Have I missed something?......

[tomf52]

Can somebody shed someight on this for me? I have been a bullet caster for for over forty years, albeit there was a long twenty year hiatus. In all my time with this hobby I have gone though the same frustrations as I guess most of you have in achieving bullet fill out, particularly in the base areas of the bullet. I have tied different alloys, temps, techniques (in regard to puddle size etc.) etc. I have also read mostly every available post, viewed many videos and learned many different methods. The one procedure I cannot remember ever having encountered was the one laid out in the iinstructions that came with a new RCBS mold. That was to hold the mold sideways (90* to it's normal vertical position), place the nipple of the ladle tightly against the sprue hole and turn them together to a normal vertical position. Pause for a few seconds to let the cavity fill and them twist the ladle briskly away to it's holding position. An added plus to this is that there is almost no lead left atop the sprue plate. Yesterday I cast about 500 RCBS 90 gr .314 SWC bullets and and out of the whole batch there were only about 20 rejects and 8 or 10 of those were the "warm up" casts. I should have read the directions with the other molds years ago and would have saved my self a whole lot of aggravation. What puzzles me is the lack of mention of this technique on this and many other forums or did I miss something? I wish I had video capabilities as I think this would make life nicer for many of us casters.

[swheeler]

Tom you just missed it , on this forum anyways. I'm going to say less than 2 weeks ago pouring this way was described right here, it is also described in many casting books.

[ScottJ]

I've not used that technique because of what I read in Richard Lee's book about it.

He said you'll get a dark spot on the resulting boolit because you superheat a spot in the chamber.

He claims it leads to uneven shrinkage on cooling and makes the boolit out of balance.

Now, I couldn't get if he was talking about using that technique specifically with his aluminum molds or not.

[swheeler]

Look in Cast Boolits/Dipper & 2 cavity molds thread/ 1-15-10

[tommygirlMT]

The "Ladle Pressure Casting" technique you describe is as old as hand casting itself. I've seen American Colonial Revolutionary War period musket ball molds and dippers to be used over an open fire where the lead was melted in the dipper built as sets to fit each other to cast with that technique.

It works great with iron and brass molds but it sucks with aluminum molds. Also, a lot of people prefer to cast with a bottom pore pot instead of ladle cast.

[Heavy lead]

I have a couple moulds that respond well to this, well to the point I will do no other, I also will only use a bottom pour, one does happen to be an aluminum mould as well.

[405]

Oh ya, been around awhile. I remember reading about it I think in old Ideal printed material. If Lee doesn't recommend it -- is that why the Lee bottom pour has such a small spout or why the Lee ladle is nothing more than a pot srcaper or is it the other way around?? For most of my larger/longer bullets using the ladle to "pressurize" the melt is the best way to get full fill out including sharp bases.
I don't buy the Lee thing about a bad spot in the center of the base! Any irregularity of alloy would be quite small compared to the out of balance irregularity of variable fill out or voids.

[runfiverun]

he is talking about a hot spot forming from one part of the mold getting hit with the lead from the dipper time and again.
the twist method is how i started,didn't take long to figure out speed with the bottom pour.

[KYCaster]

That's pretty much how I use a ladle, but I like to leave a substantial sprue even after letting the cavity draw from the ladle for a couple of seconds.

Jerry

[dualsport]

Been doing this awhile too, but still experiment with different techniques. I just recently tried holding the sprue cutter directly against the spout on my Lee bottom pour, immediately started seeing the sharpest base edges yet. The downside is cleaning the sprue hole for the next cast, it doesn't just fall off as nice as a fat sprue.

[geargnasher]

Been doing this awhile too, but still experiment with different techniques. I just recently tried holding the sprue cutter directly against the spout on my Lee bottom pour, immediately started seeing the sharpest base edges yet. The downside is cleaning the sprue hole for the next cast, it doesn't just fall off as nice as a fat sprue.

It does if you polish the "funnels" in the sprue plate and use Bullplate on them.

Gear

[38-55]

Dualsport,
A way to get around the problem your having is... hold the sprue plate against the nipple of the pot.. pour your boolit.. twist the mold away and then pour a 'regular' sprue puddle on the already poured boolits.. Sprue will pop off normally and the spout gets cleared for the next pour.. Pretty simple fix..
As for the original poster.. I've found that when casting 'big' bullets ( big defined as 300+ gns ) the side casting technique is the best way to get good bullets.. Just my experience but the technique is a good one to have in one's knowledge base and tool box..
Stay safe
Calvin

[jtaylor1960]

I was taught to cast that way. I do leave a sprue puddle as I noticed when the alloy shrinks it would leave a void in the base.I think this technique helps to force the mold to vent.If the venting is adequate I don't think it would make much difference.Also as the mold gets hot it probably increases finning by forcing alloy into the vent lines.

[Bret4207]

I read about that method a good 30 years back. It works great with some moulds, others want a different method, an airspace drop maybe.

If Lee says it won't work, I'll be sure to try it!

[405]

For those who can bottom pour large/long/heavy bullets out of a Lee pot and get full/sharp fill out including sharp bases more power to you. For those who can use the Lee ladle and get same results with the big bullets more power to you. Not talking 158 gr 38 cal bullets or 45 cal roundballs, more like 500 grain 45 cal bullets.

