First Casting Session

[sathington]

Hello CastBoolits crowd.

I've lurked for a while and am a member of some other gun forums. Had a hankering to start casting when I started shooting, but it took quite a while to get over my fears of it. When I put the thermometer in the pot today and it was up at 850 I almost had a panic attack. I'm sure I'll get used to it. Anyways, I bought my casting equipment more than a year ago, but just been to chicken to get started. I finally decided today was the day, and I got it done. It was a rocky start at first, but I think I got about a hundred bullets cast or so. Most are pretty gross, mainly wrinkly (I think my lead was too hot) but I found at least one that looked good to my novice eye, so I'll consider it a success. Here's some mediocre pictures:

http://i1301.photobucket.com/albums/ag104/mingus1921/IMG_20150109_144157213_zpsdfvg05mt.jpg (http://s1301.photobucket.com/user/mingus1921/media/IMG_20150109_144157213_zpsdfvg05mt.jpg.html)
http://i1301.photobucket.com/albums/ag104/mingus1921/IMG_20150109_151515465_zpsigsvcdsr.jpg (http://s1301.photobucket.com/user/mingus1921/media/IMG_20150109_151515465_zpsigsvcdsr.jpg.html)
http://i1301.photobucket.com/albums/ag104/mingus1921/IMG_20150109_151619066_zps54h3crwv.jpg (http://s1301.photobucket.com/user/mingus1921/media/IMG_20150109_151619066_zps54h3crwv.jpg.html)

The mold is a Lee six cavity copy of the Keith SWC, at least according to my memory. I bought it from a dandy fella named Jim Luke, who posts here I believe. Anyways, looking forward to sharing some pictures of better bullets in the future.

[varmint243]

Lead too hot makes a bullet frosty
Mould too cold or oil in the mould gives wrinkles
Accuracy comes from the bullet base, make sure it's flat and crisp
a little nose wrinkle hurts nothing for accuracy in a handgun

[Scharfschuetze]

Congrats on making the jump! You'll find it most enjoyable and rewarding and the positive feedback from a well cast boolit is excellent.

Hard to say from the photos, but my first thought was your alloy or mold was not hot enough, but at 850 degrees it should have been more than hot. Perhaps the alloy? When my molds get too hot, my boolits will frost slightly. Not a bad thing and certainly better than partially filled out or wrinkly boolits from an alloy or mold that is not hot enough.

Keep us posted and welcome to the forum!

[bangerjim]

They look pretty good for 1st time. You did not say what your alloy is.

Wrinkles are most times caused by lack of Sn, cold lead, and/or poor pouring techniques. Oil/grease will not cause wrinkles......I have proved it many many times.

If you are running less than 1.5 to 2% Sn, add some. Your wrinkles will magically disappear. A thermometer will help you get the temp you want......use it. Do not overheat you lead.....frosty's.

Keep practicing. The ones in the pictures are all shootable! Either grease them up or PC them and head to range!

bangerjim

[No_1]

Excellent work! Lube them, load them, shoot them then start over again.

[michiganmike]

Your one prize is a beauty. The rest look pretty good as well.

Learning to cast bullets is kind of like learning to ride a bike. I remember trying to learn to ride my first bike. Wobbles, falls, frustration - and then as if by magic I was rolling down our drive and pedaling. Before I knew it I was riding my bike to my friends, to the municipal swimming pool in the summer, to my part time jobs.

Learning to cast bullets I got frosty ones, wrinkled ones, bullets with rounded edges, ones that looked OK, but when I shot them didn't show up anywhere on the target. And then one day, the bullets started dropping out of my first mould shiny, smooth, with crisp, clan edges, no ripples. And they weighed out +/- 1 grain of one another. AND they even started to group nicely once I began to learn about powder selection, etc.

Casting bullets is in itself a very satisfying hobby. Going to the range and getting 2 MOA groups @11 yards with the bullets that were once ugly scrap wheel weights - priceless!

MichiganMike

[shoot-n-lead]

Those look pretty good for a first try.

That appears to be one of the Group Buy Keith molds...they make nice bullets with the full diameter front bands.

Keep up the good work...

[Cherokee]

Congrats !! Good first effort. Keep casting and things will get better. Make sure your mold is up to temp, looks like it was a little too cool. What alloy ?

