Wrinkley boolits

[DCP]

Please help

I only get Wrinkley boolits


pot was 700 degrees with ww

102 grain lee 380 die- 2 boolits



I think mold is not hot enough?


So how do I get it hot enough and keep it hot?


Thanks

[docone31]

Lee Molds need to be hot. With your two holer, rest one end of the mold in the pot. They actually float. Give it about 30 seconds.
Try casting. If they are still wrinkled, try cutting the sprue, and let the casting sit for a bit. Letting the castings sit in the cavity increases the molds heat. Once you are up to casting temp, then moderate the temp by adjusting the speed of the cast.
Good luck.

[Russel Nash]

I will gingerly balance the mould and the mould handles so that the mould is actually dipped part way into the melt.

That gets the mould warmed up real good.

Maybe if you watched my hatcam video here, that would help:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTrD8buyIHY&feature=channel

The other nice thing about having a warm mould is that I can push the sprue plate over with my gloved thumb and NOT have to beat on the mould with a hammer or a stick.

I think some other guys will be chiming in, in a minute or two to tell you about degreaseing the mould. For that I use automotive brake cleaner...preferabbly outdoors.

[Matt_G]

+1 on all the above.
You could also increase the temp of your alloy. With my iron moulds I will run the alloy at 720 or 730.
Aluminum needs more heat than iron does. Try running your alloy hotter.

Another excellent way to get and keep your mould up to temp is to invest 10 bucks into a hotplate.
Got mine at Ace Hardware for 9.99 plus tax.
They are usually around 750 watts, so don't put it on the same circuit as your lead pot.
Especially if you have a 20 pounder.
That's pushing a standard 15 amp circuit too dang hard. :)

[machinisttx]

Fill your mold and cut the sprue, but don't open it for a few extra seconds. When you do open it, get the boolits dropped and the mold refilled again asap...and repeat. By doing this, you're letting the mold absorb more heat from the boolit and bringing it up to temperature a little faster. After you've done this a couple of times, speed up a little at a time from the pace you were using last time. Gradually increase your pace until the boolits start dropping without wrinkles, and keep an eye on them from there on out to see if you need to vary the pace.

[38 Super Auto]

Just about every Lee mold I have ever owned needed some work to produce consistently good bullets. I think most Lee molds suffer from poor venting. Many times, I get good bullets from 4 or 5 cavities of a 6-cav mold, regardless of tin content or alloy temperature.

I'd check the "Lee-menting" techniques to dress your mold cavities, and improve venting. You'll get more consistent bullets and better mold release.

:Fire:

[mooman76]

I don't usually have trouble getting the lee mould working good right off the bat excluding the6x which are a bugger to get hot. When you dip the mould make sure you get the sprue plat in there too or it cools the lead off quicker and you don't get good fill out right away. I also like to start out a little hotter at first until I get going good and I gradually turn the heat down befroe it gets too hot. It should take about 2-3 seconds for the lead to cool enough cut the sprue. If themould isn't quite hot enough I will sometimes pour the lead over the sprue plate letting it run back into the pot. I do top pour though which makes it easier I guess. Keeping it hot is through you casting speed and a smaller bullet uses less lead so it doesn't heat or kep the mould as hot so more heat is needed. Adjust as you need it. Have everything ready and close by so you don't have to slow down.

[MtGun44]

Increase the heat and scrub the mold cavities with a toothbrush and Comet.
No need to smoke the cavities.

Get some Bull Plate Lube from The Bull Shop, scroll down for link. Apply a TINY
amount on the bottom of the sprue plate and on mold alignment surfaces with
a Q-tip barely wetted. Mold will not gall, the sprues will cut easier and you will
be happy.

Bill

[shotman]

Kroil Kroil Kroil all you need

[Linstrum]

Everything that has been suggested so far is all good info, follow it and hopefully it will cure your troubles. Casting good boolits is not hard AT ALL once you get everything where it should be as far as temperature, cleanliness, and lubing of critical points all go.

