Getting better, thanks for the help

[BCall]

After I got home today, I wanted to test out the new Lee 4-20 pot I got this weekend, so I fired it up and about an hour and a half later, I was tired, so I stopped to take a look at my castings. I was getting much better overall I think, with way fewer rejects. Still having a little problem with the base tearing and not cutting cleanly, but not all of the time. Here were 5 selected at random from tonights casting. I got the temp up like I was advised, and I was only getting about 30% rejects instead of the 80% from before. Bottom pour was much easier for me. ladles might make better boolits, but I am not proficient enough with these little ones to make it work yet I think. I had no problems with the bigger boolits, but these smaller ones were kinda tough. Thanks for the help guys, Billy

[docone31]

They look pretty good. They are also real shiney, how pure is the lead in the mix?

[BCall]

Thanks, the lead is just ww's that I added 1/2 pound of 40/60 solder to 19 lbs in the pot. Then air cooled. I was trying to get them frosty, but as I was told, that little boolit has a hard time keeping the mold hot enough. Billy

[Frank46]

Billy, you want to see real good mould fillout?. Run your pot about 50-75 degrees hotter than you are noe. and maintain a fast casting rythm. Your mold will get hotter and your bullets will start coming out frosty. When they are coming out all frosty then slow down your casting rate and maintain it. Your metal is hot and so are your molds. I cast all my bullets frosty. Bullets cast this was give excellent mold fillout and usually have no defects. Forget shiney. Learned this the hard way one night and been doing it this way for years. The bands on the bullets are well defined, little to no parting lines. Bullet looks like mirror copy of the muold. And thats what you want.
Try it and see what happend. Frank

[snaggdit]

The sprues seem to be cutting cleanly, but the bases seem to have some porosity. I bet the added heat will help, and +1 on the increased speed to get the mold hotter. I must of missed your earlier post. These look like gas check boolits. In that case the bases don't matter, but it is an indication of some additional tweaking to get the reject rate down a little more. The boolits look good, with sharp bands.

[Calamity Jake]

The base is the steering end of tne boolet and needs to as good as you can make it, gas check or no GC.

The 3 boolets on the right are rejects because of the porosity in the bases, Add a little more heat and pour a larger spru to see if that will help.

Other than the few bad bases, your looken good.

[Dean D.]

+1 Calamity Jake. I'll add that porosity or uneven boolit fill out causes unequal weight distribution which can cause instability. Instability = Inaccuracy.

[454PB]

That porosity on the bases is caused by too much flow. One of the quirks of the Lee 20 pound bottom pourers is that when the pot is full, it causes too much flow. If you throttle back the flow for the first 1/3 of the pot, you will reduce the porosity. After the pot is down 1/3, begin increasing the flow.