To say I am discouraged is an understatement

[madsenshooter]

Armoredman, something I've found with my little Lee pot, is that over time, the element gets thinner and thinner. I used to be able to cast with the knob set a bit above 7, now it is nearly all the way up to get the same temp. I have a new element waiting on the sideline for when this is one is completely gone. I was trying to cast with straight WW's, and like you, was about to give up, when I grabbed my little digital thermometer, which was sitting there all along, and found the alloy temp way below what had previously worked for me. I'm in the habit of leaving my pot on for long periods of time. The elements don't last long under those conditions. Despite arguments to the contrary, crank it up until it starts working, if it still doesn't work, chances are it isn't getting hot enough. And find a cheap digital thermometer. Here's what I have: http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/Atkin...motiveQ5fTools $23.99 and accurate.

[casterofboolits]

Maybe you did what I do a lot, being used to just "seeing" measurements to three decimal places, when someone just posts two (which is fine) I automatically add a zero in front in my mind. Used to automotive and boolit meaurements, always to the thousandth or beyond.

Gear

Yup, comes from making precision insert tooling for stamping dies in my youth. Plus .0002 minus .0000. Also a 2 to 4 micro finish on cartridge case drawing tools.

Then teaching people in the UK and Japan to do the same. Fun times! Luckily I speak Japanese, but I learned that I do not speak English!

[Cord]

Any caster, new or experienced, who could use an inexpensive hotplate
for preheating should immediately check your local Walgreen’s for the:

“Kitchen Gourmet” Single Buffet Range

Regularly $10, they are closing them out for only $4.99

I bought my first one for $10, and when I heard they were on sale for $5
I went right out and bought another one, they work great for me –

Be advised that the cord is only 2 feet long, and it is an open coil type,
so open the package and check to see that the coil is flat in the center.

Hard to get something useful like this for $5 nowadays.

.

[Recluse]

OK Geargnasher. . .

Now, as most here know, I'm never one to ever go on a rant of any type. . . (y'all hang on for a second while I look for that little smiley face that has the nose that grows like Pinnochio)

With my hard-metal molds, everything you said is dead-on square-up the Caster's Hallowed Truth.

But with some of the Lee soft-metal two-bangers, I've simply found over the years that a hotter alloy works better in those molds. Now, there's a trick and that is to not let the molds themselves get too hot, or you pretty much negate everything--hence the wet towels/sponge off to the side. Sprue plate gets a slap on it every casting--base of mold gets one every second/third casting.

Beautiful, well-filled out boolits this way.

I agree about not smoking molds. Biggest waste of time I've ever tried and never had it do anything positive. When the boolits drop easy, it's because they're too small. Lee-menting will fix you right up and then you don't need the matches and beeswax, etc.

Keep in mind that I haven't seen Lee update their directions on existing products in years, and sometimes decades. So what might have been acceptable twenty years ago is no longer today.

Now when it comes to old wives tales and boolit LUBES. . . if you try telling me that smearing the sign of the Sacred Cast Boolit on my nekkid chest with liquid alox while dancing around the hot griddle plate on a moonless night in my backyard is an old wives tale and does nothing to help my lube concoctions perform better, we might just have a problem.

Because next thing you know, you'll be telling me that sacrificing those Butterball roaster chickens and lighting my Hoppes #9 candles has no effect at all on the Gods of the Lubes in determining whether my sacrifices are pleasing or not!

That would be blasphemous and I wouldn't want to be anywhere near you when the Gods have been angered enough. Hope you understand; nothing personal, I'm just trying to squeeze out an existence here when it comes to boolit casting and lubricating.

Feller's got to do what a feller's got to do.

[Bret4207]

Okay, since Recluse and some others have done the mini-rant thing, I'm going to jump in too.

First off, whoever was producing boolit "heads"- they aren't "heads". Heads are those things on top of our necks. You are producing boolits/bullets/projectiles. I could even accept slugs but not heads/pills/tips/etc. That's just a personal peeve of mine. Makes no real difference in this old world, but I feel the need to vent.

Second- DO NOT SMOKE YOUR MOULD. If you have to resort to smoking to get good fill out or boolits to drop you're just masking another problem. Also, tin is a darn poor (and expensive) way to harden a trimetal alloy, not that we need HARD CAST to start with. Tin is for fillout, antimony and tin combined are for hardening, NOT THAT YOU NEED HARD CAST!!!!!!!!! Standard run of the mill WW will work for probably 90% of the guys out there 90% of the time.