If you still have trouble, consider the following from my own experience about some molds that were so exasperatingly finicky and cranky that I wanted to tie them to a rock and throw them back through the main office window of the factory where they came from.

First of all, I'm speaking ONLY about my own molds and my own personal experience using them.

In 45 years of casting with Lyman, Saeco, Lee, and a bunch of molds I made myself, if after first cleaning, lubing, and getting the mold and metal hot, and there is still trouble, every single problem with wrinkley boolits, cavity fill-out, lack of uniform weight, and rounded edges and corners at the boolit base and lube grooves have all been caused by poor air venting. The air has to get out of the mold cavity before the molten metal can get into it, and to make matters worse, as the molten metal starts to enter the cavity, it further heats up the air in the already-hot mold. That causes air pressure inside the mold cavity to go up enough so it momentarily pushes on the molten metal going through the sprue hole, which slows it down enough to interfer with fill-out caused by premature freezing. Wrinkled boolits are usually, but not always, from premature freezing. Contamination of the cavity surface with a volatile material like oil will form a thin layer of gas between the molten metal and the cavity wall, and that also makes wrinkledy boolits. MtGun44's advice will cure that very well.

The way I figured out there was poor air venting was very simple: I noticed that all the molds that gave me absolute fits had weak and shallow venting lines cut into the block mating faces. The molds that didn't give me trouble and worked great had deep and very prominent venting grooves cut into them. So I took one of my molds that was giving me nothing but trouble and cut the venting lines a bit deeper and wider and that was all it needed to work like a champ! No more trouble with wrinkled boolits, no more indistinct rounded-over details on the lube grooves and boolit bases, no more trouble, period.

At first I had done the obvious things like getting the mold hotter, getting the alloy hotter, adding alloying constituents to decrease the alloy surface tension and still did not have much change for the better in getting rid of wrinkled or indistinct detail in my boolits.

I'm not saying that cold alloy and/or a cold mold won't give troubles, they most certainly do, and PLENTY of it! But boolit casting can be done quite successfully over a pretty wide temperature range as long as the temperature isn't too low.

Now I even cut vent lines on the underside of the sprue plate, I cut an "X" that intersects the sprue hole in the plate with a jeweler's saw and all the boolit bases are now sharp-edged and the gas check heels are sharp and the right size so the gas checks have enough meat to crimp onto and stay put. Having good sharp edges on everything also makes boolit weight more uniform from one boolit to the next.

Have fun and good luck!

rl619

[Bret4207]

You have two temps to think about- pot temp and mould temp. Pot temp you obviously control by the setting and by blocking any drafts around the pot. Mould temp you control by your casting tempo. The more often you mould is filled with hot lead and the less time it sits empty the hotter it will get. The guys covered the normal causes of wrinkles.

[Pat I.]

Get the melt up to about 780 degrees and don't trust the dial on your pot. Pick up a thermometer.

[DCP]

Wow good boolits


You might think I was 12 again when I got some good ones. The wife just laughed at me and said "I thought you didnt dance"

90 % good. Then I took a beak


When I went back

I had some finning and they stopped falling out of the mold like at 1st

50 % good


Thanks for the all the help

[Bret4207]

When you have a good run going DON"T STOP FOR ANYTHING! not till the pot is empty anyway.

[Suo Gan]

If they look like raisins, clean the mold of all oil and see if that helps. Cleaning is especially helpful for new molds. I take out all the screws, remove the sprew plate, and give everything a good wash in warm sudsy water. I then bring the mold up to temp on a hot plate with a steel plate on top to dry it. Clean it good and see if that helps.

When I first started I had the same problem. Wrinkly friggin boolits one to 500. I filled coffee cans with the suckers. Zinc??? No. Alloy hot enough??? Yes! Mold cold??? No!! Mold Clean??? Bingo!!!

Man that should have been easier!
Good luck my friend.