[dualsport]

Thanks for the tips guys. Both ideas sound good. It's funny how even after thousands of castings I can still find a trick to make 'em better easier. Here's one I just did; my Lee pot drips, mess with it, but still the drip comes back. The top of the pot's base is an extrusion, has ridges in it. Those ridges make it hard to move the hardened drippings out of the way. I cut a piece of thin aluminum flashing to make a cover, now the drips land on a smooth surface and are very easy to push aside.

[giz189]

Most of the guys that shoot in competition and win, well at least some of them, prefer to cast this way as it, according to some of their writings I have read,gives a more consistant bullet for the long ranges{1000 yards} they shoot. I remember Paul Matthews converted to this method in reading one of his books, and I have read that Mike Venturino and I think Steve Garbe also use this method.

[Crash_Corrigan]

I have always been a botton pour spout Lee 4-20 pot user and never even tried the ladle method. However "the experts" on the BPCR forum swear by the ladle particularly with big and heavy boolits.

So I went out and bought a ladle. I was using a Buffalo Arms Co 695 GR creedmoor moldl. This is a single cavity mold. With 40-1 lead/tin alloy from rotometals I commenced to cast some boolits.

I tried the ladle and I was getting nowhere. Alloy all over the place and lousy boolits. Then I just sat down and tried what has worked for me for 16 years.

Heresy I know, but I confess that I used the Lee 4-20 as Richard Lee designed it and poured the alloy thru the spout and air dropped the silver stream directly into the center of the sprue hole. SUCCESS. I made sure to pour a generous sprue puddle and I watched as the dimple over the cavity got deeper and deeper as alloy was drawn into the cavity. When the color finally changed I waited another 5 seconds and opened the sprue. Only to find another perfect boolit.

If I missed the center of the hole and allowed the alloy to swirl around the edges of it instead of falling directly thru the hole into the cavity I got problems. The air could not escape completly and I had voids and not quite filled out bases.

If I hit the target perfectly and was generous with the sprue puddle I was successful and when weighed they all came in at or very close to 695 gr and all measured .511 at the base.

I had very few rejects and they shoot beautifully into less than one MOA at 100 yds.

I will keep the ladle for another time and when I smelt ww's but as for using it for casting........no way. I use two pots and keep the alloy temps stable and well fluxed and neither of my two Lee 4-20's drip at all with a pair of vice grips attached to the top of the operating rod.

In spite of what "the experts" say I found that air dropping with the Lee 4-20 using clean alloy and closely regulated temperatures works well for me on some the largest boolits anybody is likely to make. I was producing them at a rate of 3 a minute and cast a couple of hundred boolits in about 1 1/2 hours.

I must say that the rotometals alloy is really clean and easy to work with as compared to ingots made from ww's but it is more expensive.

I need to figure out a way to recover my boolits for reuse but there are no snowbanks here in Vegas.

[44man]

I've not used that technique because of what I read in Richard Lee's book about it.

He said you'll get a dark spot on the resulting boolit because you superheat a spot in the chamber.

He claims it leads to uneven shrinkage on cooling and makes the boolit out of balance.

Now, I couldn't get if he was talking about using that technique specifically with his aluminum molds or not.
The hot spot is true to a point but I only find that with the TL designs. The main cause is the small blocks and the aluminum alloy of Lee molds. It takes a few seconds to eliminate the spot when ladle pouring by keeping the whole mold at the proper temperature.
Waiting long enough for sprues to harden also distributes the heat around the blocks better.
I only use the twist method of ladle pouring on all molds and have no problems with Lee molds plus I make my molds with much larger blocks of aluminum. The more metal the mold is made from, the better.
Tipping the mold and ladle to vertical at different speeds with different molds will give different results with problem molds.
What you need to do is hold the ladle on the mold long enough for the boolit to draw all the lead it needs OUT OF THE LADLE and stop depending on it drawing from the sprue. The sprue cools too fast to feed boolits. IT IS NOT PRESSURE that fills the boolit when using a ladle, it is the ability of the boolit to keep drawing from molten lead as it cools. I will not let any boolit draw more lead from the sprue alone and I get a divot in the top of the sprue from only the sprue itself shrinking. No deep divots allowed!
This holds true for any boolit from .22 to .50 caliber and once you master the ladle you will never bottom pour again although those six cavity things might need it. I have no trouble using two, two cavity molds at the same time but I have no six cavity molds so I can't say. I bet I could make a ladle work though.
The best ladles are the Lyman and RCBS, I don't want a ladle that looks like a spoon with a spout. You can't feed the boolit with them. You can't feed a boolit with the bottom pour unless you hold the mold tight to the spout so that takes a very fine adjustment for the proper flow rate and one chunk of slag in the spout will stop you from good boolits. A ladle is easy to keep clear where a plug in the bottom pour will stop production and waste a lot of time clearing it and by then the mold has cooled.
I am not saying you can't make perfect boolits from the bottom pour but the equipment we use is not like the big commercial stuff so it just takes too much work to find what each mold needs, to adjust the flow and to keep the flow even and the spout clean.
My first bottom pour Lyman was bought 49 years ago and I never made a good boolit from it. It has seen nothing but a ladle. I plugged the drip-o-matic hole in my Lee pot.
No thanks, a good ladle, preparation before casting and I can cast a whole pot of lead with zero rejects, even boolit number one is perfect. Any reject is just my fault and I might get a few trying to get two molds going. I really need two mold furnaces and two hot plates.