Would anyone mind critiquing my casts?

[chutestrate]

Sorry for the less than stellar pics, but I think you can see the two groups I sorted out. None of the casts are great, but the better ones aren't too bad, I think. The bad ones have wrinkles. From my searching I don't think I want to go higher temps so I'm not sure what my next step is.

I have been away from casting for several months. I am using a 2 cavity lee mold TL358-158-SWC. In the past I've used 6 cavity molds for my 45, and 40 and it seemed a little more user friendly.

I am having fill out problems, but it seemed to get better when I used a higher heat. My thermometer is staying between 700 and 800. Very few of the casts are falling freely from the mold. I have to give the casts a good push with a screwdriver on the base to release the casts.

I'm wondering if I should add a little bit of tin to help with the fill out, or let my mold get hotter. I'm not sure of why I'm getting a shiny finish.

My pot is the lee 4-20, and the lead is range lead.
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[btroj]

Cold mould. Get it hot, keep it hot.
A Lee 2 cav for that bullet needs to be run pretty quick to keep the mould temp up. Pour, let sprue harden, cut sprue, dump. No stopping to look at bullets. Just go, go, go

[MarkP]

Clean your mold cavities using an old tooth brush with hot water and dish soap. Dry your blocks using heat and once dried thoroughly, smoke the cavities with a butane lighter. Carefully re-lube the locate pins.

[chutestrate]

Thank you

[geargnasher]

Alloy looks contaminated and the mould looks like it's either damaged around the cavity edges or has a lot of trash stuck to the block faces and isn't closing properly. Plus what Btroj said.

Gear

[chutestrate]

I'm learning here. What do you see that makes it contaminated?

[geargnasher]

I see lots of pits, inclusions, and the edges of the wrinkles look ragged. Just a cold mould with good alloy will show clean wrinkles and rounded edges, but yours looks like either it has a lot of oxide material mixed in, ash, or is contaminated with aluminum from wheel weight coatings. I assume bottom-pour pot here, I'd drain the pot, clean it with an SOS pad, and remelt your alloy in "smelting" pot and flux the tar out of it with pine sawdust and some bits of wax, then pour clean ingots and start over. You might be able to save what you have in the pot by taking a lot of time to scrape the bottom and sides repeatedly with a long tea spoon and flux a couple times with sawdust. If that is a six-cavity mould, you might consider getting a cheap electric hot plate and making a mould oven out of an old saw blade and metal can with a "door" cut in the side of it with snips. Preheating the mould will shave a lot of time/aggravation off of getting a six-banger going.

Gear

[chutestrate]

Thank you again. I can do that. Dumb question. When using the sos pad use water?

[geargnasher]

Yes, I'd recommend using water, reason is so you don't get the fine lead oxide dust from the inside of the pot airborne, breathing that fine dust is about the best way there is to get lead in your bloodstream. I'd also recommend doing that outside if weather permits, or in the bathtub.

Gear

[chutestrate]

Thank you for the advice. Pot is empty and cooling. I'll scrub out after work tomorrow night.

[runfiverun]

check your other thread in the test section.

[jonp]

Wow, did you come to the right place to ask that question :coffeecom

[chutestrate]

I cleaned my pot 3 ways from sunday. I also tried cleaning up my mold, but it didn't make a difference in the casts. Pic attached. I think I have a problem with the mold. I'm going to send the mold back to Lee.133199

[white eagle]

did you try adding a touch of tin?
looks like you may have a bit of fining going on
check the mold and see how she closes
check your handles make sure they are not loose

[chutestrate]

****. Forgot the tin, I'll try that as well. The mold looks good to me, but I am getting fins. I used the same alloy, and got these casts from my 2 cavity 44 mold. Fill out could be better, but no fins.

[roberts1]

the 3rd boolit from the left looks like your mold halves are not lining up. Is there a spot of lead on the mold face not allowing it to close all the way? Are the alignment pins loose?

[rockrat]

Kind of looks like the mould halves are not mating correctly, as "roberts1" point out. Also, mould looks too cool. I usually dunk the corner of the mould in the hot lead for about a min, after warming it up on a hot plate.

[JeffG]

The last picture you posted, middle bullet looks like some trash (inclusions) in the alloy. Also too cold on alloy and/or mold. What temp are you casting at? I typically run mine at about 725, but the mold needs to be hot and any trace of oil out of it. I typically heat it at least 350 before I start casting.

[Larry Gibson]

****. Forgot the tin, I'll try that as well. The mold looks good to me, but I am getting fins. I used the same alloy, and got these casts from my 2 cavity 44 mold. Fill out could be better, but no fins.

What alloy are you using? Assuming COWWs then it is antimony rich so add 2% tin and flux well. If range scrap then it could be even more antimony rich so add the 2% tin and see how it casts. You might want to add 1 - 2 lbs of lead to the RL to dilute the antimony before adding the tin.

I use that same TL 38 mould along with 3 41 TL moulds and a 44 TL mould. They all cast excellent bullets with alloys I've mentioned.

Larry Gibson

[1Shirt]

Lots of words of wisdom, most all of which I agree with. Emphasis on hot mold and consistency in timing.
1Shirt!

[chutestrate]

Thanks everyone. The alloy is a mystery. I have friends who give me scraps of range lead, and I've bought through ebay over the years that is supposed to be range lead. Just in trying different things I had the pot heated between 800 and 900. I tried heating the mold different ways. I know sometime it was too cold, or hot based on the time it took the alloy to cool on the sprue plate. I'm pretty sure I hit the happy spot, but I never hadf fill out that got any better.

