New caster....some questions

[Jevyod]

Hi all! I have been doing a bit of reading on this sight, and Saturday did my 1st smelting session! I paid 75 dollars for 180lbs of wheel weights. It yielded very well, leaving me with 155lbs of ingots. That means about .48 per pound of clean lead. After looking at prices on ebay, I didn't feel it was too bad. Anyway, I do have several questions. First off, the tops of my ingots are rough looking. It seems like some "skin" came off the top and got poured into the ingots. I fluxed twice, and scraped all the impurities off, but it seemed to develop a skin right away. Does that matter or is it perfectly fine?
Secondly, what is the hardness of straight WW? And will I be ok shooting straight WW? It will be out of a 9mm to start with. Just wanting an easy shooting, cheap plinking load. I do plan on casting sometime for my 1950 Marlin 336 in 35 Remington. I am assuming I will need something harder then....maybe water dropping my boolits?
Thirdly, I have read the sticky on powder coating boolits and I am intrigued. From what I have read, it seems like gas checks aren't necessary with pc boolits. So is that a good option? Thinking especially with my 35.
Finally, how well does lead expand? I know it depends on hardness, velocity, etc. but was thinking if I shoot water dropped boolits out of my 35 with a velocity of 1800-1900 fps, will that even expand? Or would I be better off getting a HP mold? Or does expansion not really matter that much? I will be hunting white tail in the Pa hardwoods. Sorry if some of these questions are a bit elementary, but I guess I am a novice caster! Any help and input will be appreciated!

[Love Life]

Expansion- It is nice to have, but holes poked in organs=dead animals. Take that for what it's worth.

Hardness- Wheel weights can be all over the place, but I would think 11-14 bhn for straight ww is not asking to much.

Water dropping- Helps out, but lead work softens so you pretty much undo the water hardening when you size. Better size then oven heat treat.

PC- Not enough experience to help you there.

Skin on ingots- I can't picture what you're talking about can you post a picture?

Loading lead for the 9mm- There is a very informative sticky on it. Read it to prevent pulling your hair out.

[bangerjim]

I PC EVERYTHING! From slow 38/45 plinkers to fast rifle boolits. PC'ing eliminates the need for any kind of lube and from what I have read by coating the base, eliminates the need for GC's. I still use Cu GC's on my boolits cast for them. I cannot recover my spend rounds, so I cannot attest about what the back of coated end boolits look like. I just know there is no lead in my barrels!

I have a lot of experience PC'ing slugs and have tired EVERY method brought up here on this site. Still, after much experimentation, using the Harbor Freight electrostatic gun is the best and fastest way of putting the powder correctly in place as it was designed to be and a toaster oven is the best way of baking it to a rock hard finish. My slugs in matte black are perfect every single time and are beautiful to look at. I have had NO leading problems since I stopped using greasy 45/45/10 and other witche's brews for lubing.

I cannot recommend any of the other application methods, as none of them yield boolits that look as nice. They may protect OK, but people that see my loads marvel at them! And the other methods involve SEVERAL coat/bake cycles, where I use only ONE coat and ONE bake.

Nice thing 'bout PC'ing is: you can stop fussing around about the hardness of the boolit as much! The coating protects your barrel and prevents too hard or too soft from leading. I keep all my standard slugs around 10-12bhn with rifles around 14-15. Not a problem...........ever.

Any further questions, PM me.

good luck!

banger

[bruce381]

banger how is the smoke? much at all or like a J boolit? any smell upon shooting them?

[bangerjim]

banger how is the smoke? much at all or like a J boolit? any smell upon shooting them?

No smoke from burning grease any more! Check out the several (!!) threads on here about people's experiences from making and shooting PC boolits. It IS the way of the future. There is a TON of discussion for you to spend several hours reading.

