convince me casting isn't a waste of time

[stephen]

First off hello to all.
I'm new to casting, trying to start on the cheap, ie coleman stove & cast pot, after spending something like 4 hours I've ended up w/ around 100 bullets of terrible quality. Equipment was Lee 2 cav mould & ww lead. I'd flux, pour 2 batches and have to flux again. Gray ash type powder kept raising up. In the end none of the bullets filled out right, and they were real soft. HELP!
Thanks

[bfox]

I am not the most knowledgable caster but I''ll try to help .
Are you sure you got the melt hot enough and the mold ?
If its not they will be wrinkly .

A thermometer would be nice to have .

I like to drop mine in a bucket of water , out of the mold .
Hardens them up some . Don't let any water get in the lead .
I found that out the hard way . Must of had some condensation on an ingot .
No harm but the tinsel fairy paid me a visit .

Keep it up you'll like it .
I am sure some more help than me will be posting soon .

Good Luck , Bill

[osage]

stephen welcome to the group. I hope you stick around for a bit, read and use the search. I know I found many answers to problems I was having via the search.
Was the mold cleaning following Lee's instruction?
Preheating mold, increasing alloy temp may cut the number of casts need before you get good boolits.
You did not say if your alloy is in ingot form. I found that I still get some dirt coming to the top when remelting ww ingots to make my alloys. Your will also find the top of the melt will start to oxidize as soon as it is exposed to the air. The more you scoop it off the more it forms. I just move the dross enough to fill my ladle.
As my snow berms have been melting the last couple of days I have picked up many boolits that when dropped from the molds were not perfect. They worked fine for close work and plinking.
Hang in there, you'll be hooked before you know it.

[jdhenry]

Just my 2 cents but I was doing the math today and for my .357mag, It costs about .05 to load a 200gr bullet. To go buy factory ammo it would be about .40 a bullet. I just ordered 10,000 primers and to shoot all of the primers (as a loaded round) it will cost me $500.00 and to buy 10,000 loaded factory rounds it would cost about $4000.00. Hope that helped Also the time away from the real world PRICELESS!!!!!!!!!

[verney]

Did you add any tin to the WW?

[andrew375]

You are just at the start of a learning curve, just the way I, and most of the others here, started. The good thing is that the only thing you are wasting is a bit of time and heat, bad bullets just go back in the pot.

To answer your problems it looks like either your mould, metal or both are not up to temperature. An important lesson we all learn is to abandon the idea of melting metal in a pot on a gas stove and instead go to a thermostat controlled electric pot.

Apart from cost cast bullets make me independent of supply fluctuations. When I'm staggering out of the shed with another hundredweight of 250 gr. SWCs I have a little smile at my none casting shooting friends who are having fits sourcing bullets and end up having to use yet another bullet type, which they didn't want, but have to use as it is the only one available.

[jack19512]

I am a long way from being an expert but I do cast some nice bullets. Two of the things I have noticed that would give me trouble in the beginning was the lead temp and new mold prep. Also, did you smoke your mold? I should add I use straight wheel weights for my casting, never had to add anything myself.

[DonH]

I am a long way from being an expert but I do cast some nice bullets. Two of the things I have noticed that would give me trouble in the beginning was the lead temp and new mold prep. Also, did you smoke your mold? I should add I use straight wheel weights for my casting, never had to add anything myself.

I too suspect metal temp is too low. I have no experience with melting on a Coleman stove but do wonder if one can get and maintain high enough temperature. If you are not really sure how serious you want to get about casting, you might try one of the Lee 4 pound electric pots. Capacity is low but the temp issue wiil go away.
Addition of tin to wheel weight metal WILL enhance castability but I have also cast may thousands (tens of thousands?) of bullets from straight WW and never had a problem with mould fill-out.

[OldBob]

I started out with the same sort of equipment ( about 40 years ago) and one thing I did was set my melting pot inside of a piece of stovepipe that just slipped onto the pot. It seemed to help concentrate the heat and it also stabilized the pot. From what you describe it is either the mould not cleaned properly or the melt is too cold, just as the guys above said.

[Wayne Smith]

and they were real soft. HELP!
Thanks

WW metal should not be "real soft", even air cooled. Sounds like you got into some soft lead, which is harder to cast. Did you make the ingots? Are you sure they are ww metal? To cast Lead well you need heat - I cast lead up around 750 degrees.

You didn't specify one burner Coleman or two burner Coleman, but I've had my two burner propane Coleman up over 900 degrees with a 20lb Lyman pot full of ww. If you have a two burner you have plenty of heat.

I was casting relatively well before I got a thermometer but improved dramatically when I kept my temps more constant using one.

Read posts on leementing a Lee mold before you give up. Treat that mold gently and it will last, beat on it and it won't.

You don't say where you are. Its possible one of us is close enough to visit, or for you to visit one of us. Hands on instruction is invaluable. It takes longer only using the internet, I kno.

[VTDW]

Stephen,

Welcome bro. Stick around and you will naturally learn whazzup. Casting is definitely worth your while as it affords you peace, quiet and tranquillity as you perfect your workmanship. Just sit back, take a break and enjoy your newfound hobby/addiction. Those fellas who posted above gave some really good hints. I sometimes write those things down and use them until one day, wallah, it all comes together.

