I hope this is the right place in the forums for my comments.
I just got a 45-70 1874 Sharps replica and first bought some cast and lubricated bullets. These were $0.24 each, so that doesn't make for fun shooting for me, so I bought a couple of molds. I am not a novice, nor an expert at casting. I had H&G molds, matching 4 cavity that I cast for bulleye shooting years ago and several other molds over the years. Most of the time, they started producing good bullets pretty quickly. I have a good supply of Lyman #2 ingots that I use.
Well, I got 2 Lee molds, one a 340gr FN .457 and the other a 450gr .457 FN. I cleaned the molds with brake cleaner, finished with alcohol and a toothbrush and wiped them with a lint free cloth making sure there was no oil or any debris on the cavities. I turned on my old Lyman mold master XX that I have had since 1980 (not much use on it, as I got out of casting for 20 yrs). and checked it for 30 minutes until it was up to temp. I checked with my Lyman thermometer and it was in the Lyman #2 range, almost to the beginning of WW. I casted for 2 hours and NEVER got a bullet that I would keep. I kept turning up the temp, as I was getting wrinkled bullets that was not filling out the grease bands either. I know I have aged a bit since last casting a lot, but some things, we think we don't forget. I then tried smoking the molds with a lighter and still no good bullets. I gave up for the day. When the molds cooled down, I brought them in the house, cleaned them again and this time smoked both with a candle. The next day, yesterday, I went back out to the garage, turned on the furnace, cranked it up more and waited until the pot was up to temp. It was probably 740 degrees or so. I started casting and actually, the first bullets out of each mold was not bad. The molds finally got hot and I cast for about 1 hour or so and got lots of good bullets and they finally were a little frosty. I could not get a frosty bullet the day before. I was probably at 640 the day before and 100 deg higher the next day and success. I know some beginners that would have quit and gone back in the house to search for "cheap" cast bullets to buy. I am just saying that sometimes things change, and good bullets are going to be cast sooner or later. I have not cast bullets that were this big before and I think that having to fill out the molds that are long like these made a big difference than casting a .452 200 swc for my 45acp.
Something that I noted also, was that I checked the thermometer with a pot of boiling water after the first day of bad bullets and it was right on 212 degrees or close enough. The scale on the Lyman therm, has WW going out to 700 degrees and of course the Lyman #2 max scale is less than that. You cannot always go by what the scale says, it worked many years ago, but for whatever reason, now it did not. You do need to go by temp, though and without a thermometer, you are guessing until you get it right. Next casting session, I will crank the temp down a little to get out of the frosty range, but that can be somewhat controlled with giving the molds a little more time to cool between pours.
sorry for rambling, but I thought some others might see that it is not always the newbies that has problems.
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Originally Posted by Whitespider
