First cast 9mm boolits

[HeavyMetal]

the 9mm mold you have is a bevel base mold, kinda has a chamfer on the edge of the boolit base. A flat base boolit would have a sharp edge with no chamfer on it.

Theory is the BB boolits load easier but if the case is prep'd right it shouldn't make a difference in loading. Now it is easier to spot a bad base fellout with a flat based boolit.

I could go on a small rant here about my dislike of the whole TL system but I won't, you need to figure out what the problem is with the sprue plate on this particular mold, it maybe loose, it may be to tight or it may be bent can't tell without seeing it.

By the way two cavity or six??

HM

[michael.birdsley]

It is a six cavity mold. I am guessing it is way to loose. I figured out what the spruce lube was for real quick after loading up the 6 cavities and destroying the end of the 2X4 to get the plate to cut the sprues. With remaining boolits I have could I take my pocket knife and remove the flashing?


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[HeavyMetal]

the problem here is I really can't see them well enough to tell, the base edge should be on an angle not rounded.

If the base has a round look to it nothing you do will fix it other than putting them back in the pot and starting over.

If you do that I will suggest you get a hot plate set it to just under medium and warm up your mold while your lead pot is coming up to temp as well.

you'll need to put something on top of the coil to protect the mold, an old saw blade will work just fine, do not buy a hot plate that does not have an exposed coil to set your blade on they do not get hot enough!

In the perfect world the mold should be hot enough when you start casting that the sprue plate does not require a lot of effort to open, done right the sprue plate will open easily and with little effort pending your alloy strength.

When you start casting and you open your sprue plate look closely at the boolit base's before you open the mold and drop the castings out: the base should be fully filled out with no air gap of any kind around the circumference of the boolit base and no casting flash either!

once you get this part down your casting should run about 90 to 95 % perfect, again inspect when your done and sort **** out and remelt it.

Only perfect boolits shoot perfectly everything else goes down hill from their, you are your own QC director you must decide what you can live with.

you have managed to pick the hardest cartridge to cast and reload for bar none!!

so my suggestions are:

Fix your mold, remelt your alloy, heat your mold on a hot plate and cast slowly and steadily, your looking for perfect boolits not a mountain of scrap!
As you gather skill that mountain of boolits will come to you and so will the joy of mastering the 9mm!!

HM

[michael.birdsley]

the problem here is I really can't see them well enough to tell, the base edge should be on an angle not rounded.

If the base has a round look to it nothing you do will fix it other than putting them back in the pot and starting over.

If you do that I will suggest you get a hot plate set it to just under medium and warm up your mold while your lead pot is coming up to temp as well.

you'll need to put something on top of the coil to protect the mold, an old saw blade will work just fine, do not buy a hot plate that does not have an exposed coil to set your blade on they do not get hot enough!

In the perfect world the mold should be hot enough when you start casting that the sprue plate does not require a lot of effort to open, done right the sprue plate will open easily and with little effort pending your alloy strength.

When you start casting and you open your sprue plate look closely at the boolit base's before you open the mold and drop the castings out: the base should be fully filled out with no air gap of any kind around the circumference of the boolit base and no casting flash either!

once you get this part down your casting should run about 90 to 95 % perfect, again inspect when your done and sort **** out and remelt it.

Only perfect boolits shoot perfectly everything else goes down hill from their, you are your own QC director you must decide what you can live with.

you have managed to pick the hardest cartridge to cast and reload for bar none!!

so my suggestions are:

Fix your mold, remelt your alloy, heat your mold on a hot plate and cast slowly and steadily, your looking for perfect boolits not a mountain of scrap!
As you gather skill that mountain of boolits will come to you and so will the joy of mastering the 9mm!!

HM

The boolits are filling out nice and they have nice sharp edges. Some have what I call flashing around where the mold halves join while being held in the closed position and around the bottom of some but, not all. I pre heat my mold on my kerosene heater that I use to heat up my garage. I just set it up top while I wait for my alloy to melt. I know it's the hardest to cast for but, like my high school football coach told us, if it was easy everybody would be doing it. I am learning stuff as this process goes on.


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[michael.birdsley]

Some success powder coated boolits with Janns net craft paint. I sized them to .357 after powder coating. I picked a mid range load of unique of 4.8 grains oal of 1.100. Still a some leading. I only loaded 20 up just to see if this was worth it. Maybe playing around with the powder charge I can get rid of the bit of leading?




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[HeavyHev]

Interesting you are getting leading. I used a softer alloy early on and my rounds tumbled like yours. I maintained the same size and hardened the alloy and all tumbling stopped. I wonder if that will help you out? also I never had any leading with PC. I also have 360 coverage so that might be the difference? Are your bases sufficiently coated after standing them up like that?

