I posted this in the alloys section, but didn't get any response, so please forgive the double post.
Just finished my first casting session. The 2 molds I have are a Lee 18 Cavity 00 buckshot mold, and a Lee 6 cavity .401 175 gr flat point mold. My plan was to put 10 pounds of clip on wheel weight ingots in the pot and add 2% tin. That was a lot less tin than I was thinking it would be. The smallest ingot I had was closer to 4%, so that's what I put in. I also water quenched them.
The bullets/pellets seem pretty hard, and I am shooting for a harder pellet than the Hornady pellets I've been loading, but they wound up coming out at .323-325 and weighing an average of 50.5 grains (as opposed to .33 cal 54ish grains of the Hornady pellets). The bullets also came out a little small @.4005.
I'm not sure either is really a problem I can't work around, but would a different alloy come out a little bigger? I only have clip on wheel weights, stick on wheel weights and tin that came from pewter I melted into ingots.
I read on here that heat also can play a part on size. So I tried casting them as cool as I could, with the same results.
Any ideas? Or do I just have molds that throw a little small.