My first time melting WW's was this past Sunday. I went through about 75% of my 3/4 full 5 gallon pail checking by hand for lead versus Zinc/ steel and figure if I kept the temp down to around 650 the remaining 25% would melt and I could avoid sorting by hand ( guess I should have just done the rest and I could have avoided this post ) . I bought a Lyman temp probe for this purpose. I did try to maintain the temp the best I could but would have to increase the flame under the pan when adding more WW's to the mix to get it back up to temp to melt so I guess it was at these times I should have paid better attention and used the gauge more often. Anyhow I tried to cast some .40 S&W boolits last night and no matter what, I could not get a decent cast. Mind you this is only my second time casting boolits so what the heck do I know. My first attempt with 9mm a couple weeks ago with already cast lead that was gifted to me turned out great ( for a rookie ). So when melting this newly cast lead in my old Lee pot it looks normal with none of the porridge looking stuff in the melt like I've read about. I guess my question is ...do I have zinc in my lead or could it be that my temp in the pot is not high enough or my mold is not hot enough or a combination of both. It seems like the pour isn't pouring fast enough??? and I'm not getting fully formed boolits and there are a lot of distortion/ wrinkles etc and the edges are not sharp and they are somewhat rounded.
I emptied the pot the best I could and used some of the gifted lead to see if it made any difference and although not perfect they did come out much better than the previous ones. What is the best temp to have the lead at to cast?
having trouble attaching photos.