my first attempt at casting

[RobP1]

Sprue cut looks good, base is way too rounded for me to accept. I would melt those and try again. A larger puddle on the sprue plate may help.

Thank you, that's the kind of critique and advice I'm looking for.

[canyon-ghost]

In detail, the ones with voids at the spruce hole are too hot. I suspect that's why they'd be frosty. I have to open the mold and wave it in the air and drop the heat control down. They cut sprue a little too easily! It rips the hardening lead from the base. They'll be lighter in weight.
You can change temp at the mold itself by pouring faster for heat, and opening the mold( hesitating) for cooling.
I agree, your bases need to be sharp. Maybe more sprue metal on the plate. Good work.

[JoeJames]

I have not confessed to this before, but my first try at casting in a long time was not with a plumber's pot, but with a plumber's forge which uses white gas and had a pump on it like a Coleman lantern. It was a dismal try. Then I got a used Lee 10 pound pot from a member on here, and after that I eventually began to actually cast genuine sho nuff good revolver boolits.

[TurnipEaterDown]

I have not confessed to this before, but my first try at casting in a long time was not with a plumber's pot, but with a plumber's forge which uses white gas and had a pump on it like a Coleman lantern. It was a dismal try. Then I got a used Lee 10 pound pot from a member on here, and after that I eventually began to actually cast genuine sho nuff good revolver boolits.

I remember 2 nights 30 years ago w/ a white gas plumber pot melting down 1/2 ton of lead in an indoor rimfire/pellet gun range. Worked like Tony the Tiger says: GREAT! I did it with a friend and got the minority share, as it was all his equipment & access. That 250 lb got me going at the beginning of my casting!

[BLAHUT]

After casting and sorting for looks, i weigh every bullet and segerate by 1/10 gr, so all will be roughtly the same weight, every round in the 50 carterage box weightys the same> i use blackhorn209 powder in a 45/70, very consistance, i shoot long range, this is where your casting and lube will show up on target, i found 400yd and beyound, is where things get intresting ?? In the meantime you can use a cheap air gun to pratic at 10 or 15 meters and keep sharp>> .01$ a pellet is cheap pratice>>

[Stopsign32v]

I call bullcrap, no way that is your first time casting.

Those look GREAT man! Way better than my first attempt, I know that much.

[farmbif]

many times lube sticks better to frosted bullets.
job well done. once you get melting and pouring clean alloys its not all that difficult with a good mold to get good results every casting session.

[WinchesterM1]

15meter, I'm in Northeast Ohio a little town called Ravenna. Thanks guys for the input. Rob

If you ever make it to Ashland Ky hit me up, I will show you my set up, even though I’m 36 I’ve been casting for 20 years

[WRideout]

In detail, the ones with voids at the spruce hole are too hot. I suspect that's why they'd be frosty. I have to open the mold and wave it in the air and drop the heat control down. They cut sprue a little too easily! It rips the hardening lead from the base. They'll be lighter in weight.
You can change temp at the mold itself by pouring faster for heat, and opening the mold( hesitating) for cooling.
I agree, your bases need to be sharp. Maybe more sprue metal on the plate. Good work.

I cast with a fairly quick cadence, and have gotten molds too hot rather frequently. I didn't believe it until I tried it, but touching the hot mold to a rag moistened with a little water brings the mold temp right down, and allows me to continue at the same pace. I have gotten those base tearouts when I ran too hot.

Wayne

[Land Owner]

Attachment 303804Land Owner, Thanks for the advice. The sprue seemed to be cutting pretty well. Here's a pic what do you think? Rob

Divots in the boolit base from the spru cut have been explained (post #22) and yours for a first time are "probably" not excessive. I would like to give you credit for boolit #3, hard and sharp edges, clean spru cut, but the picture is out of focus. That's a 75% rejection rate for those four.

Looking at the background boolits in the picture there are a lot of rounded bottom edges. You didn't mention the alloy used, Lead-WW-Tin percentages if known, so with a grain of salt, perhaps add a smidgeon of Tin to the alloy, between 1% & 2% by weight, a hot mold, hot melt, and hot spru plate should help with fillout of the mold and reduce rejection.

Still, kudos to you on your first attempt (ditto posts #16, #26, et al). Your boolits really look good. Shoot a few! That is also instructive. As mentioned (#25), weigh and sort them. There are differences not apparent to the eye and it will leave you with an itch as you wonder why...

...keep scratching.

[Shanghai Jack]

Not bad at all - agree with the comments regarding sharp edges on the bases. Old writing used to call the base the steering end. There were studies done about the bullet's flight after damage to the base, nose, driving band, etc. Damage to the base seemed to cause the greatest inaccuracy. More reading. Weighing is much easier now in the day of the digital scale. Agree with weighing

On the other side of the coin - after you get your casting down to an art where your boolits are coming out to your liking you can go full anal-retentive and do the cast only in a single cavity mold, weigh, sort, lube the day of shooting, index the bullet to the barrel and shoot in the order cast drill. I generally only go this route when I'm going to a match.

