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gray wolf
04-21-2010, 04:19 PM
I one the battle :drinks:

This is in relation to my other post about crappy bullets with Inclusions and what appeared to be dirt. The brass 200 grain Mi Heck mold was giving me all kinds of trouble, I could not cast nice looking clean bullet. They kept coming out looking like they were rolled around in a sand box, pocked marked and full of inclusions.
My metal was as clean as you could want, I tried different kinds of wax for flux,
cleaned my pot two times, tried a hotter mold, tried a hotter melt.
Nothing, Nada, zip I could not solve the problem. Now I have cast a bullet or two in my time and most times I have no problems but this made me crazy.
I had dreams about this mold and couldn't wait till I got it, and now I can't cast a bullet that looks good ?
OK so I took a break and cast a load of 32 ACP bullets from the mold that
Jeremy M was so nice to let me loan from him. Same metal same pot same everything. OH NO the same problem.
Well it all went away as soon as I stopped letting the metal go directly into the sprue hole.
I cast two and let the metal swirl into the mold and instantly got perfect bullets,
I did about 20 more--all perfect. Next cast into the center and got inclusions.
I could cast them good and could cast them bad at will.
Swirl the lead--no problem--right down the middle and got the inclusions that look like dirt.
So I switch to the Brass mold and had the same thing happen, swirl into the hole and good bullets. So from what I know it is telling me the metal is gassing and the none direct metal flow is allowing the air to escape from the mold.
So it's onward and upward. Thanks for all the help I got on this one, it made me think it through and solve the problem.
I hope it can help someone else it they are having the same problem.
I also got turned on to the saw dust flux that I like very much.
So a big Hooo-Raaa form me to you all.

44fanatic
04-21-2010, 04:45 PM
Wish I had some cedar sawdust...might make the smelting a little more pleasant.

Great lessoned learned and shared.

jbc
04-21-2010, 06:01 PM
another thing i have found is that when i hold the mold further under my bottom pour pot so the lead has more of a distance to fall through air that i get dirty looking boolits - my theory is that the alloy is oxidizing in contact with the air because the closer i hold it to the spout the cleaner they get??