[michael.birdsley]

Interesting you are getting leading. I used a softer alloy early on and my rounds tumbled like yours. I maintained the same size and hardened the alloy and all tumbling stopped. I wonder if that will help you out? also I never had any leading with PC. I also have 360 coverage so that might be the difference? Are your bases sufficiently coated after standing them up like that?

Yes they are covered on the bottom. I do have some 50/50 solder I could throw in or maybe water quench them?


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[HeavyHev]

You'd have to try and water quench after the PC process because baking at 400 will undo everything the quenching did after casting. 50/50 will only get you so far, you need some antimony. If you are willing to invest into it, Rotometals has an alloy called superhard which is about 70/30 lead/antimony. Put a 1/4 of a bar into your pot and your BNH will vastly improve. I personally use their Foundry Alloy which is 12% tin 23% antimony and the rest is lead. I put in a half bar (2.5lbs) into a pot with 12.5lbs of range scrap lead making a 15lb pot of estimated 16-18 BNH. Since then, I have had 0 key-holing. Like I mentioned, I haven't had any leading problems and I am sized .001 over bore. A cheaper alternative is to run a full pot clip on wheel weights, that should be hard enough for a semiauto handgun.

[michael.birdsley]

Yes I'm willing to order some might have to wait untill next week


Edit never mind just looked at the alloy calculator I'll just order the hard ball stuff


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[HeavyHev]

I haven't used solder so I can only be pretty sure, but I think the mix is tin and lead. Tin's hardening properties are minuscule. Also too much tin can have negative effects on the physical properties of the projectile. Some rough guidelines for hardening are as follows:
Basic Rules for Hardening Lead-
For every 1% additional tin, Brinell hardness increases 0.3.
For every 1% additional antimony, Brinell hardness increases 0.9.
For a simple equation,
Brinell = 8.60 (pure lead) + ( 0.29 * Tin ) + ( 0.92 * Antimony )

Superhard is about $19/5lbs https://rotometals.com/super-hard-al...imony-70-lead/ and Foundry is about $20/5lbs https://rotometals.com/foundry-type-...mony-12-5-tin/
orders of $99 get free shipping and I swear I am not sponsored by them

*For my alloy, range scrap (mostly jacketed bullets) averages 1-3% antimony (I'm guessing 2%). Adding in a half bar of Foundry (2.5lbs) gives me an estimated 2.22% Tin, 5.50% Antimony and 92.3% Lead which is me trying to get close to RotoMetals alloy called Hardball (2% tin, 6% antimony, 92% lead)

[michael.birdsley]

I haven't used solder so I can only be pretty sure, but I think the mix is tin and lead. Tin's hardening properties are minuscule. Some rough guidelines for hardening are as follows:
Basic Rules for Hardening Lead-
For every 1% additional tin, Brinell hardness increases 0.3.
For every 1% additional antimony, Brinell hardness increases 0.9.
For a simple equation,
Brinell = 8.60 (pure lead) + ( 0.29 * Tin ) + ( 0.92 * Antimony )

Superhard is about $19/5lbs https://rotometals.com/super-hard-al...imony-70-lead/ and Foundry is about $20/5lbs https://rotometals.com/foundry-type-...mony-12-5-tin/
orders of $99 get free shipping and I swear I am not sponsored by them

*For my alloy, range scrap (mostly jacketed bullets) averages 1-3% antimony. Adding in a half bar of Foundry (2.5lbs) gives me an estimated 2.22% Tin, 4.67% Antimony and 93.1% Lead which is me trying to get close to RotoMetals alloy called Hardball (2% tin, 6% antimony, 92% lead)

Yeah I just looked at the alloy calculator your right. I'll just order the stuff you are talking about. Might have to be next week though.


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[michael.birdsley]

Update: so I decided to try to drop my charge of unique from 4.8 down to 4.0. Honestly that's the two best magazine grouping I have shot out of my ruger sr9c. Top left of the bulls eye looks like a key hole but, it is two bullets close. So I mean, no key holing is good, and with the groupings I am happy with atleast. There is what I think still a tad of leading after 20 rounds(picture). However, I bought 5lbs of super hard from roto metals to add to my wheel weights so I will use that along with my powder coat I bought from smoke so I don't have to use my jig paint.


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[Boolseye]

Nice groups. There is always that much leading for me in the 9mm, it won't do no harm.

[JeffG]

Another consideration or thing to try here is after shooting 30-50 rounds, brush the bore with a bronze brush. Is the 'leading' removed? If so, it may instead be antimony wash and not leading. I had to get past that not understanding of the difference between the two.

[michael.birdsley]

So this would be considered an acceptable amount of leading in the barrel?


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[Boolseye]

judging only from the photo, yes. That looks normal. Can't see the rest of the barrel. Accuracy will suffer when leading gets bad, then you'll get keyholes.