Third- Pot temp and mould temp are two completely different things. You regulate pot temp by altering the heat setting, be it electric, gas or solid fuel heat source. Mould temp you regulate by casting tempo. Some moulds simply need to run hotter than others. And Recluse mentioned the BruceB Speed Casting Method, a very handy way of running your mould nice and hot and yet not having to wait an eternity for the sprue to cool. Try it, read the sticky- it works great.

Fourth- Gear and CBRick are 2 of the smartest, most humble and best looking guys that ever lived. They are beloved by children, dogs and beautiful women every where. I know this because they agree exactly with what I would have said. Listen to them.

[Bass Ackward]

These threads are always informative but never complete. No guideline is really ever acknowledged that covers 99% of all situations. So I'll try.

From my friends and family's experience, you need 200 degrees over the melt temperature of your mix for ladle casting and 250 to 300 for bottom pouring. Works for any practical mix. (IF you want to add copper to a mix as an example, temp requirements rise.)

The difference or variance is speed of fill and the weight of the sprue vs the weight in the ladle. Ladling is a force fill method.

The variables of bullet diameter and weight, drive band width, and mold material, plate hole sizes may require up to 100 degrees from any mix more from the 200 degree norm without there being any problem. Examples are doing 22 caliber bullets or designs with less than .070 band / groove widths. Or bottom pouring too slowly.

That means 650 for lino to 900 for pure lead. As long as you are in that range, you are right with everyone else. If this guideline is breached, say you need 750 for lino by a certain mold, or that you must ladle to make a mold work, then either the mold is cold, dirty, or there is a venting problem. Simply, the lead is pouring / filling too slowly.

It's just that simple to identify the correct temperature range or a problem if one exists. If you have to do something extra like more heat or smoking a mold, you are missing the real problem.

[lwknight]

From my friends and family's experience, you need 200 degrees over the melt temperature of your mix for ladle casting and 250 to 300 for bottom pouring. Works for any practical mix. (IF you want to add copper to a mix as an example, temp requirements rise.)

I don't think I've even had to run my pot at over 700 degrees.
A 5% tin alloy will cast just fine as low as 620 degrees.
Maybe it depends where the temperature is measured from.
I keep the probe near the bottom spout.

[Bass Ackward]

That's great. From my RCBS pot, at 620 degrees with a 20-1 mix, (5%) you won't get any flow at all unless you are wide open. Then if you are already wide open, you have wide range of arm movement and no control to open further as the weight of the lead declines and empties.

Important point is not below those guidelines but above so folks can identify problems. Perfection is always welcome.

[CJR]

Time to roll another grenade into the room about smoking moulds to improve booliit quality.

For the record, old Schuetzen riflemen often smoked their bullet moulds to produce better bullets. Some of their record cast bullet groups still stand today. Also, the National Rifle Association did testing on smoking bullet moulds to improve bullet quality. The NRA found and documented that smoking a bullet mould DID improve the quality of the bullets, see NRA's Cast Bullet Handbook, pg.81. In my view, the NRA did more important research into cast bullet research than anyone I'm aware of.

When I started bullet casting in 1956, every now and then I would encounter a problem mould. I tried every solvent or cleaning solution/technique available to clean the problem mould. When I read the NRA article on smoking the mould, I tried that and it worked for me. So I'm a believer in smoking moulds and use it all the time. But that's been my experience. Use whatever cleaning procedure works for you.

Give me a minute to get my helmet on and get down behind this rock before all the incoming rounds. I'm ready, let the barrage begin.

Best regards,

CJR

[Recluse]

Time to roll another grenade into the room about smoking moulds to improve booliit quality.

Give me a minute to get my helmet on and get down behind this rock before all the incoming rounds. I'm ready, let the barrage begin.

Best regards,

CJR

Not from me, my friend.

I'm the biggest proponent in the world about "I care more about the results than I do the methods." (Why do you think I dance in the dark of night around my hot griddle plate with alox smeared on my nekkid chest when making lubes? All I know is it works. The one time I didn't do it and fired a boolit, my trigger finger fell off, and I couldn't shoot any more that day until I found a way to reattach it. Ever since then, I've sworn by making lube the way I make it.)

