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Thread: Something I learned last weekend, about temp

  1. #101
    Boolit Master


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    Quote Originally Posted by KuunLB View Post
    i didn't go through all the replies so forgive me if this is a repeat question. you mentioned pine sawdust. Would i use this with flux or without? Is the sawdust for fluxing specific to pine? or perhaps could cedar or other woods be used?

    thanks for a great article, lots of good info, definitely a sticky
    I use cedar with great results. Most prefer the high resin content of pine and the way it smells but cedar smells good too.
    Lead bullets Matter

    There are three kinds of men: The ones that learn by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence and find out for themselves. - Will Rodgers

  2. #102
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    Quote Originally Posted by cbrick View Post
    From "Ingot to Target" by Glen E. Fryxell - chapter 4.

    The benefits of sawdust are that it‘s a sacrificial reductant that can reduce any oxidized tin back to the metallic state, and it‘s cheap enough that the caster can use enough to form an effective barrier layer to protect the alloy from subsequent oxidation. What’s more, as the sawdust chars on top of the melt, it forms activated carbon, which is a high surface area, porous sorbent material that has a large number of binding sites capable of binding Lewis acid cations like Ca, Zn and Al. So it not only keeps the tin reduced and in solution, but it effectively scavenges those impurities that raise the surface tension and viscosity of the alloy (Al, Zn and Ca), keeping the alloy in top shape for making good bullets.


    Rick
    i'm actually reading this in pdf form, the writer is one well educated individual, making my head hurt but i'm getting alot of good info. going to be top of my read list until it's done.
    Famous last words: "Hey, watch this!"

    Straight shooters and deadbeats thread http://castboolits.gunloads.com/show...?263833-KuunLB

  3. #103
    Boolit Grand Master



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    Yes he is, here is snip from a post I made in another thread on Dr. Fryxell.

    In short, he is: Chief Scientist; Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Adjunct Professor of Chemistry, One of the countries leading scientists in nanotechnology, been published in scientific journal's to many to list, author of several books in his field, over 2,700 citations by his peers and far more.


    Here is an index to many of his articles, if you enjoy the book you should like these also.

    http://www.lasc.us/ArticlesFryxell.htm

    Rick
    Last edited by cbrick; 11-08-2014 at 07:24 AM.
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  4. #104
    Boolit Man larryw's Avatar
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    I sure want to thank all of you, especially Gear for the info here.
    I am reading a ton & printing a ton, so I don't forget where I saw it.
    Been loading for 40 years, just now starting to cast. I have yet to
    pour my first lead, got more reading to do. Just getting things
    together I need. will get a thermometer the end of the month.
    Thank's again for this info, it is much appreciated...

  5. #105
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    That's why we're here, Larry, to put out the good info with detailed explanations as best we understand it and dispel myths so everyone can benefit. Not all of us agree all the time, and there are many things that can be done to the same effect lots of different ways, but not all.

    Gear

  6. #106
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    Quote Originally Posted by larryw View Post
    I sure want to thank all of you, especially Gear for the info here.
    I am reading a ton & printing a ton, so I don't forget where I saw it.
    Been loading for 40 years, just now starting to cast. I have yet to
    pour my first lead, got more reading to do. Just getting things
    together I need. will get a thermometer the end of the month.
    Thank's again for this info, it is much appreciated...

    Awesome Larry glad to see you found castboolits. Can't wait to see your first cast boolits.
    Lead bullets Matter

    There are three kinds of men: The ones that learn by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence and find out for themselves. - Will Rodgers

  7. #107
    Boolit Man larryw's Avatar
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    Hey Chevy, good to see 'ya. You bet I'll be posting pics of 'em all over LOL.
    End of the month I'll have my thermometer & my little bitty lead stash will
    go away real fast LMAO....

  8. #108
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    Quote Originally Posted by larryw View Post
    Hey Chevy, good to see 'ya. You bet I'll be posting pics of 'em all over LOL.
    End of the month I'll have my thermometer & my little bitty lead stash will
    go away real fast LMAO....
    LOL cool I'll be looking forward to seeing them. Anyways this was this was my first try at casting. http://castboolits.gunloads.com/show...ever-yesterday
    Lead bullets Matter

    There are three kinds of men: The ones that learn by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence and find out for themselves. - Will Rodgers

  9. #109
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    Quote Originally Posted by geargnasher View Post
    That's why we're here, Larry, to put out the good info with detailed explanations as best we understand it and dispel myths so everyone can benefit. Not all of us agree all the time, and there are many things that can be done to the same effect lots of different ways, but not all.

