Help with mold fillout

[Gtek]

+1 on gear, just start casting. When I was a newb my confidence, cadence, where this hand goes, and so on. I just started going for it and worked into what has become some pretty smooth and rewarding sessions. Worst case you melt them again. It was my own fear of unknown that slowed and kept me from advancing. I learned to watch the sprue and count in head. Everbody swims a little different. Be safe. Gtek

[Gswain]

OK, wanted to update for everyone that helped with this. Everyone who said the mold was not hot enough, spot on. Got a hot plate, let the mold sit on the hot plate while my pot was heating, just left it on medium. Once my pot was up to temp, started casting. Apparently, the first run the mold was WAY too hot, because the lead stayed moulten for about a minute, then finally solidified. After that, let it cool off just a little, and started casting beautiful boolits! Thanks again all, and to anyone having a similar problem, take the advice of TRY to get your mold too hot, then back off from there.

[geargnasher]

Good on you. Does what I said in post#13 about exploring both extremes of the mould temperature spectrum make a little more sense now? Now you have a better idea of what "just right" is for that mould and alloy.

Also, did you notice how little time it took for the overheated mould to cool off to casting temperature? It takes even less time for it to cool from ideal to too cold, so keep up the pace it needs, you can cull your boolits, add sprues/ingots to the pot later, but when you're casting, just focus on that and maybe a quick glance at your boolit pile to make sure nothing's gone too terribly wrong.

Gear

[Gswain]

Good on you. Does what I said in post#13 about exploring both extremes of the mould temperature spectrum make a little more sense now? Now you have a better idea of what "just right" is for that mould and alloy.

Also, did you notice how little time it took for the overheated mould to cool off to casting temperature? It takes even less time for it to cool from ideal to too cold, so keep up the pace it needs, you can cull your boolits, add sprues/ingots to the pot later, but when you're casting, just focus on that and maybe a quick glance at your boolit pile to make sure nothing's gone too terribly wrong.

Gear

Absolutely helped. As you stated, I really was having a hard time comprehending just how long it takes to get a mold up to temp. I slowed down a bit at one point, and had a couple of casts get wrinkly, but just doing a couple quick casts got me right back to where I needed to be. Now that I stop and think about it, there is ALOT of aluminum to act as a heatsink, especially in the smaller cav. aluminum 6 holers!. Thanks again.

[geargnasher]

You're welcome, I think you have the hang of it now, the rest is cake. You'll also have a good idea of what to do if you get an iron or brass mould, or a significantly different aluminum one: Get it clean, and get it to the "right" temperature.

Gear

[Gswain]

On an interesting side note, I also did some casting with a 420gr RD mold, and wow is that ever a different beast than a 358158! the RD mold casts at a MUCH slower pace, and have to wait about 15 seconds after pouring to open the sprue plate or it smears, and that is with melt at 650! Just thought i'd add that for anyone else reading this, heavier boolit molds seem to cast at a slower pace.

[Bret4207]

The bigger the boolit the larger the heat source. It's just a matter to relative size or surface area. If your mould was relatively larger so that it was to the 420 gr what the 156 is to your other mould they would work more alike.

It's very nice to hear someone come back and acknowledge that the advice given was correct. Far too many times we get noobs who simply can't grasp the concept of pot temp/mould temp/fillout quality/etc. Drives you nuts after the 137th post asking the same question. It doesn't click and they almost invariably turn to adding tin or wondering about Zinc contamination. Guys like Gear don't hand out bad info.