Pretty Boolits??

[gon2shoot]

I just shoot em, not dance with em. Dont worry about what they look like if if the results suit you.

[swheeler]

If it really bothers you then just take some 4/0 steel wool and swipe the loaded round. The boolit will be a lot shinier. Myself, I'm not much on surface appearances, not in boolits, cars or clothing. It's whats inside that counts.

Yers Trooly, Bret M, President and Chief Morale Officer, Curmudgeon and Not So Handsome Guys Society of America.

Pretty bullets are like pretty women, doesn't mean much! Beauty is only skin deep.

[Tom R]

Pretty bullets are like pretty women, doesn't mean much! Beauty is only skin deep.

I like them all pretty.

[caillouetr9981]

I have been casting now for only about a month now but I have found that my boolits are not that pretty.. I know this sounds stupid but I do not have the shinny purty boolits that alot of you post here. Don't get me wrong, they all shoot just fine and don't give me any leading in my guns but they are not shinny. I am using WW's with 2% tin added or jsut lain WW's and they just don't come out looking shinny. Am I doing something wrong?? Or do you guys just take the best looking boolits you got and shine them up for the camera??

Try a mix of 9-parts WW and 1-part 50/50 Plumbers Lead (also know as Plumbers Solder).

If you can't find the Plumbers Lead at hardware stores, try Lowe's.

This mix does mold "purty" bullets, doesn't seem to give any leading problems (when used at reasonable velocities) and perform very well when they hit something.

Good Luck...

Reggie

[Doble Troble]

Run 'em hot and let 'em frost! Fill-out trumps shine. Casting lots of bullets fast trumps everything except shooting them.

[snuffy]

Ya mean like these?







No, they're not all shined up, just as they dropped from the mold(s).

I was experimenting with Gears cool lead, hot mold technique. It works. If I let the molds get too hot, I got frosted boolits. In fact I had to set the molds on a wet sponge to keep them cool enough, even casting with 2 molds This was a relatively hard alloy, 15 lino-5 pure lead.

Yes, if the 500 440 lee started to get too hot, it would frost just a spot in the middle of the boolit, next to the inside of the mold. That thin area between the 2 cavities. It would be smaller in that area. The other is a 310 44 lee. The Miha grand canyon 500-700 was a dream to cast with. But it too would get too hot if not cooled or slowed the pace.

[GL49]

Snuffy,
Even on my best days, mine NEVER have looked that good!

[geargnasher]

Snuffy, the 9% antimony and 3% tin in your alloy melts at a pretty low temp, and fills out really well in a fairly cool mould. It's possible to do the same thing with wheel weight alloy, but much more difficult (for me, anyway). When using WW with a touch of tin added, I just set the pot about 100 degrees above the melt point and run the mould until I get complete fillout and a light, even frost, like these:



Gear

[a.squibload]

Snuffy, those are really nice.

Gear, yours look blurry???...
With my camera I partially push the trigger to make it focus,
then have to back away a little. Seems to work.

My latest boolits were nice & shiny... and full of wrinkles!
Think my mold temp was too low.
I'll get better.

[weakhand luke]

OK, all well and good. But what is that frost on a hot molded boolit, and why can you just wipe it off?

[Doby45]

The highlighted one is EXACTLY how I try to cast mine.

[nanuk]

just use the same alloy as Swede Nelson....

all his pictures show boolits that appear to be machined from cold rolled steel...

all shiney and such

[geargnasher]

Gear, yours look blurry???...
With my camera I partially push the trigger to make it focus,
then have to back away a little. Seems to work.

My latest boolits were nice & shiny... and full of wrinkles!
Think my mold temp was too low.
I'll get better.

I just linked an existing a pic from my attachments, that one was focused on the mould blocks themselves with regard to making a HP pin to fit the very nice old Ideal Keith mould, it isn't a very good pic of the boolits.

OK, all well and good. But what is that frost on a hot molded boolit, and why can you just wipe it off?

I'm lead to believe that the light "frost" that you can just wipe off is antimony dentrites forming on the surface of the lead, and that they contribute to "antimony wash" in gunbarrels, often confused with very light leading.

Heavily frosted (and pitted, dull looking) boolits are from the same effect, just more pronounced. Here's a better pic, the ones on the left were from a mould too hot, middle is the way I like it, right is too cool. ALLOY TEMPS WERE THE SAME FOR ALL THREE, 650F for COWW + 1.5% tin with a full-liquidus point of 560F:

just use the same alloy as Swede Nelson....

all his pictures show boolits that appear to be machined from cold rolled steel...

all shiney and such

I don't know what Swede uses most of the time, but I know that he's posted more than a few pics of mirror-bright, perfectly filled-out boolits cast from straight wheel weights. I don't know how he does it, especially from his aluminum moulds.

Gear

[a.squibload]

The highlighted one is EXACTLY how I try to cast mine.

The highlighted one is how I would LIKE to cast mine!

[Lizard333]

MY GOD SNUFFY!! To think I was jealous of purty boolits before I saw yours!! I don't think I could even shoot those!! Those are far to purty to shoot. So let me get this straight, you cast with hot lead and a cool mold?? Care to be a little more detailed??

[SwedeNelson]

geargnasher

Its because of my aluminum moulds and what I have picked up from you.
Block temp, melt temp, get every thing right and its a ball.
Nice and shinny and full fill out, couldn't ask for anything better.









Swede Nelson

[white eagle]

blue light reflecting adds wonderfully

[stubshaft]

I just finished casting some of Ranch Dogs 225 boolits out of my new mould. I was using "hardball" alloy.

[MikeS]

just use the same alloy as Swede Nelson....

all his pictures show boolits that appear to be machined from cold rolled steel...

all shiney and such

Speaking of machined boolits, I just cast 100 of Lee's H&G #68 clone tonight, and they came out really nice. On closer inspection you can even see the tool marks from where the mould was cut! Half of the pot was my mix of stick on wheel weights & lino, the other 5 lbs were some clip on wheel weight ingots I bought today at a local gunshop.

With as much hassle as I've been having getting wheel weights on my own, I think I'm going to buy some more of his ingots, they're selling 1lb WW ingots for $1.00 each, and they're local, so there's no shipping involved!

[snuffy]

http://www.castboolits.gunloads.com/...2&postcount=31

lizzard333 posted;

MY GOD SNUFFY!! To think I was jealous of purty boolits before I saw yours!! I don't think I could even shoot those!! Those are far to purty to shoot. So let me get this straight, you cast with hot lead and a cool mold?? Care to be a little more detailed??

Nope, you got it bass-acwards. Cool lead, hot mold. The link above is from this thread;

http://www.castboolits.gunloads.com/...d.php?t=106025

Gearnasher has changed the way I've been casting for the last 40 years. Look at his comments on that thread, you CAN make boolits that look like that, but the temp range of the mold is very narrow. Accurate read-out and control of the alloy is critical. The mold will tell you where it wants to be to produce shiny well-filled-out boolits.

Those cast big, the .44's were .433, the 500's were .503. They sized well but took some work, the hard alloy and sizing to .431 and .501 was accomplished. I plan on putting some thermocouples in a few molds, then running them into a thermometer so I can keep track of temps, so I can duplicate the same set-up in the future. I also have to start writing stuff down, my main weakness is poor record keeping. Maybe now that I'm retired, I will have the time to do that.