Here is the latest one. ES GUN application is the BEST way:

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?209151-Powder-Coating-101-Electrostatic-Method&highlight=powder+coating

And it even may be a way around the "Nazi patrols" that many ranges now have about no lead slugs and J's only. But sorry, no ceeeeegar on the *******s in Nazifornia banning Pb.

banger

[littlejack]

Jevyod:
Welcome to the CastBoolits sir. You have lots of enjoyment ahead of you.
I surly hope you checked the batch of WW's that you bought, and made sure there was no "zinc" in with them before you melted and ingotised.
As for casting and shooting straight ww metal, I did it for decades. No problems. Then there was this rumor going around, that one needed to add about 2% tin to help mold fill-out. So, I went to the radiator shop and the fella gave me all of his solder drippings. I also went to the Good Will and St Vinny stores, and latched on to all of the pewter I could get. Now, I have all of the tin I need and a couple hundred pounds of ww metal. I can't really say that the boolits come out any better with the tin,
ButI got it so I will use it.
Regards
Jack

[1_Ogre]

Jeyvod: Welcome to boolit casting. You hit a lot of good points/question, good on ya. There isn't anything stupid except the questions not asked, remember that. We all started there at one time, so don't be shy.
For my 9mm I cast the Lyman 356637, usually straight w/w's. They work fine and no leading and I push em to abt 1200fps. I've found that on the AVERAGE, w/w's BHN at 8-12. It's a Dukes mixture because no one knows what they are putting into the w/w lead, so it's always an educated guess.
PC, never tried it. I just cast (for any and all handgun cals), size through a Lyman sizer and they work fine.
Keep up the good work, and remember: Trial and error is how we learn.
Lea47..

[Jevyod]

Yes I did sort them well! Sorted them all by hand. Then I didn't let my melt get above 675. I found 2 or 3 zinc that I had missed that floated to the top. I feel pretty confident that I was left with pure lead.

[littlejack]

Good on you.
I sorted a bucket of stashed ww's yesterday. I found 2 (Zn) zinc, and a few (Fe) steel. Now I need to start melting.
Regards
Jack

[mac266]

1- Don't worry about the rough looking top on the ingots. This is a result of being exposed to the cooler air when hardening. With the bullets you'll make, the entire contents of the lead will be inside the mould and not exposed to air. The only exception, of course, is the small amount of overfill sitting on top of the mould until you cut the sprue.

2- Don't worry about the "skin" on top of your melt; it's normal. Just make sure you flux and stir, scrape off the dross, repeat a few times. As long as you're doing that you're keeping the alloy about as consistent as you can. Again, the "skin" is from being exposed to the air.

3- Wheel weight lead usually runs between 8-13 on the hardness scale, which is just fine for pistol loads. When you move into rifle loads you'll want to be a bit harder, maybe somewhere around 20. That's usually accomplished by increasing the antimony content in your alloy, or just using linotype lead to begin with.

4- I don't know anything about powder coating, check the other responses!

5- Lead expands better than most high-tech, jacketed rounds. For hunting or self defense lead will work just fine, just make sure you check local case law on using handloaded ammunition for self defense (there is a theory which says some prosecutors will go after you extra hard for using your own ammo, but I've never heard of it in Colorado where I live).

Welcome to the world of casting! Have fun and BE SAFE!

[JeffG]

Concerning the skin on the melt with WW's... After fluxing with something like beeswax and skinning off the trash and dross, the surface should very clean and mirror bright. If you start seeing a dull silver 'skin' after that, that is likely the tin oxidizing on the surface. You don't want to get rid of that but add something like a layer of pine sawdust to the surface, which will act as a oxygen barrier and promote returning the tin back into the melt.

[Jevyod]

Does that not act as a flux if you put sawdust on? And if you keep lead in the pot when you are done, I am assuming you would skim off the sawdust before the lead solidifies? Also, what is a good temperature to cast at? I am getting my Lee pot today and want to cast some and see how they turn out. I have an RCBS thermometer.

[pmer]

You can shoot air cooled wheel weight pretty fast in your 35 Rem with correct sizing and lube and no trouble with leading.
If you do have some leading trouble, a piece of all copper cleansing pad wrapped on a smaller sized brush will remove it from barrel pretty quick.

It seems to me the mold will tell you the best temperature. When the temp is right the puddle on top of the mold should harden in a few seconds and the boolits will have nice sharp corners. Around 725* I leave the saw dust in mine.