What did you cast today?

[Jal5]

About 200 RCBS 9mm 115g RN on a new to me mold. Looking forward to trying these out.

[Net_Ranger101]

[bobthenailer]

went shopping with the wife saturday morning @8:am when i got home i fired up the pot made 2,044 saeco 068 45 cal 200gr swc in 1 1/2 hours casting time then spent about another 2 hours lubing & sizing them. that makes 10,537 bullets cast / lubed/sized since the 1st of febuary 2012

[LAH]

went shopping with the wife saturday morning @8:am when i got home i fired up the pot made 2,044 saeco 068 45 cal 200gr swc in 1 1/2 hours casting time then spent about another 2 hours lubing & sizing them. that makes 10,537 bullets cast / lubed/sized since the 1st of febuary 2012

You did good Bob.

[kbstenberg]

I just came in from casting. An it was the most productive day I have ever had. The bullets were jumping out of the mold. Which was a recent Lee purchase.
Just like with the "A Team". Its wonderful when a plan comes together.
Kevin

[a.squibload]

Not today, but last week we had a couple cool breezy days.
Cast up a couple hundred of each 9mm 105s, 9mm 120s, and .40 180s
out of soft lead for swage cores.
Need to try the HP mold again, maybe this weekend.

The water heater "skin" makes a great wind shield with no modification,
just cut it down one side to get it off the tank. Sits on it's own around the
burner stand, taller than the top of the pot. Reach in through the gap.
Maybe I'll trim it to fit some day.

[letsmeltlead2693]

I casted my lead block into these ingots today. I made 21 1lbs ingots and 1 11/2lb ingot from my new Lee mold, so that make 22 ingots I made today. Total lead melted today into ingots about 21.5-22lbs.

[Roosters]

Cast 32# of ingots from wheel weights today. First thing I ever poured other than a little gravy on my shirt! Started with a 55# box of ww. Sorted zinc and steel out and commence ah cooking. Spooned off clips, fluxed with candle wax, stir, flux again, stir and so on three or four times. Lot of soot in the pot?? Is this normal?
First trouble was New Wally World Muffin Pan. First dozen three ingots came loose so I then dropped it on the floor Walla 10 ingots and 2 of the cups with ingots attached fell out. Didn’t let that stop me. Poured 9 more and turned off the pot. Two of these came out. The remainder if anyone is old enough to remember was like opening sardines without the key. (New Molds In My Future)
On the fluxing does it ever completely clean up ? And is the soot normal ? Her are pictures of the pot and of coarse ran out of beer and batteries died in the camera before I got pictures of the 21 ingots.

[Dale53]

Roosters;
If your smelting pot is aluminum you need to get rid of that fast! Aluminum melts at 1200 degrees and loses most of it's strength at a much lower temperature. There have been catastrophic failures of aluminum pots with BAD results...

If the pot is stainless steel, then all is good.

Stay safe people, PLEASE!

Dale53

[Roosters]

The pot is stainless. I have a lot of cast iron cookware one pot that my great-grandmother had. Luv to cook over a camp fire and my stuff is seasoned well enough you can fry eggs in them. Jus can’t bring myself to us a cast pot for lead. Pinto beans, green beans & taters, cornbread, fried chicken, Cornish game hens the list is endless but no lead!

[Dale53]

Roosters;
You should be "good to go" then.

Sounds like you have a great start.

Dale53

[Echo]

I cast a few pounds of Lee 8mm's and 8mm Max's for my sporterized 98. Sized to 325. I opened one cavity of the 175 gr Lee to get rid of the GC shank. Used a 21/64 drill (.328) and now I cast one PB, one GC, and all is well (although the gc cavity gives we some grief - doesn't want to nicely fill out the base, so about 10% were culled. I've got to see if .325 works OK, whether the PB will do as well as the GC 175, and if the Max is necessary for the throat of the piece.

[Dale53]

I recently received a like new original H&G four Cavity mould I bought from a gentleman off "The Cast Bullet Association Forum". A couple of days ago, I ran 20+ lbs. of match grade bullets. The mould is a dandy, the bullets are barely touched by my .358" sizing die (as represented by the seller) making for about "as good as it gets" type situation. Here are some pictures:



Here the cute little fellers are after loading:



Dale53

[LAH]

And Dale the alloy was?

[ricklaut]

I cast just over 800 .401's (on top of loading a few, tumbling brass, honey do's, etc). Good day! Here's about 1/2 of them.

[Dale53]

LAH;
I cast these with my "standard" pistol alloy - WW's+2% tin. If I had been thinking, I would probably have cast them of WW's+scrap lead 50/50 +2% tin. The low velocity of my target loads would have worked just fine with softer bullets (past experience) but also work well with the "standard" alloy.

On the other hand, since my sizing die is at the "proper for my guns" diameter of .358" and these just barely cast at that, using a softer alloy may have ended up with them a bit undersize. Something for later experimentation (or not, as the case may be).

Dale53

[dbarnhart]

Cast 411 rounds of 45acp from an Accurate 45-230M brass mold yesterday. Promptly put 100 of them downrange this morning. My accuracy has noticeably improved since switching from FMJs to my own Boolits.

[Alan in Vermont]

I cast 15 lbs. of Lee 358-105-SWC. The mold has some issues with a low strip right down the center of one block. As a result there are some bullets with fins big enough they could be flying fish.

I do love the 6 hole Lee for the way it shells out boolits. I can't seem to cast fast enough to overheat it to the point of frosting but it seems to take forever for the sprue puddle to solidify and the boolits to cool enough to not smear when the sprue plate is moved aside.

Had a terrible reject rate, some from the finning caused by the mold blemish, the rest from poor fillout. Total rejects was around 20% by weight. One thing that drove me nuts when inspecting was that it looked like rounded bands when I held the boolits flat in my hand as I checked them. That turned out to be an illusion, luckily. If I held them at about a 45° angle with the nose upward it changed how the light hit them and the edges were perfect. Makes it a little fussy to check that way but I can live with that.

I'll call Lee and find out where to send the mold. I wish I could get a picture but I don't have a camera good enough to take that much of a closeup.

[monge]

60degrees in northeast NY Beats casting in the 10 degrees we had this winter cast 200 boolits out of my 429-421 single cavity want to try to drill them for hollow points. cast on JOE

[Michael J. Spangler]

cast about 26# of boolits today. MP .454-200 grain cramer HP with round pins

took a bit to heat things up, once the mold was hot i was cooking though boolits. i had to stop and do some mold maintenance, there was some lead stick between the HP pins and the mold, and a little in the gas vents. once i cleaned it i was back in the action. i'm sure i have some wrinkly boolits to cull out but it was still a ton of fun.