At the end of the day, what tells the tale is where the hole from the boolit scores--be it on paper, man or beast. How you get it there is your beeswax. (a little cast boolits lube humor, there )

[Doby45]

I you Recluse.

[Springfield]

OK, first off, I just don't see how someone who uses more than a couple moulds can do it properly without a temperature guage. I mean, I CAN do it, but it just makes repeatability that much more difficult to attain. Second, I rarely run my pot over 675 deg. I DO preheat my moulds by dipping the end in the molten lead. Works for me, haven't warped any of my 69 moulds in the last 5 years, so I do it. Third, I don't smoke my moulds, per se. I have found that my best performing moulds are the older ones that have darkened cavities from so much use, so I guess you could call them smoked if you want. But on the few occasions I had a balky mould and I purposely smoked it I did not find they worked any better. Whereas getting out my magnifier and getting rid of any hidden burrs DID make a world of difference. And as to cleaning, I usually take my LEE 6 cavs and wash them with dishsoap and a toothbrush. But everyonce in a while I get a new LEE or Mihec and get in a hurry to use it and just cast as is out of the box, and they worked fine also, after a few casts. Seems to me the oil is going to burn out of there eventually anyway, and my casting has shown this to be true. This works better if the mold isn't full of chips, though, like some of the older LEE's I bought. Mihec moulds don't have this problem. FYI, I use a 40 lb Magma pot, so I may have a more consistant temp due to the larger volume, but even so, I believe mould temp is much more important than pot temp. As to Armoredman's problem, the only NOE mould I have is one for .223, 4 cav, and it worked perfect out of the box. I suspect his problem is the mould is too cool and his casting tempo is too slow to heat it up. Preheat that thing until the sprue takes 15-20 seconds to solidify, and then let it cool from there. Works for me.

[cbrick]

Time to roll another grenade into the room about smoking moulds to improve booliit quality.

Give me a minute to get my helmet on and get down behind this rock before all the incoming rounds. I'm ready, let the barrage begin. Best regards, CJR

Didn't see a single post in this thread that said there is only one way to do things. Not a single post that said anyone had to do it this way or that way. Did see a few posters with their eyes held very tightly shut and their hands over their ears that refused to see any method or reason for it that's different than their way.

A hundred years ago the old timers did some incredible shooting, therefore nothing has been learned since then. There are no better mold materials or better machining tools and methods since then to produce higher quality, bur free, easier to use molds, right? The NRA book is an incredible book, I wish they would do a reprint because it would be a huge service to casters new and seasoned but it is 60 years old, nothing been learned since then, right? This book says that Alox is the best lube ingredient, nothing new since then right?

Point is that if you have been doing any part of this hobby in a way that your happy with your results then by all means you should do it that way. There are nearly as many ways of casting as there are casters but that's no reason to close your eyes to anything new or different. Heck, even "cranking up the heat" to assure there is no tin in your alloy or waiting far too long for the sprue to solidify is viable if it works for you but that in no way means there isn't a different or better way. After all, the metals industry goes to the extent they do with alloys simply because they have too much time and money on their hands, right?

In the interest of new or prospective casters the option of learning a bit of the metallurgy should be available including the reasons for doing it in a particular way. No, we do not need to be metallurgists but an understanding of the basics is important and can go a long way to achieving better results.

Not a single post in this thread has suggested anything that I haven't been through or tried over the years including burning the tin out and dancing in the backyard. Lucky for me I'm curious and continued my attempts at learning and achieving better results. Still do, after all that's why I'm a member of this forum.

Rick

[sourceofuncertainty]

Lee's recommendation for smoking is purely to mask the effect of the leftover machining oil and the tendency for the edges of the aluminum cavities to have burrs which make it hard to tap the boolits out.

Is there a recommended way to deburr the cavity edges? Seems like that's a really critical area of the mould so I assume that just going at it with fine sandpaper is a no-no.

Thanks again for the feedback, guys. I've started getting all the smoke off my moulds and will try the clean, hot mould approach instead.

[Doby45]

You can use a piece of a wooden stick, like soft pine. Thats what I use.

[Suo Gan]

Time to roll another grenade into the room about smoking moulds to improve booliit quality.