[sathington]

Thanks for the encouragement. You all are some fine folks. I am using range scrap ingots I bought from a local guy. For the foreseeable future I'll be buying ingots, as I'm not ready to jump into smelting wheel weights and such. I don't know what sn is, but I'll research it.

[shoot-n-lead]

Sn is tin...helps the alloy to fill out the mold well and produces clean, sharp edges and harder bullets.

[JohnH]

That's the stuff addiction is made of. Swear off now. Send me all your lead and casting paraphernalia and go find yourself a therapist. I will be sure that those materials do not find their way into the hands of another wayward young man seeking to ruin his life with silly pursuits like boolit casting. I'm old enough and seasoned enough now I can handle it ;)

[sathington]

Alright John, I'll send 'em all your way.

Yeah, who am I kidding. All night while I was working, I was thinking about casting. I can see I already have the bug. It was a lot of fun, and just digging through them to find the "good" ones was quite the delight. All in all, I found 76 usable ones. I'm sure there would be more or less depending on other folks standards. But, considering that I'm also a pretty bad shot, it's probably not that important at this point. Which is why I wanted to start casting, so I could make bullets so I could shoot more, so I could get better, so I could make more bullets, etc., etc. Some pretty circular stuff. Thanks for indulging my ramblings.

That aside, this adding tin seems interesting. I did notice that some of the edges were not as crisp as the ones you see from fine commercial castings as well as the stuff posted here. Obviously, it probably has much to do with my novicity, but perhaps the tin would help. I'm using a Lee 20pound pot, so any thoughts as to how I should add some tin. Or thoughts that I shouldn't. Any advice appreciated and thanks for all encouragement. If it's not too much, I'll post round two, which should be next week.

[leebuilder]

Nice work. It is alot of fun. And even more rewarding seeing them hit the bullseye. Casting its self is relaxing and i enjoy making stuff.
It is priceless from tire weight or scrap to pot, to the mould, to target.
good luck

[Seeker]

I hope mine look as good as yours if and when I can finally get started casting. I have everything I need now except for the weather. I have no place to set up for casting indoors and it is 1.5 degrees out side right now.

[WHITETAIL]

sat, Welcome to the forum!
You will get better with more time melting.
No one gets better without practice.
I do not care if its golf or tennis, the more you try
the better you will be.
It took me along time to get realy good boolits.
And I am still lerning from the great people here.
Do tell anyone but I have been at this for 30+ years.:castmine:

[kens]

Lead too hot makes a bullet frosty
Mould too cold or oil in the mould gives wrinkles
Accuracy comes from the bullet base, make sure it's flat and crisp
a little nose wrinkle hurts nothing for accuracy in a handgun
+1
and a cold mold won't have sharp crisp edges, nor good fill out.
Tin is good to have but not required to get good boolits.
Tin can make it easier to get fewer culls in a session.
Some days the equinox & stars is not aligned you won't get any good boolits. its just an aquarious thing.

[JohnH]

My first question would actually be how did/do you preheat your mould. If you are not preheating, but depending only on the heat of the melt to get the mould up to temp, then 100 or so boolits ain't enough to get the job done, especially with a 6 banger. Use a hot plate if need be. I always lay my moulds on the lead pot when I turn it on. Don't hold back, go for the gusto. When you cast, cast till your back hurts and then cast for at least 30 more minutes. An average casting session for me runs about 2 hours and with two double cavity moulds I generally turn out between 500-600 boolits. A quick glance at each drop to be sure the boolits look decent and keep going (you can look at them while the sprues cool) Until you reach a good operating temperature, everything is working against you and once you get to temp, you want to work steadily at it while you're in the sweet zone. I use a Lee 20 pounder too. I make my ingots using the cast iron corn bread pans, the ingot looks like a small ear of corn split in half and weigh about 1 pound on average. (there are two sizes of these you'll find at flea markets, the smaller ones only weigh about 6 oz.) I keep a stack of 20 or thirty of these on one side of the pot, and once I get started, I lay one on the pot so it preheats. As the lead level drops about 1/2" to 3/4" as you cast, take a pair of needle nose pliers and put that ingot into the pot and lay another in it's place. That way you can minimize the temperature swings of the melt as metal is added back and at the same time, you can keep your casting rythem even. I cast with two molds at a time, the alternate empty, refill, set down pick the other up allows for the sprues to cool well before cutting and helps keep my arthritic hands from aching as a result of constantly gripping the mould handles. Casting is actually a quite forgiving process. If it weren't we wouldn't get such good results so easily. It is not so much at art of the mastering the unknown as the art of consistency. Work to get to the sweet spot (good operating temp and rythem) work as long as you can in the sweet spot, when you tire and begin to fumble as a result of tiredness, stop. There will be plenty of time to cull after the session is over, and the longer you work in the sweet spot, the fewer culls you'll have.