[casca]

I have an old fashion hot plate sitting with in arms reach, if I get stalled or answer the call of nature , on the hot plate the mold goes.
also leave the next mold to be used warming on the hotplate I believe the hot plate will get as hot as the lead will >

just my .0009 euros

casca

[7br]

I generally sit my moulds on the edge of the pot when I start it up. This heats them up as the pot heats up. If I still am getting wrinkly boolits, I put the blocks into the melt. To me, the blocks are hot enough when the melt does not stick to the mould. It is kind of neat to put the mould into the melt and have enough heat sucked out of the surface to make an impression of the bottom of the mould.

Couple of tips I have picked up. Use the pink eraser on the end of a pencil to clean the mould cavities. Took out some nasty lube that I got into one of my moulds during a soft point experiment.

To smoke a mould, first you have to get the correct size rolling paper. Oh wait, that is a different subject. Wood kitchen matches or butane lighters work well. You want just a slight film of soot on inside of the cavities. Not sure why this works, but it has for me on a couple of occasions.

[lwknight]

A thin layer of oil or lube can cause wrinkles no matter how hot your molds and melt are.

[Linstrum]

The cause of wrinkling when there is a slight amount of oil inside the mould cavity is from the gas generated when the oil is flash super heated by the casting alloy hitting it. All natural hydrocarbon lubricating oils start to generate out-gasing at about 375°F, well below the melting point of boolit casting alloy. Having good venting will help prevent "oil wrinkling" because it allows the out-gassing generated by the hydrocarbon lube oil to escape, but of course the proper solution is to make sure there isn't any oil or lube inside the mould cavity to begin with, as lwknight and many others have already pointed out.

But the bigger picture, though, is it makes me sad and a bit frustrated when I read posts about beginning casters (and even advanced ones) here who go to absolutely enormous but futile efforts to cure their mould fill-out problems by doing everything except what needs to be done! Using 1000°F super-heated alloy, or using 650°F cool alloy, scrubbing out mould blocks for hours on end with all sorts of exotic solvents and cleaners, lubricating the sprue plate, de-lubricating the sprue plate, adding all sorts of expensive stuff to their casting alloy, using plain 100% lead, sooting the cavities, de-sooting the cavities, and on and on with doing everything EXCEPT WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE, which is to very simply spend ten minutes with a jeweler's hack saw or needle file and cut half a dozen vent lines approximately 0.020" deep and 0.040" wide into the mating surfaces of the mould blocks. I suppose this extreme unwillingness of casters to cut vent lines into a mould block comes from two erroneous ideas: 1- that casters think that every mould block always, always, always comes from the maker perfectly made and correctly vented, and 2- that they will instantly destroy an expensive mould if they even breath too hard on it, much less take a cutting tool to it! Well, I have been making moulds for 45 years and you're not going to destroy your cranky, finicky, un-useable un-vented mould by carefully taking a jeweler's hack saw or needle file to it and cutting six vent lines to the CORRECT depth and width to let the darned air out! Really, you won't!

Nearly every mould that I have ever bought has not been adequately vented! The only moulds that I have that came from the maker adequately vented are some older Saeco and Lyman moulds that I bought over twenty years ago.

Quite often I get away with casting using whatever alloy I find that looks like it will make good boolits, using dirty sooted moulds I haven't cleaned since I bought them, using 700°F alloy contaminated with who knows what, and my boolits come out beautifully just about all the time! I just about never have any troubles casting, from 65-grain .22s on up to 1930-grain 20mm slugs. Why? BECAUSE I MAKE SURE THAT ALL MY MOULDS ARE ADEQUATELY VENTED!

[Bullshop]

Linstrum
Thank you ever so much for your ventin on venting.
I am with you 100% buddy.
BIC/BS

[MT Gianni]

Like trying to drink out of an old time beer/soda can with only one hole in it or pour gas out of an unvented container through a spout.

[Linstrum]

Hi, guys, thanks for backing me!

Back in my drinkin' and smokin' days in the early '70s, down at my favorite watering hole I used to take "bar bets" that nobody could blow cigarette smoke into an empty beer bottle by blowing straight into the mouth from a few inches away and fill it up, and I won every time. I also used to take "bar bets" that I could fill it up with cigarette smoke by blowing straight into the mouth from a few inches away when everybody else failed, and I won every time.