Somewhere in some of the old writings there was mention of the "fact" that no two mold cavities are ever the same, irrespective of the care taken in their manufacturing. The same writings mentioned that by changing the indexing of the bullet to the bore that one could change the impact of the bullet. There was talk of placing the rifles in a gun vise and changing the indexing of the bullet with respect to the bore from 12 o'clock, 1 o'clock, etcthereby essentially shooting a circle on the target without moving the sight position on target. one of these days I'm going to give this a try.

[RobP1]

The alloy is Lyman#2. I'll get out my digital powder scale and weigh them and compare the few with sharp bases to the rounded ones. The mold is .410 dia 420gr. with the front 2 driving bands reduced.

[charlie b]

Congratulations on your success.

As others have pointed out, temperature is the key. Pot temp control is a part of that. Casting cadence is the other part, ie, temp of the mold. It is better too hot than too cold......most of the time. I didn't get really good results until I started pre-heating the mold with a hot plate. Hot plate has to be set so the mold is near the perfect temp when you take it off the hot plate. Takes some experimenting.

So, another part of casting is to inspect and reject the bullets that don't meet your quality control. My method for rifle bullets is weight sorting. 0.1gn batches. As I do that I also toss out the ones with visible defects, rounded bases, wrinkles, bad fill out, etc. Then toss out the low weight ones.

When I started with rifle bullets I was lucky to get 50% good bullets. As my technique improved it got better and now I am at 90% keepers.

[Shanghai Jack]

Congratulations on your success.

As others have pointed out, temperature is the key. Pot temp control is a part of that. Casting cadence is the other part, ie, temp of the mold. It is better too hot than too cold......most of the time. I didn't get really good results until I started pre-heating the mold with a hot plate. Hot plate has to be set so the mold is near the perfect temp when you take it off the hot plate. Takes some experimenting.

So, another part of casting is to inspect and reject the bullets that don't meet your quality control. My method for rifle bullets is weight sorting. 0.1gn batches. As I do that I also toss out the ones with visible defects, rounded bases, wrinkles, bad fill out, etc. Then toss out the low weight ones.

When I started with rifle bullets I was lucky to get 50% good bullets. As my technique improved it got better and now I am at 90% keepers.

Anything with a "fin" on the side gets discarded as well. Means the mold wasn't closed correctly and the bullet will be unbalanced.

For pistol bullets e.g. 230 grain round nose 45 caliber I'm more forgiving than for a 32-40 schuetzen match bullet where I'll apply the whole magilla of procedures. I'm not as good as CharlileB for rifle bullets but I may just be more OCD.

[RobP1]

This is interesting. The mold suppose to be 420gr. I just went through and weighed them. They are .
404-407gr. Rotometals says the BHN is 16 with this allow. I'm wondering with a higher content of lead and lower content of tin if it would bring it closer to 420gr. This doesn't include the weight of the lube but that can't be very much.

[Jags93]

This is interesting. The mold suppose to be 420gr. I just went through and weighed them. They are .
404-407gr. Rotometals says the BHN is 16 with this allow. I'm wondering with a higher content of lead and lower content of tin if it would bring it closer to 420gr. This doesn't include the weight of the lube but that can't be very much.

Yes, the drop weight should go up the closer you are to pure lead or the softer the bnh.


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[RobP1]

So, any idea how much pure lead to add to bring the BHN down to say 9 BHN from 16? 40 percent pure lead? Of course this is for when I start getting consistent casts.

[Dusty Bannister]

30 parts pure lead and 1 part tin makes about 9 BHN. Rather than trying to dilute the alloy with antimony in it already, better to start with the correct ratio and be done with it.

[gwpercle]

This is interesting. The mold suppose to be 420gr. I just went through and weighed them. They are .
404-407gr. Rotometals says the BHN is 16 with this allow. I'm wondering with a higher content of lead and lower content of tin if it would bring it closer to 420gr. This doesn't include the weight of the lube but that can't be very much.

Different mould makers cut their moulds to cast a specific weight boolit with a specific alloy .
Lyman uses Lyman #2 , another uses COWW , another uses 1/20 - tin/lead .
There is no way to cut a mould to drop a boolit weighing 420 grains with every alloy that can be mixed up and also with pure lead . The more lead the heavier the boolit will be...
but don't get all concerned if you alloy gives you a 407 grain boolit instead of a 420 gr. ... you will not find load data on 407 gr. boolits ...just use the load data for the 420 grain ... it will all work out and be okay !
Gary

[JoeJames]

30 parts pure lead and 1 part tin makes about 9 BHN. Rather than trying to dilute the alloy with antimony in it already, better to start with the correct ratio and be done with it.

I saw a reprint of an old mold catalog - I think it was Ideal back about 1905 or so. It stated their mold weights were based upon a 1 to 30 ratio.