    Gear
    i'm glad there are people like you and s-3, mooseman, and everyone who frequents the chat who take the time to answer questions us noobs have. I was about to buy my first lee 6cavity 9mm mold, i did a search on casting and found this site, i waited 2 weeks because i read about beretta 92's on this site liking .358 better than .356's and so after i learned more i decided on a lee 2 cavity .358 mold that i can use to cast for my 9mm and my .357. so yeah, thankyou for all your contributions!!

    i've cast my first ingots from WW's last weekend. and let me tell you i really enjoyed it. i can't wait to start casting boolits!
    Famous last words: "Hey, watch this!"

    Straight shooters and deadbeats thread http://castboolits.gunloads.com/show...?263833-KuunLB

  10. #110
    Boolit Mold firewhenready7's Avatar
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    Just starting to cast and I found the post very helpful. Thanks Gear
    Oh bother said pooh, as he chambered another round.

  11. #111
    Boolit Mold Mike9793's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by MT Gianni View Post
    A thermometer is a standard. If your shows water boils @ 300 F it isn't accurate. That doesn't keep you from noting you get your best bullets when it reads XXX and taking your melt to that point. Accuracy isn't really needed for most boolit making just repeatability. Pure lead melts @ 621.5 F so get some pure and see what it does with your t/stat. make sure it is pure but those are your reference points.
    funny this week I was casting .54 cal pedersolli mold and found that I was on 7 and was getting wrinkles turned it to 8 and dropped the mold about a inch from the flow tip and watched it fill to the top than tapped it slightly and once hardened open in up and I get a perfect bullet ever time. It took me about fifty bullets to figure this out but it works for me.

  12. #112
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    lots of good info here that helped me understand a few of the problms im having. i'v got 983434857687359834763 questions but i promice not to ask them all here now. there is a thermometer in my very near future. i knew heat the alloy, heat the mold, lift handle to fill mold, cut sprue, tap boolits out, refill mold. had no clue there was a good temp to cast at, or that mold temp played a LARGE part though i did notice many of my boolits came out wrinkled or not full and ended up goin back in the pot. for now im using lee molds, 1 is a .401 175gr for a .40 s&w, the other is a .356 125gr for a 9mm. those for the .40 fall right out but the ones for the 9mm do lot of sticking. i read somewhere on here about filling th cavities, cutting the sprue and drilling a hole in the boolit for a hexheaded sheetmetal screw and using a drill to rotate the boolit in the cavity to polish things up. also i read that maybe the hammer handle im using ain't the best thing to use for cutting the sprue?? it works well but could i be damaging the sprue plate?? or the blocks??

    thanks to everyon for all the info here on the site, glad i joined

    Joe

  13. #113
    Boolit Grand Master

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    A hammer handle is fine, but a small rubber hammer might be better? As long as you don't hit the blocks too hard it'll be fine.
    Remember that it does take about as much time on a hotplate to properly preheat your mold as it does for your lead pot to properly melt your alloy and bring it up to operating temperature (about 20-25 minutes).
    An easy way to find out the right heat setting on your hot plate is to tak a good guess at it and let it heat up while the lead melts.
    Once everything is up to temp, take the mold off the hot plate and fill it.
    Watch how long it takes for the puddle to freeze.
    If it takes more than 5 seconds, turn down your hotplate a little, leave the mold on it for 10 minutes, and try it again.
    If it takes 4 seconds, leave it alone.
    If it takes less than 4, turn it up a little.

    Of course, at operating temperature, you want to be seeing a 3 second sprue freeze, but you need to start with a little too much heat, push the first three drops aside, then start piling up the good-uns.
    Precision in the wrong place is only a placebo.

  14. #114
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    Quote Originally Posted by goodsteel View Post
    Watch how long it takes for the puddle to freeze.
    If it takes more than 5 seconds, turn down your hotplate a little, leave the mold on it for 10 minutes, and try it again.
    If it takes 4 seconds, leave it alone.
    If it takes less than 4, turn it up a little.

