Need some assistance with my alloy, please

[Evoken]

Are you saying you heated your pot, heated your mold, poured 50, and stopped? I ask 'cause many of us pour 100's from the same mold at one casting session before culling to make the cost/time/quality triangle of opportunities work for us.

You can make it FAST, at the expense of cost or quality.
You can make it CHEAP, at the expense of time or quality.
You can make it GOOD, at the expense of time or cost. A lot us us cast here...at the expense of time.

Not quite. I heated the pot and cast 50 or so of this one and 100 .44-240. I still haven't got the hang of casting yet and this one is tough for me.
I will keep at it though and sooner or later I will figure out how this mold likes to run.
I'm still doing small batches as I am new to casting. My lee magnum seems like it heats up and melts plenty fast enough for me to learn on.
I can see if this becomes a habit I will want more equipment. But I'm up to 4 presses on the bench, so this is a next step.
I think I need a bigger bench....

[dtknowles]

Leave a bigger puddle on the sprue plate. I was not getting good bullets until I started leaving a bigger sprue. So big that it overflows the sprue plate. Casting faster helps keep the mold hot. I have never had good luck with molds that have more than two cavities, just can't cast fast enough. Add to that dealing with a plug for hollow base or points, it is hard to keep up a fast enough pace.

Tim

[kevin c]

Just my personal experiences and observations:

I need to preheat my 8 cav aluminum molds and cast at a good pace to keep the mold temp where it gets me keepers consistently. With the bigger blocks and alloy temp at 720°, that's about two pours a minute.

A regular casting cadence keeps the mold at the right temp the longest and gets me the most consistent casts. I cast out of doors and weather conditions (air temp and wind) affect the cadence needed.

The casts are the most consistent (all keepers) when they all have a light matte frosting. When I see that degree of frosting I try to keep the same cadence to stay there. More frosting means I have to slow down, less means I need to increase the pace.

I use a bottom pour with a mold guide. I don't have forearms like Popeye's, so not having to hold the mold and ladle tires me less and make for more consistent pours.

I try to be consistent in how the alloy stream hits the mold. I tend to direct the flow directly into the cavity rather than hit the sprue plate first.

I get lousy fill out and wrinkles if the alloy stream is too slow. That needs both initial adjustment of the valve on a bottom pour as well as periodic adjustment as the head pressure drops when the alloy level in the pot drops significantly.

I don't know if any of this applies to your particular issues, but I hope it helps.

ETA: "I need a bigger..." is almost always a thought that occurs to someone who's really getting into a new hobby. Welcome to the addiction!

[Evoken]

I ended up burning the rest of this alloy up in boolits for the .44 mag and ran maybe 75 or so for the .45 colt.
So far the swc 240 over 22.5gr of h110 is a winner. I want to try some blue dot for this boolit as well.
I think my next run of the .459-405 will be with a softer alloy like 20 to 1. I should have no problem with leading loading these to the bottom end of 1895 data or the top end of trap door.