Bottom-Pour or Ladle-Cast .38 Wadcutters?

[PBSmith]

My mould is an old two-cavity Lyman 35891, bevel-base/button-head affair. It's a look alike to the H&G #50 bevel base version. This is my first experience casting .38 wadcutters.

Do those of you casting a similar bullet find that bottom-pour vs. ladle makes any difference in quality of bullet? Put another way, which casting technique gives you best results? I can do either but prefer bottom-pour. My alloy is 7tin/93lead.

If you bottom-pour, how close do you hold the plate to the nozzle?

Do plain-base WC's, as a rule, fill out better than bevel base, or isn't there any difference?

Thanks. Look forward to your comments.

[tazman]

I have the 35891 in a 4 cavity mold. I am not at home right now so cannot tell you if it is bevel based or not but I think it is a plain base. I have other molds that are bevel base.
I pour using a Lee 4-20. I hold the mold down far enough so I can see the lead stream easily. As long as I let the sprue puddle up a bit on top of the plate I get nice fill out.
I use range scrap for alloy, so God knows what the percentages are.
I don't find any difference in getting good fill out between bevel base and plain base boolits.
As long as the mold is hot and I puddle up on the sprue plate I get good fill out with both boolit styles.

[Lefty Red]

I have bottom poured both BB and PB WCs, in Lee molds. As long as the alloy is not too hot and the spruce is good and heavy and the spruce is cooled til solid, I didn't have a problem. But if one of those there wasn't paid attention too, I had smears and under filled molds.
Jerry

[PBSmith]

Thank you, gentlemen.

Tazman, I muffed the mould number. It is 35891, same as yours. These moulds are 30+ years old, according to Lyman. They still make the same mould but call it 358091. Have you ever miked the diameters of range-scrap castings from your four cavity mould?

[tazman]

Thank you, gentlemen.

Tazman, I muffed the mould number. It is 35891, same as yours. These moulds are 30+ years old, according to Lyman. They still make the same mould but call it 358091. Have you ever miked the diameters of range-scrap castings from your four cavity mould?

I knew you did and I knew you would figure it out. They changed the numbers because they wanted everything to be 6 digits. Then they changed them again when they began using 266 and 267 prefixes for 2 and 4 cavity molds.
Mine drop at .359-.360 depending on the day. My alloy varies because it is range scrap. I size to .358 for the 38 special loads I run through my 357 mag.
I water drop for convenience sake. The extra hardness is a bonus.

[35remington]

Given that when I shoot wadcutters, I shoot lots of them, ladle casting offers no advantage over a bottom pour pot. Ladle casting only has a superiority when it is applied to the sprue plate in a "one at a time" fashion to offer consistent headpressure on each pour. This requires frequent refilling of the ladle, is one more heavy thing to manipulate with your other hand, and is slower.

Allowing the sprue to "puddle up" as mentioned makes sure enough metal rests above the cavity to provide a good reservoir to draw from upon bullet shrinkage when it cools. This enables good fillout.

In producing wadcutters in this manner, I frequently set aside some production to shoot through rifles, like the 313492 intended for the 32 Smith and Wesson Long, shot through a .308 at circa 1000 fps speeds. Since such usage subjects the bullet to more rotational speed than a pistol does, and given that these group far better than any commonly encountered revolver is capable of shooting (as in below 0.9 inch at fifty yards) I would say that bottom pour production is no handicap to wadcutter pistol bullet accuracy.

The potential of the bullet is considerably better than the gun's potential. In other words....don't worry about it.

Since the bevel base has two angles and the flatbase has one, I find the flatbase usually runs to fewer rejects, but I can produce good bullets from either type of mould.

I pour with about a one inch gap between mould and spout. Any closer and I can't see what's happening.

[rintinglen]

I smelted and cast a 33 gallon trash can full of wheel weights back in my PPC days. IIRC, that was just shy of 700 pounds of wadcutters. At first, I was using a ladle, because that was how I had learned to cast. But then I got a LEE 10 pound bottom pour, and I never looked back. I no longer own a ladle. It is simply too slow, stopping to refill the ladle. Now if you have a big, 1 lb ladle, then things might be different, but I never found sufficient reason to buy one. Boolits cast from the bottom pour Furnace were every bit as accurate as the ones I had ladle cast.