    Thanks I need to try this next time.
    Lead bullets Matter

    There are three kinds of men: The ones that learn by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence and find out for themselves. - Will Rodgers

  15. #115
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    Quote Originally Posted by hillbilly571 View Post
    lots of good info here that helped me understand a few of the problems i'm having. i've got 983434857687359834763 questions but i promise not to ask them all here now. there is a thermometer in my very near future. i knew heat the alloy, heat the mold, lift handle to fill mold, cut sprue, tap boolits out, refill mold. had no clue there was a good temp to cast at, or that mold temp played a LARGE part though i did notice many of my boolits came out wrinkled or not full and ended up going back in the pot. for now i'm using lee molds, 1 is a .401 175gr for a .40 s&w, the other is a .356 125gr for a 9mm. those for the .40 fall right out but the ones for the 9mm do lot of sticking. i read somewhere on here about filling th cavities, cutting the sprue and drilling a hole in the boolit for a hexheaded sheet metal screw and using a drill to rotate the boolit in the cavity to polish things up. also i read that maybe the hammer handle i'm using ain't the best thing to use for cutting the sprue?? it works well but could i be damaging the sprue plate?? or the blocks??

    thanks to everyone for all the info here on the site, glad i joined

    Joe
    Joe, welcome to the forum. I used to use a hardwood stick to strike the sprue plate to cut the sprue. I often saw many others here that used a welders glove to simply twist the sprue plate open to cut the sprues. I finally tried it, as I already had the gloves for smelting. It works! I always worried that I might be damaging the mold by hitting it, now no worries! I was being stubborn for not trying it before.

    As for the drilling/sheet metal screw process, it's called LEEmenting. It also takes some sort of abrasive as well as turning the boolit in the cavity. Many simply use toothpaste. If you have some very fine valve grinding compound, that works as well. I use 600 grit fire lapping compound. Don't spin it too fast, you only want to remove the burrs in the mold cavity that are holding onto the boolit.

    As for heat of the alloy, intil you get a thermometer, you won't know what the numbers on your furnaces dial actually mean. ((This is assuming that you are using some sort of electric casting furnace.)) You should never need to go above 750 degrees with a wheel weight alloy, or the equivalent. As you said and goodsteel said, the mold is more important to have up to temp than the lead alloy. The 3-5 second sprue puddle freeze rule is a good one. This allows the boolit to keep drawing lead from the sprue puddle as it cools and this is when you get complete fill-out of the boolit.

    Please keep asking questions. That's what this forum is all about, providing a place to come to get straight answers to well thought out questions.
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  16. #116
    Boolit Mold
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    Thanks again. Yes, I am using an electric furnace at this time and using the "hardball" ingots i ordered from midway (6%, 2%, 92%). Next casting session will be a lil different than this last one as I'll have a thermometer and will be armed with some timing and temperature knowledge. My last session was about 3 hours long with a total of about 400 boolits though a lil over half of those went back in the pot. Visually the ones i kept looked pretty good but, they will be individually run across the scale to check the weight. Anything severly off will be put back in the pot for another round.

    I'll give the gloved hand appraoch a shot when cutting sprues

    Leementing. Is there a type of toothpaste to avoid or will about any work?? Should this be done with the mold block hot, warm, cold??

    Thanks again for all the info

    Joe

  17. #117
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    I can't remember who suggested this or I'd give them credit, but the suggestion was to use a rubber mallet as a sprue knocker and hinge banger. Because the "whap" is not as sharp, and there is a bit of reverberation in the rubber, it shakes out boolits more effectively when tapping the hinge of the handles. It's what I'm using now.

  18. #118
    Boolit Master Slow Elk 45/70's Avatar
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    Yup, should be a sticky , not many of us are going to go to the effort Gear did to make the information usable for all. Semper FI
    Slow Elk 45/70

    Praise the Lord & Pass the Ammo

  19. #119
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    Read the .pdf form this weekend before I have even cast my first bullet. I learned a lot and probably saved a ton of money by not buying the wrong stuff right off of the bat. Thanks again for this forum!

  20. #120
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    For decades (on and off) GONRA has used any nice lookin' "lumber scrap" stick
    to "strike the sprue plate to cut the sprue". Verks Just Fine.

    If it sprue sticks, just wack it again - usually boolit will "just fall off".
    If it doesn't offgefall, just cast again (hopefully with yer BOTTOM POUR furnace) -
    and if metal is hot enuf to properly cast, mold refills Just Fine.

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Abbreviations used in Reloading

BP Bronze Point IMR Improved Military Rifle PTD Pointed
BR Bench Rest M Magnum RN Round Nose
BT Boat Tail PL Power-Lokt SP Soft Point
C Compressed Charge PR Primer SPCL Soft Point "Core-Lokt"
HP Hollow Point PSPCL Pointed Soft Point "Core Lokt" C.O.L. Cartridge Overall Length
PSP Pointed Soft Point Spz Spitzer Point SBT Spitzer Boat Tail
LRN Lead Round Nose LWC Lead Wad Cutter LSWC Lead Semi Wad Cutter
GC Gas Check