For the record, old Schuetzen riflemen often smoked their bullet moulds to produce better bullets. Some of their record cast bullet groups still stand today. Also, the National Rifle Association did testing on smoking bullet moulds to improve bullet quality. The NRA found and documented that smoking a bullet mould DID improve the quality of the bullets, see NRA's Cast Bullet Handbook, pg.81. In my view, the NRA did more important research into cast bullet research than anyone I'm aware of.

When I started bullet casting in 1956, every now and then I would encounter a problem mould. I tried every solvent or cleaning solution/technique available to clean the problem mould. When I read the NRA article on smoking the mould, I tried that and it worked for me. So I'm a believer in smoking moulds and use it all the time. But that's been my experience. Use whatever cleaning procedure works for you.

Give me a minute to get my helmet on and get down behind this rock before all the incoming rounds. I'm ready, let the barrage begin.

Best regards,

CJR

The Col. is a god until he starts talking about things like smoking molds . But, for some reason smoking molds does work for occasional problem child (read Lee 2 banger). I guess that Phil Sharpe was wrong about Dr. Hudson. I mean they (shutzen shooters of the 19th cent) were pretty well childlike in their empirical knowledge about casting and shooting . This is a scientific hypothesis. We have used the scientific method to get to come to our way of thinking too. We have a stubborn mold. Usually a Lee mold. It has incomplete fill out in one or more cavities and they don't drop worth a hoot either. We have cleaned it, are running it at a good casting temp, our alloy is good, and at the right temp, we are using another mold practically like the stubborn one and it is working fine!!!! , and we think "Smoking, what have I got to lose? And you know what? It works! Would it be better to stop everything, and get out all the stuff necessary to Leement that bugger to come to the same conclusion? There is usually more than one way to skin a cat.

EDIT: Just read Ricks response above, and it is a good one. If everyone on here was as knowledgeable as Rick we really would not need this forum I guess. And that is not a put down at all. I have not been doing this for that long in the whole scheme of things. What I pride myself in doing is following a few key rules to the nth degree. One is that I have bought and READ all the available literature on casting boolits that I can get my hands on. To my knowledge I have read 99% of everything that has been dedicated to the boolit. When you do this you come to an understanding. You begin to realize (just as Rick has said) that there are conflicting reports made by people in the know, the true founding masters of the sport. Is this because they were lying? Not that I can see, it is just as Rick has said, they had found a successful way of getting the results they wanted. Were they above learning a new way? I don't know the answer to that. But what they did was state of the art at the time they did it. In fact, with everything we are capable of today, with the dissemination of knowledge what it is, we are very hard pressed to actually get the results that they did 100 or more years ago. Like most children, we have been spoiled into believing we do not stand on the shoulders of greater men. The best part of what we discuss on this site, the nuts and bolts of casting a good boolit, was known by a FEW shooters way back when. The only real difference I can see is that this old, once highly regarded (and secretly held) knowledge is now free for the taking. So I would argue that the real difference between now and then is not technology and us modifying our techniques around it, but rather the amount good boolit shooting knowledge is held by far more than it was back then. The stuff we take for granted here, were trade secrets 100 years ago. One of them was smoking a mold.

So with that being said, when a shooter finds a technique that works and he gets good results with it, he generally sticks with it come hell or high water. Is this because he is innately stupid and stubborn or because he knows it works? Does he realize that there might be better ways? I would say "No and Usually".

Just KISS, that is the best advice for this hobby IMO. Don't get frustrated when guys with a PhD in Boolits (like Rick) get the results they do. Casting is no different from anything else in life. Most of us learn by doing, over and over and over. What you think is cool beans today, might be old taters in a year or even tomorrow. Just pick a jumping off point and do it well. (That jumping off point should be finding a boolit that FITS your gun, and mastering casting technique!) Would you ask your third grader to do fractions all day? Or would you present the knowledge to him and leave off on a good point? Do you think you could race alongside Lance Armstrong without practice? You might not ever get there, but it does not mean you should not try, or be satisfied with realistic results. Alloy X, and alloy y, and alloy z are not as important as some would have you believe.

PS Please defer all your complaints to CJR

[Suo Gan]

Is there a recommended way to deburr the cavity edges?

If it is a Lee 2 cavity mold, I have been known to deburr them by letting them season for eternity at the county landfill.