Now let's be clear: if you are casting rifle boolits from a single cavity mold, with a desire for maximum accuracy, then maybe you'll have better results with a ladle, depending on your casting skill. I haven't had results that warrant that investment of time. YMMV.

[Mk42gunner]

I cast either way. It depends on what I feel like that particular day, as to which style I go with.

As long as the mold is cooperating, I believe I can pile up more good boolits with a bottom pour furnace; but I usually have a better percentage of keepers using a ladle. Doesn't really matter, you still have to sort and inspect them.

Robert

[Lloyd Smale]

depends on whether youd rather spend your time casting them or shooting them.

[T-Bird]

I ladle cast only. Yesterday I made 250ish Lee 358-158 with a 6 cavity in an hour and I wasn't trying for speed. I just counted the boolets after I was finished. I culled about 10, most of those were from before the mold came up to temp. I had a Lee 10 pound bottom pour years ago that was a *** and I went back to ladleing (if that's a word). Shoot Straight, T-Bird

[Crusty Deary Ol'Coot]

PBSmith,

I ladle cast with a Rowel bottom pour ladle and it is the best system I have ever used. Been using that ladle for over 10 years.

I also use and OLD Coleman gas stove and a cast iron pot which hold 40 - 45lbs.

The pot is big enough and the stove hot enough that I can continually cast with only breaks to flux and skim on occasion. I can add back the sprews and add my 3lb. + ingots of alloy as needed and because of the volume of alloy in the pot and heat source, keep right on casting.

I have used the Lyman type side pour ladles and they are much too small and slow.

Plus, if casting with multiple cavity molds, you can only fir that little nipple to the sprew plate on the first bullet, so I just end up pouring them all. MUCH BETTER the bottom pour ladle!

I like 4 cavity or larger molds when ever possible.

With other then my 45/70 mold from which I want a bit better quality and consistency of bullets, I use 2 - 3 molds if casting by myself and 4 - 5 molds if team casting with a partner.

When casting with a partner, we go through a LOT of alloy in a 2 - 3 hour session. Way more then could be brought to temp with a typical electric bottom pour pot.

Lots of folk like the bottom pour pots, but they have not rung my bell and are much too slow for my desired rate of production.

AS you can see, different strokes for different folk, but give me the bottom pour ladle and a big lead pot.

Crusty Deary Ol'Coot

[targetfreak]

Wow. I stumbled upon this thread, and now I'm adding it to my favorites. I want to begin casting soon, and I learned a lot here. Thanks.

[Le Loup Solitaire]

For many years until I could afford a bottom pour pot I casted H&G #251 with a ladle. The WC is a double ended flat faced design that weighs approx 148 grains.I made good bullets and then continued to do so with the bottom pour. As a BE competitor I inspected and weighed my casts and kept close track of results on my targets. With a 4 cavity mold I got the best results by keeping the sprue cutter about 1/2 inch below the pouring nozzle and poured a generous sprue...sometimes passing the pour twice...once in each direction. It was a little bit sloppy at first, but practice gets rid of that. Best advice i followed came from a guy called Loverin who said, "watch the quality and not the clock". LLS

[country gent]

THe bottom pour vs ladle is normally personal prefference mainly, sometime existing ecuipment makes the decission also. I ladle cast everything I cast ( mostly bigger BPCR boolets) but have also cast handgun bullets with a bottom pour lee pot set up. I did get more varieces with the big bullets and the bottom pour pots when I tried it. I normally pour a ladle full of lead into the cavities letting the excess runn off the side for the rifle bullets. I also pour a heavy large sprue on the handgun bullets when I did cast them. I think the wadcutters ( light loads low velocity) will benifit more from the correct alloy than how cast. I have found the soft lead wadcutters out perform the hard casts in my wadcutter gun.