Today's casting session

[Chris C]

Well, I'm as tickled as a kid at Christmas who just received his first Red Ryder BB Rifle! :D I sat down and cast about 135 bullets today. My first, what I'd call, session of casting. (I know that's nothing to most of you) I only tossed 10 back in the pot during the casting and after a really close inspection afterwards. I'm pretty darned pleased with the results. But I do have a question: Some of my bullets are frosty in places. Not all over and not all the ones with frosty spots were frosty in the same places. What's up with that? Either the mold is too hot and the bullets should be frosty pretty much all over, I'd think, or the mold is the correct temp and they shouldn't be frosty at all. I see absolutely no reason to toss them. Everything else about them checks out fine. Haven't done my bell curve to see how many are really keepers, but I'm really happy with my first session.

[Outer Rondacker]

Frosty looking bullets are not a problem. Frostyappearance is caused by too much heat. We are going to need some pics. Congrats. My first time I made about 150 or so. I was and am very proud of it. You should be too.

[toallmy]

Good job ,YOUR hooked , your reward is loading and shooting your own. It is a nice feeling to see your own bullets in a little pile.

[Cherokee]

Congrats !! A little practice will help, frosty is OK.

[bangerjim]

Bell Curve??????????? :coffeecom

You know this IS a hobby........not a job! Right?

As long as my boolits look good, no voids, flat bottoms.........I Powder coat 'em and shoot 'em! Do not expect your boolits to look like many of the pictures you see on here that are perfect hand picked specimens and polished to a high shine.

If you are preheating your molds to FULL casting temp (not just warm) with a hot plate, you will get perfect drops from the 1st one. I definitely do. I get sometimes <1% reject rate.

Frosty? Forget about it! No need to worry.

Have fun casting!

banger

[Chris C]

Okay, here is a picture...........just to prove I wasn't yankin' your chain. :kidding:

158917

The numbers on the left are grams and not grains. (don't have a digital grain scale yet and wasn't going to take the time to weigh them on my beam scale one at a time.) At least they seem close together in weight. Nice lookin' bullets too, I thought.............at least for my first session.

[Cowboy_Dan]

Not that the frostiness matters, but I have a bypothesis as to why they are inconsistently frosty. My thought is that the alloy stream is hitting the mold differently each cast due to a slightly different allignment of the mold and stream throughout your session. This would unevenly heat different areas of the mold, causing different areas at different times to reach frosting tempreture. Again, this effect will only affect your end results if you are chasing maximum accuracy at longer ranges.

Don't sweat the small stuff, I was right where you are about a year ago. I could still use some improvement, but if you keep at it the learning curve goes fast.

[country gent]

Some moulds may have hot spots in them where a small amount of frosting happens first. This can be caused by how the metal enters the mould. Depending on mould and material temps of alloy, you may be able slightly lower your alloy temp 15*-25* to help allieviate this.