Before something can go into an enclosed container like a boolit mould or a beer bottle, the stuff that is already in there has to come out. That stuff that has to come out is air. Smoke can't get into a beer bottle because there is already air in there, and casting alloy can't get into a boolit mould because there is already air in there. The way I used to win my bets that I could blow cigarette smoke into a beer bottle when nobody else could was I put a soda straw into the bottle, which let the air out!


rl674

[Bullshop]

I even vent the sprue plate on some molds. If a mold will not consistantly give a well filled sharp base I vent the sprue plate. Makes a world of difference.
BIC/BS

[Tazman1602]

EXCEPT WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE, which is to very simply spend ten minutes with a jeweler's hack saw or needle file and cut half a dozen vent lines approximately 0.020" deep and 0.040" wide into the mating surfaces of the mould blocks............... by carefully taking a jeweler's hack saw or needle file to it and cutting six vent lines to the CORRECT depth and width to let the darned air out! Really, you won't!

OK Lin you sold me. I'll gamble $18 on a mold. Got a .45 acp mold drives me nuts with fins till it gets really hot and even then once in a while. Can I take a triangle checkering file and just deepen every other or every third ventline that is already there? Mold is Lee alum and I've tried all the witch doctor stuff with it already, even threw some chicken bones at it one night.

Seriously though when I found this forum I had ONE aluminum mold, now I've got five (or hell could be six now...) And all of the Lee-menting techniques have worked extremely well. VERY happy not to have to spend $50-$100 for a new mold now although one of the group buys sucked me in.....GRIN

Never read about this before so we'll give her a whirl.....

Thanks
Art

[HORNET]

It doesn't seem to hurt to cut a vent between the cavities and parallel to them. Otherwise, the first boolit poured blocks half of the vents in the second cavity.

[Linstrum]

Bullshop and I independently discovered that venting the sprue plate is also quite often necessary to get the base and gas check heel properly formed.

What Hornet says is also quite true, multiple cavity moulds need a different venting layout so the filled cavities don't block half of the vent lines for the empty ones. I don't have many multiple cavity moulds but the ones that I do have I cut "risers" between the cavities like Hornet very aptly pointed out.

On the UNDERSIDE of the sprue plate I cut an "X" that intersects the sprue hole with a fine-tooth hacksaw, probably somewhere around 0.025" - 0.030" wide and 0.005" - 0.010" deep. It is best if the "X" is as uniform as possible since it does have some influence on the boolit base, although I don't get much of a discernable "X" cast onto the boolit base from the vent lines, and what is there doesn't bother seating the gas check squarely.

Years ago I had a 500-grain .458 Lee mould that wouldn't fill out at all, it always gave wrinkly boolits, rounded corners - the whole ball of wax of ALL problems that one can encounter with a mould, and when I looked at it and compared the cross-hatched vent lines Lee uses to the straight lines I cut into the moulds I make for myself I said to heck with the cross-hatching and carefully cut six vent lines like I use on my own moulds using a regular hacksaw, and all my problems vanished with ten minutes work. I vented all my Lee moulds and they are just great!

There is nothing magical about having exactly six vent lines, some small moulds I use less and big ones like my 20mm/12ga slugs I use probably a dozen. On one duplicate size mould I tried cutting the vent lines pretty deep to see just exactly how far I could go before it starting leaving "stick-outs", and I had to go pretty darned deep. I use that mould but I have to scrape off the "stick-outs" with my fingernail, otherwise it looks kind of like a fish skeleton.


rl675

[Tazman1602]

OK, This is a copy of a PM I sent to Linstrum last night as I decided I would risk one of my Lee molds and "gamble" $20 on maybe being able to make a balky mold work properly.

I had already done the cleaning, I had already lapped the mold, cleaned off all casting flash, etc. The only thing I haven't been able to do to this mold is get the sprue plate off and lap that yet --- but it doesn't have any issues in that area.

