My first casting and a question

[PolarWolf]

Hello,

I've been reading along with this forum for a while and I thought I'd share with you my first results in casting boolits. These come from a mould I borrowed, I think it's a Lee mould. These boolits are 45 grains of pure lead, sized to .224. I'm not a powder shooter, so these go into my Evanix AR6 PCP airgun, and shoot rather nice even out to 100+ yards. I have my own mould on order, a 55 grains .224 from NEI Handtools. We'll see how that goes.

These are my first 2000 or so boolits:

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=11633&stc=1&d=1235297146

I've traded some lead for a Lee bottom pour melting pot which is a very nice device to start pouring lead with. No hassle aside from the periodic clogging of the spout. I do flux (using candle wax), but somehow there's still stuff in my melt which causes clogging when pouring. Is there some way to prevent this? It's annoying to have to stop pouring to unclog the spout.

My next "project" will be to cast boolits for my soon to arrive Evanix AR5. This is a .20 caliber model for which I need to find a mould (any suggestions?). Pouring .22 was fairly straightforward, is there anything I need to be aware of when starting to pour smaller calibers?

Anyway, thanks for all the information I've been able to find through this forum sofar. There's a wealth of knowledge and experience present here, and I hope to learn a lot from y'all!

Thanks and regards from The Netherlands

Fer.

[sav300]

Polarwolf,welcome to the site,may I ask for information about your air rifle?Calibre is .22 and I thought that a .22 pellet was for air rifles.Try CBE in Australia for a .20 mould.
castbulletengineering.bigpondhosting..com

[PolarWolf]

"Officially" the Evanix AR6 is a .22 (5.5mm) rifle. But Evanix uses a rather oversized barrel, it seems, so .223 and .224 also go through it without problems. My AR6 is standard and pushes out its projectile with 80J (60ft/lbs). It can be pushed to 100J (75ft/lbs) without too much effort. It requires heavy lead to stay under the speed of sound at those power levels, so 30 grains or more is required. You can't generally buy those chunks of lead in your average airgun store, hence the move to regular .22lr heads which are easy to cast and shoot quite nicely in higher powered airrifles.

Thanks for your suggestion, I'll have a look around that website or contact the guy. At least he accepts a creditcard or paypal ;)

[WHITETAIL]

:castmine:Polor Wolf, Welcome to the forum !

[Echo]

Welcome, PolarWolf, to the best board on the net. Some good folks here, and helpful beyond fault.

[runfiverun]

should think, nei could cut the other mold also.

[PolarWolf]

should think, nei could cut the other mold also.

Perhaps, except my experiences with NEI have been less than stellar sofar. Sofar it's been a two month process to even order a bog standard mould, I dread the process for a custom one. No, I'll take the alternative ;) Sofar there's that australian chap and a guy called "Veral Smith" who does custom moulds. I think I'll contact them for a nice .20 mould. I just need to select a design from somewhere.

Any suggestions on how to stop my bottom pour melting pot from clogging?

[Cherokee]

Welcome PolarWolf

Clean the spout of your Lee pot. I use some copper wire to run up and down the spout while it is hot - watch out for the hot lead coming thru at the same time. Then, you could lap the nose of the shaft to the hole using valve lapping compound. I find that cleaning the spout usually helps.

[PolarWolf]

Though I said my experience with NEI has been less than stellar due to the long process and little communication my mold did actually arrive today! It's this one:

http://neihandtools.com/catalog/224-55-gc.jpg

I elected the non gas checked version (i.e. plain base) for my airgun use, and I'm going to try and cast a couple of boolits tomorrow. So, a careful thumbs-up for NEI!