My First Time

[414gates]

This is the first time ever for me. Cast from Lee moulds, melted in my home made gas powered bottom pour melter.

Thanks to all the great advice on this forum.

[Wayne Smith]

Good for a first try! I'm not sure if it is your camera or if I see some feathering - mold too hot most likely, and may see some wrinkles? That would most likely be a mold that still has some oil in the pores.

The real beauty of casting is the opportunity to toss them back in the pot and try again - done that many times. In fact, as I think of it, it is routine.

[Sasquatch-1]

Can't really tell from the picture, But it looks like your mold either needs a good cleaning or you need more heat. May need a little tin for fill out.

The wrinkles look like either oil or grease of some sort or low temp.

Clean the molds with soap and water, dry and set on top of your melt to pre heat. I normally put a very small amount of candle wax on the pivot screw and when that starts to smoke the mold should be hot. If you have a thermometer make sure your melt is hot enough. If this does not work then add a little pewter or other source of tin to the mix.

[RED333]

"melted in my home made gas powered bottom pour melter."
I want pics of this melter!!!

[w5pv]

Looking good but clean the alignment pins

[414gates]

"melted in my home made gas powered bottom pour melter."
I want pics of this melter!!!

The melter was made from ideas taken on this forum, with reference to the design I used. I posted the pics here, last two pages are the small unit :

http://ysterhout.net/docs/melter/index.html

[414gates]

Thanks for the feedback.

The wrinkles I'm sure are from a too low temperature of the melt. I have an infrared thermometer, which was giving me funny readings off the surface of the melt, it probably doesn't like shiny surfaces. The matt black surface inside the pot was reading correctly, but not the melt itself. I have to get a mechanical thermometer .

The moulds were also not hot, because dipping them in the melt left a thin layer of lead stuck to them.

I'm going to weld something on one side of the melter to suspend the moulds over the gas coming up off the bottom around the one side. It heats that side of the melter [ which is insulated ] to 150 degrees C, a bit more than half the melting temperature of lead.

All the parameters are functional, now it's just tweaking.

Next step is to make up some 45-45-10.

[runfiverun]

it's mold temperature.
the shiny boolits are the giveaway.
more heat in the molds [@400-420 or so is where they like to be]