I was having issues with incomplete fill outs, finned bullets out of one cavity which was driving me nuts -- didn't happen all the time but I was culling a LOT of bullets every time I cast with it. It's the Lee 90290 452-230-TC 45 ACP mold and the bullets shoot very well from all my .45 ACP's.
_________________________________________________
Linstrum,

I am in awe. I have hassled with that one Lee .45 mold for a week and did post that I'd gamble twenty bucks and start sawing on it to get the vent lines deeper as you suggested.

I used to be a gunsmith....still would be if not for liability and used to hand cut gunstock checkering, no money in that anymore, too time consuming and no one wants to pay that kind of money but I still had all my tools.

I'll be a monkeys uncle if I didn't cut six lines deeper with one of my files. Not very deep. Didn't work, still casting poop, oh well Linstrum's full of do-do. What the heck, it's already ruined might as well cut the snot out of it and see what happens.................

That damn mold ------ and I'd of swore I ruined it, threw two dozen of the nicest bullets it's thrown since it was new...so I cast a couple dozen more and changed the pouring technique I was using, instead of mating the pour spout to the sprue plate I slopped lead all over the top.........got it hotter than blazes.............let it cool off.........

.........I would not have believed it if I hadn't done it but no matter how I pour, what I do, that blasted thing is throwing perfect bullets every stinkin time now.
_________________________________________________

You can get some files that are perfect for this from Brownells, I used the 90 degree V-file but here are links to these if anyone is interested:

http://www.brownells.com/.aspx/sid=2880/pid=0/sku/Medium_File

http://www.brownells.com/.aspx/sid=2882/pid=0/sku/Medium_File

OK I know:

http://i525.photobucket.com/albums/cc336/Tazman1602/worthless.gif


As soon as I get out and grab my camera out of the deer cabin I'll post before and after pics. This REALLY is a great technique and works if you're having issues

Thanks to Linstrum and Bullshop..........

Art

[Linstrum]

YUP! Don't leave Bullshop out of this, he has recommended cutting the vent lines deeper and wider in moulds and venting the sprue plates just as often as I have.


rl677

[Tazman1602]

Bullshop AND Linstrum,

I forgot to post the pics I promised of before and after vent lines on the mold that was giving me troubles were cut and now give me ZERO troubles.

Anyway here are before vent lines were deepened and after cutting the vent lines deeper on my .45 mold that was giving me fits.

Before venting there was NO WAY I could get rid of the flashing shown here:

http://i525.photobucket.com/albums/cc336/Tazman1602/Molds/BeforeVentLines.jpg

After vent lines had been deepened here is the way that "cheap" Lee mold throws them:

http://i525.photobucket.com/albums/cc336/Tazman1602/Molds/AfterVentLines.jpg

Sorry for taking so long to post these I just forgot about this post.

I also have another question. The Lyman 4-cav 358156 mold I just got (older mold) gives me ZERO issues but I did notice that between the cavs running the same way (up and down instead of across) there is a vertical vent line my other molds don't seem to have -- would that be one of the reasons newer molds need more venting, because they don't have that veritcal vent line? Just curious, let me know.

THANKS for the advice from both of you.

Art

[HORNET]

That vertical vent between the cavities is common on molds from 4 cavity on up. I've seen a couple that looked like they ran a 1/8" end mill between the cavities about .015 deep. Why they figured that it wasn't needed on 2 cavity molds is beyond me. Note that the lee 6 cavity uses a semi-vertically oriented vent pattern that accomplishes the same thing.

[Tazman1602]

That vertical vent between the cavities is common on molds from 4 cavity on up. I've seen a couple that looked like they ran a 1/8" end mill between the cavities about .015 deep. Why they figured that it wasn't needed on 2 cavity molds is beyond me. Note that the lee 6 cavity uses a semi-vertically oriented vent pattern that accomplishes the same thing.

ARRRRGGGHHH! Don't own one YET but soon will!!

Thanks!

Art

[Linstrum]

Hi, Art, I loath the words "awesome" and "cool" because they are way, way, over used.

But the difference between your un-vented and vented results are

AWESOME!

