Today I made a 20:1 lead tin alloy. Used a lee 452-255 double cavity mold. Liquid alox tumble lubed. Loaded 4.5gr imr red, with a col at 1.55" and a light roll crimp. Oh, this is for my .45 colt.
Super happy with my results, ended up with 48 rounds. Thought I counted 50, and 1 was swelled up to much. I did not size this first run for 2 reasons, 1 I dont have a sizer die yet, and 2 they all came out right about .454, a few at .4535, and the one monster for some reason was .456.
I have a few questions if you folks dont mind. After melting my pure lead and 50/50 solder I used Frankfort arsenal flexing compound. I used that because it is what is available to me right now, a lot of stuff is sold out.
After the initial flux I got some dross off the top, not much. The lead was clean and new from rotometals. The 50/50 was clean, old stuff that I've had a while just some surface oxidation, no scale just looked tarnished. I kept getting dross/slag at the top of my pot. I assume this is lead or tin oxide reacting to the atmosphere. Is this now just garbage, or is there a way to use this? When cooled it is a powder.
I was going at this for a while as I wanted to get the best looking boolits I could. Many of them went back in the pot until i got enough to make it worthwhile to fire up the press.
Looking through the lyman #4 this mold is not listed, nor is the powder i used. I based my col on similar boolits and the boolit profile itself. 1.55 put me right at the top lube groove.
These all weighed in right around 253gr or so.
I used Hodgdon's web site load data for powder charge. I have heard that imr red and alliant red dot are the same. They sure look the same. Can anyone confirm this? Lyman #4 does not even list imr red in the burn rate chart.
At the end of the day I am very happy with the results. I just melted and cast my own lead boolits for my cowboy revolver!! I will shoot some of them tomorrow. Now i just need stupid FedEx to deliver my other mold when they are supposed to (should have been yesterday). And source some more lead, hopefully for cheaper. Still, I made rounds for about .03$ a piece today, mmwaahaaha!