[sathington]

That's great advice John. I think I understand what you're saying about the sweet spot. I had read about the relationship between the heat of your alloy and the heat of your mold, but it didn't make that much sense until I tried it.

I did use a hot plate to warm my mold, but I think I babied it a bit to much. I thought it was "ready" when it was pleasantly warm to the touch. I see now that it must be hotter.

All this conversation is really great. I'm pretty excited for my next session.

[bangerjim]

I run my molds up to FULL CASTING TEMP on the hotplate B4 starting. NOT....NOT "pleasantly warm to the touch"!!!!! (You would get a 2nd degree burn real fast if you touched MY preheated molds!) Doing that and having ~2% Sn and correct casting temp of the alloy I am using, I can get perfect boolits on the 1st drop. Every time. No casting dozens and throwing them back in the pot to heat up the mold as back in the "olden golden daze".


I PC all my boolits and a few frosties are not bad. Makes the PC stick even better! But you do not want to run you alloy too hot or you will burn off all you Sn. Use a pea sized piece of beeswax to reduce the Sn back in. Your pot surface will be mirror bright like magic! Just stir it in. If it flares up, you are too hot. Nice thing about beeswax is it flashes at a much higher temp than candle wax or parafin. And smells really nice! If you just skim off that dull stuff, you are loosing any Sn you may have in there.

And you can preheat all you feed ingots on the plate to shorten the cycle time when adding more to your casting pot.

Range scrap can be all over the map. I would definitely add some Sn to your mix. Add a little. Cast a few and see if the edges get sharper. It only takes a little bit. 2% Sn for a 20# load is only around 6 oz......not a lot. Worth the trouble. Do not over do it and waste valuable Sn....it costs around $10/# around here on S&S. Sn adds very little to the overall hardness. Sb is where you get the hardness. If you do not have a real hardness tester, you do know about the artist's pencil test right? Do a search on here.

If you do not know the chemical symbols we on here use all the time for various metals, find a chemical periodical chart on google and print it out.

banger

[kens]

JohnH
that a good posting, really it is about getting a rythem and casting withit. A newbie caster won't find that rythem for awhile but he will find it.
I cast with a single mold and I always got frosted boolits I keep my rythem moving along and accept the frosted look.
I also water drop everything. I have quit using soft towel to let them cool. Water dropping is so much faster and easier than air cooling even for soft lead.

[TXGunNut]

Welcome and congrats on your first casting session. I think you need a little more heat in your moulds but the other possible causes are worth looking into as well. Quite honestly all the boolits in your pics will probably shoot just fine but if you want to throw them back in the pot and try again, practice will improve your technique and sometimes a mould seems to get better with time as well.
Good job and thanks for posting, keep us posted on your progress.

[sathington]

A brief update for those who are interested.

A minor tragedy befell me. I realized as I was cleaning things up that I had boogered up one of the alignment pins on my mold. I'm guessing that in the frenzy of the casting, I was less gentle than I should have been with this mold. I did some sanding/stoning, and I think it's back in good form. However, now I'm nervous about mucking it up again and I'm going to try the RCBS 250-K mold I have. It is new, so I expect little the first time, and I will also be more gentle. Perhaps I was overly ambitious to try a 6 cavity mold my first time. Well, live and learn. I measured my new bullets and some of them were as big as .449 which seems quite a bit over.

[Sticky]

Subscribing to help me learn more, great comments from many, thanks!

[sathington]

Alrighty,

I fired up the pot yesterday during the day. Same alloy as last time, range scrap, as I have lots of it. I decided I would give the Lee 6 cavity mold a rest and I would try and RCBS 44-250K that I bought. The mold was brand new, so I had to clean it and the like. I cast for almost 2 hours with some good results. After throwing the first 20-30 back in the pot, I kept the rest, which turns out to be more than 200. I had as much fun as I did last time, and probably some more. I felt a little more in control, getting in to the rhythm, trying to monitor the lead temperature more, just more breathing in general. I think I was holding my breath alot the last time.