And the productivity you achieved is

COOL!

I pass along what Bullshop and I discovered whenever the situation arises, but the resistance to believing us is just astounding, most likely because a great many casters don't have enough faith in themselves to trust their abilities with a jeweler's file and/or fine-tooth jeweler's hack saw on a mould that cost what is an awful lot of their hard earned money. Most people at some point in their lives have majorly messed up something valuable they owned and are justifiably fearful of doing it again, but like I said a few posts above, when it comes to carefully re-venting a mould:

"You won't mess it up! Really, you won't!"

It would be great if permission from the Cast Boolits management could be granted for permanently posting your before and after photos as part of a sticky as excellent and quite tangible proof that venting is most often inadequate in moulds that are mysteriously cranky about filling out.

Thank you for posting the photos of your results, you cheered up my day! (I'm getting two teeth pulled in a few hours)


rl707

[Linstrum]

On the multi-cavity moulds, like has been stated so well by Hornet, they need vertical risers between the cavities to prevent blockage by filled cavities, and the vertical risers allow air to escape from between the cavities. I do sand casting once in awhile, and they really have to be vented adequately with vertical risers all around the cavity to let steam out that comes from the little bit of moisture in the greensand.

You know, I never thought about it before, but my experience in sand casting has been invaluable in using metal die-casting moulds, our boolit moulds are one form of die casting mould. Too bad all boolit casters couldn't do some sand casting as a learning aid for better understanding of what we do. It can be a lot of fun, too, my first sand casting was to melt down a bunch of old zinc die cast bicycle wheel hubs and old washing machine motor end caps in a big coffee can over a little bonfire in the backyard to cast a new radiator cap and gas tank cap for my old 1938 Caterpillar Twenty-Two Tractor I restored. The radiator and gas tanks caps were still available but cost something like $50 each back in 1970 and I just didn't have it after pouring new Babbit main and connecting rod bearings for the engine's crankshaft.


rl708

[Bret4207]

I have recut vent lines before. I've also basically ruined a Lyman mould be going way overboard. I'd suggest anyone wishing to try this go extremely slow and easy. VERY slow and easy. Often all it takes is following the vent lines with a knife to do all it needs.

OTH- I have ventless Lymans that vent just fine. Mould temp plays a part in this IMO. A hot mould vents better since the alloy isn't flash freezing in the vent lines.

[Tazman1602]

The advice given by Linstrum and Bullshop has been invaluable to me on my problem molds, invaluable I tell ya'!

I've done this on several other "problem" child molds I've got -- all of them so far have been Lee 2-bangers and ALL showed substantial improvement in performance after recutting vent lines. I use a little curved file I used to use for hand cutting checkering on rifle stocks and it works great.

I don't really have as much of this issue with my steel molds as much as I do with my aluminum molds -- I know some of you are members of the "he-man Lee mold haters" club and to an extent I can't blame you much as sometimes out of the box performance is lacking with the $20 molds.

For me though money is tight and if I can buy three-four "cheap" molds and fix them to work right with some of my worthless labor it's well worth it to me.

Recluse has a point too -- heat is a HUGE issue with molds. I now pre-heat all of my molds on a hot plate and that works GREAT.

For those of you who have Lee molds and are contemplating this let me give you a hint. Instead of cursing the fact you can't get the pins out to work on the blocks because those cheap molds are peened over to hold the pins in....................................


.................take the stupid bolt out of the handles........................

<GRIN>

Art

This forum has permission to use any of my photos' for their own use anytime they want........

[Linstrum]

Here is a photo from some years ago of vent lines I cut into one old Lee mould that gave me nothing but problems until I vented it. I purposely didn't do a precise job to demonstrate that moulds are darned hard to ruin as long as the vent lines aren't deep enough to produce whiskers and fins of metal sticking out of the side of the casting.

Click on the photo to enlarge it, it can be clicked on twice to get the largest view.


rl870

[HangFireW8]

When you have a good run going DON"T STOP FOR ANYTHING! not till the pot is empty anyway.

Amen, brother.

-HF