Wayne Smith made a great suggestion. A few weeks back a fellow I had only seen one time asked me if he could watch the casting process. He brought his son along and we all had a great time. He did all the casting and left with a goodly amount of lubed and sized boolits to shoot. That reminds me, I gotta get him to bring me some WW. LOL

Dave

[NVcurmudgeon]

The problem is NOT your Coleman stove, if it is in good working order. I have been casting on a Coleman for forty years with excellent results. I find dribbling, clogging electric furnaces too irritating. If you are starting off with all new equipment make sure you are following Lee's instructions to the letter. Aluminum moulds generally need higher temperature than iron moulds because aluminum dissapates heat faster. If your pot is a small round bottom model that does not cover the entire burner surface you may need to make a simple sheet metal duct to keep all the heat on the pot. The caster who taught me used one of the old tiny Lyman round bottom pots and made such a duct. I once weighed 100 of his cast boolits and found them to be more uniform in weight than 100 Sierras. When casting with a ladle you have to drag the dross to one side before dipping. I usually manage to fill the mould 15-30 times between needing to flux and skim again. What are you fluxing with, and are you stirring the flux thoroughly into the melt?

[Aldeer]

I can almost never get Lee molds to give good bullets until I thoroughly clean them. Even soaking a few hours in acetone is not good enough. What has worked for me, a procedure I got from another on these forums, is as follows:

1) boil the mold for 30 mintues in water with Dawn detergent.
2) rinse mold under running water
3) boil mold in clean water for 30 minutes
4) Repeat 2 and 3.
5) Repeat 2

After this procedure, I get good bullets as soon as the mold is warmed up.

[jonk]

I only started getting good bullets after switching to an electric smelter; I just never could get the lead consistantly hot enough with a torch or coleman stove (though I do still use the coleman sometimes for smelting into ingots)

[stephen]

OK, let's see if I can answer all the questions.
Yes they were ww. Sorted w/o using the sticky types. I made ingots out of a cast pie shaped skillet.
The temp didn't seem to be too low as the metal was flowing quite readily. I do think I'll try the wrap on the bowl stovepipe trick next time though.
I did follow the Lee cleaning instructions, but substituted Unique bullet lube to lube the sides & top of the mould. And I smoked the inside before and again during, when they weren't releasing. It took forever to get the second hole, closer to me, to fill up all the way. Seemed like more than half that dropped from there were rounded on the end.
Flux was w/ a combination of dipping a candle, tossing in sawdust, and even trying a little crisco. Then stirring up real well.
I'm in Las Vegas.
I think that's all of them. Thanks for the help. I wasn't really expecting so many replies...
Stephen

[JIMinPHX]

You say that gray ash keeps coming to the surface. Did you scrape the sides & bottom of the pot when you fluxed? Also, you say that you are using wheel weights. Did you clean & flux them into ingots first or did you just dump them into a pot, flux & start casting? Usually you want to have a grubby pot for cleaning up the raw material & then a clean pot to cast from.

You didn’t say if you added any tin. Usually 1-2% of tin helps fill-out a lot. If you throw in about 6” of 1/8” diameter solid plumber’s solder per pound of lead, it should make a big difference.

You may also see better fill out from a slightly higher casting temperature. I usually cast with the pot around 650-700 degrees F. My molds usually need to be over 400 degrees to start working properly. If the boolits start to get a frosty appearance when they come out of the mold, then you are approaching the top end of how hot you want things. The frosty boolits are keepers though. A lot of guys cast that way intentionally.

Just to check, You do know to keep water & moist tools away from the casting pot, Right? If you dip a moist tool into a pot of molten lead, the very hot contents of the pot will be distributed all over the room you are in very quickly. You don’t want that.

[JIMinPHX]

Just saw your last reply. You must have been typing while I was. Those stick-on wheel weights are usually pure lead. When we say wheel weights around here, we usually assume that you mean the clip-on ones that aren’t zinc. The clip-on ones have a little antimony & tin already in them & they cast well. They are harder too. If you are melting your wheel weights & a few of them just don’t want to melt, pull the non-melters out of the mix. If you go a few hundred degrees above the normal melting point of the regular wheel weights, then the zinc ones will melt too & your mix will be trash.

[JIMinPHX]

If your second hole is not filling up well, then there is probably not enough heat in your ladle full of lead by the time that you get to the second hole. Either your pot is not hot enough, your mold is not hot enough, or your ladle does not have enough heat capacity. What type of ladle are you using?

[Springfield]

And sometimes new moulds just don't want to vent properly, causing improper fillout. Raising the temp sometimes helps, but with the 6 cavity moulds in particular, I just have to use them a couple times until they will vent right. Especially is you have lubed the top of the mould, it just helps seal it and keeps it from venting.

[HORNET]

Um, you used bullet lube on the sides and top? That stuff'll get everywhere you don't want it to be and cause all manner of problems. Try cleaning it off ( sometimes takes white gas or gasoline to cut through the burnt beeswax) again, including reboiling, lube the mold by rubbing the bearing and aligning surfaces by graphiting them with a pencil or graphite spray (works better if the mold is warm) or by rubbing them with soapstone. Those'll stay put and not garbage up the cavities and vents. Get the mold warm (to avoid moisture condensation)and smoke it with a butane lighter or matches (candles leave a greasy residue that messes things up), and try it again. I think the mold just got garbaged up by the lube. If you read much on here on the newbie posts, you'll hear a LOT of recommendations for Bullshop's Sprue Plate Lube as the ONLY thing to use for aluminum molds.