That being said, I made a list of things I need to work on and improve. I did notice the bullets a little more filled out with sharper corners, but still not as sharp as I would like. Also, I noticed there was some smearing towards the end of the session. The top of my mold has a nice scratch on it, a bur must have formed or somethings. I decided I need to get rid of the little "sinkholes" that keep forming on the base of the bullet. I get a feeling it's related to my pouring but I'm not sure. And finally, I noticed I am sore as hell. That Lee aluminum mold is near weightless compared to this monstrosity. It did not occur to me that this would be a fatigue inducing activity, but I was definitely feeling it all last night and still today. Perhaps I should look for more aluminum molds.

Well, again, any advice, criticism, comments about how handsome I probably am are appreciated. Here's some pictures of the results, as well as the smear. Not sure if it's a big deal or not.

http://i1301.photobucket.com/albums/ag104/mingus1921/Mobile%20Uploads/IMG_20150114_132142781_zpsanliqssv.jpg (http://s1301.photobucket.com/user/mingus1921/media/Mobile%20Uploads/IMG_20150114_132142781_zpsanliqssv.jpg.html)

http://i1301.photobucket.com/albums/ag104/mingus1921/Mobile%20Uploads/IMG_20150114_132151744_zpshepejnjk.jpg (http://s1301.photobucket.com/user/mingus1921/media/Mobile%20Uploads/IMG_20150114_132151744_zpshepejnjk.jpg.html)

http://i1301.photobucket.com/albums/ag104/mingus1921/Mobile%20Uploads/IMG_20150115_093511109_zpssq8ydur1.jpg (http://s1301.photobucket.com/user/mingus1921/media/Mobile%20Uploads/IMG_20150115_093511109_zpssq8ydur1.jpg.html)

http://i1301.photobucket.com/albums/ag104/mingus1921/Mobile%20Uploads/IMG_20150115_093452621_zpse1obaimn.jpg (http://s1301.photobucket.com/user/mingus1921/media/Mobile%20Uploads/IMG_20150115_093452621_zpse1obaimn.jpg.html)

[JohnH]

Over time, I've come to believe that the sinkholes are a tin/heat issue, I've never really pushed for an answer as in shooting them, I' can't prove they affect overall accuracy. That is both from handguns and rifles; I shoot a 44 Special, a 44 Magnum Contender and a 44 lever gun. I also see those sinkholes in 45 caliber boolits from time to time. Again, I've never thought much of it. I bottom pour and have also thought that it is a lack of sprue problem, meaning that there is not enough sprue poured. The boolit as it cools will draw metal down from the sprue. A lack of metal for the boolit to pull from, or the sprue cooling before the boolit cools would result in the same thing. As to smearing, there is a thread, I think it is in mold maintenance about using automotive air conditional oil for mold lubricant. It only takes a little bit, if you can see it when applied it's too much. Find the thread and follow directions. My cure for this is to have two molds hen I'm casting. The time it takes to empty, refill, set down pick the other up allows the sprue and boolit to cool enough that the metal will shear and not smear. There will always be tiny lead flakes from the shearing of the sprue, any which build up only attract more. Your sprue plate should not be over tight. It should sing free, but not be loose. Nor should it drag on the mold face. It's a feel thingy. Too loose and the boolit base will get flashing, too tight you get smearing and scratching. Too fast opening you get smearing. Several threads here have good info on removing the smears. Do so before using the mold again. Just my take, others here know lots more than I. Read, read, read.

PS... Good looking boolits, they'll shoot well.

[mjwcaster]

Well you only need a little warmer if there is no wind.
I have successfully cast on a 28 degree F day with little wind on my coleman stove.
I plan on bringing my pop-up canopy home from the range this weekend so I can cast next week, looks to be in the 20's-30's.


I hope mine look as good as yours if and when I can finally get started casting. I have everything I need now except for the weather. I have no place to set up for casting indoors and it is 1.5 degrees out side right now.

[robg]

what johnh said leave more sprue and slow down a touch ,as long as the base is good they we shoot well.enjoy it gets easier the more you do it ;)