least in my experience. Ladle pouring is slow, you also ar pouring at different temperatures into different cavitys with multi cavity moulds. The ladle lead is cooling as you pour. with a bottom pour, your allow is coming from right next to the heating element. It's much more consistant even if you rarely stir the pot. A friend of mine and I did an experiment a while back. He cast with a ladle then I used the same mould with a bottom pour. out of 200 bullets (100 each) the bottom pour were much more consistant in weight. If you can do better with a ladle, great....keep casting that way!, but you'll never convince me.

[Sundogg1911]

geez....I really have to start proof reading or use spellcheck before I post! [smilie=1:

[Lloyd Smale]

no you dont if you start then ill have to! I allready get picked on for my posts for spelling and even sentence structure. This is a gun forum not a college entrance test.
geez....I really have to start proof reading or use spellcheck before I post! [smilie=1:

[leftiye]

Not EVEN wanting to be a yerk, BUT.... I flat LEAVE the range if there isn't something there that's a challenge (ground squirrels with a .22 revolter is better, rackjabbits (running only) is much better. If I'm not sighting in or testing a load, I'm gone! Couple of cylinder fulls, or mags spent driving rocks around and I'm bored. So I bring a lot of guns, shoot a few targets, and I'm done. If it's not shooting well, I quit. Go home and try to fix it.

Y'all might try not fluxing your casting pot (bottom pour). Add only lead that's just been fluxed to top it off every so often. Melt your ingots, rejects, sprues first in a pot that you can pour from (no temp drop when filling up your casting pot too). Keep ground up charcoal on top of both pots to keep the air off. Flux with stearic acid through the charcoal WITH A STICK, then pour. Pot only gets cleaner and cleaner.

[bigborefan]

Mark, Did you ever discover what your problem was with the dirty looking bullets? I have been experimenting with my problem bullets which sounds like it is similar to your problem. I am completely baffled. I have used a bottom pour pot for 30 years (initially a Lee and now an RCBS) and never had one problem with a bottom pour. What is perplexing is that every bullet that I cast from the bottom pour now has air bubbles, inclusions and what appears as a whitish marbling affect on the surface in spots, while using a ladle, they come out perfect as seen by the photo below. The one on the left is from the bottom pour. I tried everything that I thought would have a bearing on this. I've fluxed with everything including the stick method, stearic acid, bullet lube, Marvelux, saw dust and canle wax. I've changed the heat range from 650 dgrees to 850 degrees. I've changed the distance of the pour including placing the sout directly into the sprue hole and using the pressure method. This problem started last year and it happens with any alloy I use in it. Right now, I'm casting bullets for BPCR shooting and the only alloys that I have mixed for it are pure lead and tin (20- 1 & 30-1 alloys). Because I get perfect bullets with the ladle I have ruled out poor fluxing, wrong temperature, bad batch of alloy, problems with the mould and speed of casting. I even tried changing the setting for how much lead flows through the spout when the handle is lifted. It's the only variance between using the bottom pour and ladle casting. I probably shouldn't bitch about it since they come out OK using a ladle, but it sure was more pleasant casting using the bottom pour in the past. Below shows the inclusions but the whitish substance does not show up well in the picture.
Darrell
http://i77.photobucket.com/albums/j65/SSCamaro427/45-90Sharps014.jpg

[Ricochet]

The one on the left appears to have feathery frost-like crystals on its surface. I think the bottom spout could be contaminated with something, perhaps zinc.

[bigborefan]

Ricochet, The picture of the problem bullet is a little deceiving. In actuality, the bullet looks like it has slag in the inclusions and the whitish substance that rubs off looks like something from the fluxing agent. But what doesn't make sense is that when ladling, none of these characteristics are found in the finished bullet. I forgot to mention that I have cleaned the pot after each casting and it is clean as a new pot including the inside of the spout.

[leftiye]

Big,
I'm suspecting it's oxides that form in the pot as you cast. Cover your melt with crushed charcoal, maybe put ashes in first (ashes will form anyway, maybe not a big deal), then add a little stearic acid to (make lots of smoke) keep oxygen off. Try it with a freshly cleaned pot. I'm suspecting that with metal melted and fluxed in another pot, and this stuff on top whatever oxides (crud) there is works its way out eventually and if alloy is replenished freshly fluxed from the other pot there is no need to flux your casting pot. This keeps oxides from forming in the casting pot.

I have had this same problem for years, and have just solved it lately with this method. In my case, the stearic acid was the break point, but the situation continued to improve using this method of covering the melt. Didn't clean the pot either.

[bigborefan]

Leftiye,
Thanks for responding. I was hoping the stearic acid would have done the trick by itself but no luck. I was going to try a pot without fluxing but I usually mix my tin with the lead in my casting pot and I was afraid that without fluxing, the tin and lead would not mix properly. What I don't understand is if it is oxides forming in my alloy, wouldn't it be all the way through it? Why can I cast perfect bullets using the ladle and not by the spout using the same alloy? I think I'll mix my alloy in another pot and then try your charcoal method with that mix in my casting pot without fluxing. I've tried everything else. By the way, that stearic acid sure does smoke. I use a range vent fan for ventilation and I still get a smokey basement. Also, I noticed that my fluxing spoon was hard to clean the stearic acid residule off. I ended up using my bead blaster to clean it.