I'm getting really good casts with my 6 cavity .401 mold from the same pot of alloy so I'm a little confused by the problem. I have tin which I will be adding today to try the fill out.

[chutestrate]

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If anyone is interested this is my pictorial of the process I'm going through. If anyone can see what I'm doing wrong please tell me. After looking at my pics I'm still thinking the mold has some issues. I did add 2% tin to my mix, and it seemed to get a little better, but I'm still getting significant seam lines.

I know my heat is too high in the pot but I was focusing more on the temp of the mold.

I will be ordering some pure alloy from rotometals to mix with what I have to make it a little better. I really appreciate all of the suggestions.

[wmitty]

chutestrate:

You have a mis-aligned mould; i.e. the mould halves are not lined up correctly. The second and fourth pics (from left) show this pretty clearly. Send it back to Lee, it never should have got out of their plant.

[chutestrate]

Ok, thank you for the confirmation. The other steps I went through were a good learning process. I appreciate the feedback.

[geargnasher]

Mould is terribly misaligned, could be a manufacturing issue there.

Your sprue plate is galled terribly and lifting up of the blocks badly making extreme flashing on the base. The alloy you have looks terrible, it needs a thorough sawdust fluxing or three and a whole lot less heat.

Things you can do: Read the sticky on mould lubrication and do that next time. Get the mould fixed or chunk it and buy a new one (easier). Read the multitude of threads on sawdust fluxing, I think your alloy is contaminated, likely with zinc from the ebay stuff you bought. You may have to cast decoy weights or door stops with the alloy if it won't clean up. You're casting WAY too hot, try about 725F maximum. With a galled-up sprue plate, misaligned, un-lubricated mould, nasty alloy, and cold mould it's now wonder you're having difficulties. When you get all that straightened out, you'll have a much better time. Keep learning, you'll get there.

Gear

[chutestrate]

Thank you. That does raise a good question. What would "good alloy" look like in the pot? I am going to order some #2 lyman alloy and pure lead from rotometals to have a good baseline to start with.

[roberts1]

fourth pic from left... the top left corner of your mold block looks really rough. Dunno if you are using lube on your sprue plate or not but you definitely should. It will help preserve the mold blocks. A lot of people simply use synthetic two stroke oil. A little drop every so often on the sprue screw helps a bunch. I usually apply it after ive opened the sprue plate but before dropping the boolits to help avoid it creeping into the rear cavity and causing problems. Alloy looks a little dirty but if it is working in other molds I don't see why it wont work in that one. Definitely flux with some saw dust tho. Some have had luck changing their technique to get molds to close and align correctly. One guy always sets the mold on a flat surface, closes the mold looks to see if it is correct then shuts the sprue plate. Cumbersome maybe but it gets a $20 mold to cast well.

[kryogen]

1-your mould is screwed. trash it and buy a lee 6 cavity. its cheap anyway.
2- your mould is too cold.

[chutestrate]

New mold on the way. Going with 6 cavities this time.

[kryogen]

New mold on the way. Going with 6 cavities this time.

I like the lee 6 cavity molds. I have 5 and all have been working flawlessly since the start. Absolutely no issues. Just have a few set of handles and switch to your most used molds.

It's already slow enough to cast with a 6 bullet mould, I couldnt do it with less.

[chutestrate]

As always everyone thank you for your time and experience. I'll be fluxing/reducing/smelting whatever with sawdust in the near future.

[Swede44mag]

I don't remember the temp but I had to melt at a lower temp to get the zinc to come to the top and skim off.
If the melt is too hot the zinc will mix with the lead and give nasty looking boolits.
Someone who knows the temp please let chutestrate know.

[chutestrate]

The cottage cheese on top of my lead is confusing to me. I'm not sure if that is zinc or good stuff I want to mix back in. The sawdust may help me with that.

[geargnasher]

Yep, the sawdust will sort it out for you. If, after sawdusting and pouring ladlefulls of alloy through the charring layer of sawdust repeatedly until it starts turning to ash, skimming, and repeating, cut the temp down to about 620 F or so and see if there isn't a separate layer of silvery liquid swimming around on the surface. If there is, that's zinc being "frozen out". You can sorta skim it off, it's like an oil slick on water. Or, the junk on top may just be loads of metal oxides that you didn't get reduced back into the mix previously. That dull grey cast and stiff-looking flow to the sprue in your picture reeks of zinc contamination.

Gear

[kryogen]

oh jeez you cast at 950F, what did you put in that thing at 950F? If there was any zinc WW they melted in.... yup, looks like zinc floating on top.

Had this happen to a pot outdoors. I just cooled, and skimmed, and re-heated a bit, skimmed, cooled, skimmed....
Then fluxed with craploads of sawdust. I ended up removing most if it when the sawdust just produced ash and there was no layer floating on top. took a while.

[chutestrate]

lol, that was just one of the temps i was experimenting with. I try to keep my temp between 700-800 otherwise my pot won't pour.

[kryogen]

lol, that was just one of the temps i was experimenting with. I try to keep my temp between 700-800 otherwise my pot won't pour.

I find that running the pot as low as it will reliably pour gives me the best bullets (with a hot mould).
Still havent figured what the ideal temp is.