Read up on Leementing a mold, I think that is what you are after.

[fishnbob]

I once read here that sometimes you just have to show the mold who's boss and just get a firm grip on the handles and your temper and force the scoundrel to conform to your wishes or else. After scrubbing the hell outta it with HOT water & dish washing liquid with a toothbrush and getting your pot up to about 900 degrees, I did the very same thing to my last MiHec and forced it to succumb to my desires. I too prefer a 2 cavity mold. It's easier for me to get 2 good ones than to have to worry about 4 others acting up! Hang in there and just keep throwing them back and pouring them out and sooner or later it'll give up.

[armoredman]

I never thought to ignite such a firestorm... I think the biggest culprit is the sprue plate. My first cavity's sprue has already hardened by the time the last one emerges from under the spout. I really like this boolit, and I did size up and gas check the 11 I did get, so I am willing to work on getting it to run right. They sized up to .311 nicely, bte. I am thinking the hot plate idea might work well, gonna need a power strip in the garage for the hot plate, pot and vent fan! I have box fan that blows the fumes from fluxing out the open garage door. Neighbors haven't complained yet...
This has been the most gentle disagreement of experts I have witnessed, much calmer than, say, a Taiwanese governmental dispute.

[geargnasher]

Let me restate some facts of the properties of tin and antimony in a lead alloy, because it seems to have been missed.

First off, WW alloy has very little tin to begin with, so "cranking the heat" up to 750+* probably isn't hurting you in a way you can tell, and extra heat does aid filloutwith low-tin alloy. So you can say "it doesn't hurt anything" within that context and almost be right. However, to say that you can run the pot with a higher-tin alloy that hot is to draw the wrong conclusion from experience with straight wheel weights or similar ternary alloy. Excessive heat multiplies the oxidation rate of the tin and defeats the purpose of using it as an oxidation shield in the first place.

But if you start wtih Lyman #2 with 5% tin you will most certainly tell by the way the oxide front forms and white patches appear on your boolits from being overheated and making the oxidation rate of the tin go into warp speed. You'll also note, with as little as 1-2% Tin in the mix and pot temp too hot, that the oxide scum layer on the top grows exponentially. If you run the pot cooler this is drasticall reduced.

Second, tin and antimony bond in approximately equal parts to each other in a ternary lead alloy to form an "intermetallic bond" to each other, in effect making the distinct element "SbSn", which is what gives "toughness" to our ternary alloys. Tin alone doesn't do much. If tin is more available than antimony, all excess tin that has to antimony with which to bond becomes "free" in the mix, and, while tin is infinitely soluble in lead, the excess of our tin can still form little pockets of tin in our finished alloy because of different liquidus temperatures between pure lead and pure tin. I call this "overtinning". If an excess of antimony is present, it hardens first and forms dentrites with molten liquid pure lead and SbSn floating around it. This makes the "crystalline slush" at certain temperatures that we experience with WW and Harball alloys where there is more antimony present than tin.

Tin and Lead binarys also have a lengthy slush stage, but that's due to the crystalline nature of pure tin itself, same as antimony, but in a ternary we are not dealing much with pure tin crystals because the tin is mostly consumed as "SbSn" unless the alloy is "overtinned", so the slush stage of ternaries is either from pure antimony and/or SbSn or just the SbSn if the alloy has equal parts tin and antimony present.

Now, why run an alloy with a decent amount of tin in it at over 700*? If you're not getting good fillout, you have alloy or mould contamination of some sort, a venting problem, or the mould is too cold.

One more thing, about thermometers: If you're using one to determine the ideal alloy temp for casting, how do you know beforehand what temp you are wanting to achieve? Do you say "alloy X that I'm using right now needs 725* for good boolits in X mould"? If you do, you've likely found the sweet spot between mould and alloy and documented it. This is the only real application for a themometer, Duplicating sweet spots. Otherwise, and to establish that sweet spot in the first place, trial and error with an educated guess was probably what was used to begin with. One of the reasons I don't cast with a thermometer very often is, like I said before, A THERMOMETER WILL TELL YOU THE TEMPERATURE, BUT THE ALLOY AND MOULD WILL TELL YOU THE CORRECT TEMPERATURE. So a thermometer is best used for dupicating what you already know works.

Gear