JK's 429421's

[jimkim]

I have been trying to find the right temp for this mould. I usually cast around 7 on my Lee drip-O-matic. When I drop them from the mould they are nice and shiny, but they frost over shortly after. The alloy is WW's plus 6' of lead free( 97% tin) solder added per 10lb. These are aircooled. I'm only gonna' be pushing them around 1200fps. Any advice would be welcome.

[Lloyd Smale]

there shinny when first cast because there not cooled yet. When casting real hot and fast bullets will do that. escpecilly bullets with antimony in them. Nothing wrong with that. The best bullets you cast will be frosted.

[WHITETAIL]

Do not get hung up with frosted boolits.
Their is nothing wrong with them, just load and shoot.:Fire:

[Heavy lead]

Plus three, 99% of the boolits I shoot are frosted. Like my cake that way too.:bigsmyl2:

[warf73]

Pretty boolits there, load them up and shoot them.

[runfiverun]

mine come out a flat dull grey but i use 25% strap on weights in my mix and bout 1% tin.
in the 725 heat range.
i start out near 750 and back it down a bit then just mosey along, letting the sprue galvanize,opening the cutter by hand,dumping the sprue back in the melt.
then tapping them from the mold, there is a happy temp to the 429 mold where they come out fairly eay.
my speed equals 92 lbs of boolits in 12 hrs.
and it don't take much to go from the shiney to the grey color, probably just a bit more heat and time then you are taking.

[HeavyMetal]

A 6 inch ribbon of tin solder isn't a lot, unless it's a quarter inch in diameter!

As the others have said a little frosting is never a problem and, in your case, this is caused by the Antimony "coming out" as the boolits cool. Technically your not frosting your crystalising!

You can live with it, I have for years, or you can add a touch more tin.

In a 10Lb pot 1% would be 1.6 ounces 2% would be 3.2 ounces. Without knowing the exact diameter of your solder I couldn't even guess how much tin you have in the alloy.

I started adding tin some years ago because I wore out two Lyman sizing dies for my 45 auto loads. High Antimony content boolits are abrasive and passing them througn a sizer die leaves them with a very shiny drive band area. This is the reason dies wear and barrels don't because the dies take the "Initial" abuse and smooth out the Antimony crystals on the outside of the boolits which is what gives them the frosted apperance.

I'm sure this will generate some disagreement but I post this as my observation of casting clip on WW metal for years for my 45 ACP guns.

[Echo]

That's six feet, HM...

Lube & shoot them puppies. Any cast over 200 grains I call boos, not boolets. Smaller cast are boolets...

[HeavyMetal]

So it is!

I hate trying to read little stuff in the morning!

However if this lead free solder is a 1/16 of an inch in diameter ( or less) it still might not weigh what he needs to smooth out his alloy. I've never weighed lead free solder of any kind so I won't guess at this.

Weighing it on a scale and then adding it to the pot is the only way ( pun intended here) he'll
know exactly what he has added to the pot. By taking notes he can duplicate that effort in the future so he has some consistancy to his alloys.

Curious to see what he thinks on this.

[GP100man]

these shoot fine , straight WW / stik ons 50/50

8grs. of HERCO 1000fps & 20 grs of 2400 1350 fps.The 20grs of 2400 is almost too much for MY alloy though.

Shot from a Redhawk 71/2" barrel

http://i746.photobucket.com/albums/xx110/GP100man/th_102_0025.jpg

[jimkim]

The solder is an eighth inch in diameter. I don't remember who suggested the six feet thing, but it was on here. So far it has worked pretty well. I sized the bullets this morning. The ones in the bottom of the box were all shiny. I think I'll knock the temp down as I go, until I find a sweet-spot. I hate yo come off as fussy, but I've always been a bit of a perfectionist. You should see me in a shop. My motto isn't measure twice cut once. It's measure twelve times cut once. lol Of course I have a very low DEAD PART count.

[anachronism]

Melt 'em all down again & recast starting 200 degrees cooler. If this doesn't work, lower the temp some more. Take frequent breaks so the mould will stay cool. You'll want to use iron moulds because they heat up slower than aluminum. This should make your bullets shine!

[KYCaster]

It looks like quite a few of your boolits have poor fill out. That and the frosting can be caused by an over heated mold. If the ones in the bottom of the box were not frosted then I'd conclude that frosting occured as the mold heated up during the casting session.

Try slowing your casting rhythm substantially or cool the mold between pours, either with a fan or a heat sink.(wet towel or aluminum plate)

Like Anachronism says, it's harder to control the heat with an aluminum mold, especially the six cavs with big boolits. Alternating two molds is an easy way to slow down the tempo without getting too impatient.

If the frosting on the boolits you have really bothers you and you don't want to scrap them, just wipe them with a paper towel and they'll shine, it rubs right off. ;)

Jerry

[anachronism]

The really cool part about casting with big moulds is that they do not heat evenly. I just cast a bunch of 357s from a 4 cavity aluminum mould. I dipped the front half of the mould in the hot lead to preheat it. when the front 2 cavities were hot, the last two weren't ready yet. So I tried casting from the back forward to heat the rear two cavities without overheating the front two. Remember that the lead cools slightly in the ladle as you're pouring multiple cavities too. So I was getting wrinkled bullets from the rear cavities & frosted bullets from the front. After a while, it all leveled out & I started getting good results. This particular aluminum mould needs to run very hot, or the bullets don't fill out well & even wrinkle a bit.