Water dropping cause frosting?

[cheese1566]

Using a Lee 45 6 cavity mold, I made about 500 boolits from wheel weights. I did not use any additional tin. Got the pot full, melted, and fluxed. Starting casting to get everything warm and filling out.

I would start dropping them into a shallow pan with a heavy terry towel and 3" of cool water (far enough to avoid splash up to the mold). I would open the mold and check the condition to either OK or junk them. I know some were already frosted from the pot or mold being too hot. About half were nice and shiny.

When I pulled them out of the water, they all look to be either frosted, or have that "galvanized" crystal look.

Is this from cooling too fast?

I know they will shoot alright, and hardness isn't an issue as this are plinking loads. Would I be better to let them air cool and be careful dropping them to avoid dents?

[Onlymenotu]

water drop them for eazy..... as you said your not worried about the hardness..why spend the extra time and effort to air cool and worry about the dents... load'm and shoot'm.... i almost always water drop em

[LAH]

In my casting I've not found water to cause frosting, only higher than needed temp.

We hardly water cool, even with machines. I find dropping the bullets on a cardboard ramp which leads to another cardboard ramp and into a box plenty of cooling time to prevent denting. Just my 2.

[Throwback]

Water dropping does not frost bullets - your pot temp is too high. Sometimes frosting is useful but more often it makes your bullets out-of-round with depressions where the frosting appears.

[stubshaft]

The "galvanized crystal" look is from the alloy itself. When I use my Lee 6 cavity 255gr mould I have to dunk it in water after about 4 consequtive casts. I used to keep a damp towel handy but now, just give it a quick dunk ith the water bucket. If I don't the mold overheats real quick.

[44man]

Using a Lee 45 6 cavity mold, I made about 500 boolits from wheel weights. I did not use any additional tin. Got the pot full, melted, and fluxed. Starting casting to get everything warm and filling out.

I would start dropping them into a shallow pan with a heavy terry towel and 3" of cool water (far enough to avoid splash up to the mold). I would open the mold and check the condition to either OK or junk them. I know some were already frosted from the pot or mold being too hot. About half were nice and shiny.

When I pulled them out of the water, they all look to be either frosted, or have that "galvanized" crystal look.

Is this from cooling too fast?

I know they will shoot alright, and hardness isn't an issue as this are plinking loads. Would I be better to let them air cool and be careful dropping them to avoid dents?

Water dropping will not change appearance but you would be better off with a five gallon bucket of water set on a low stool next to your bench. 3" of water and a towel is not enough and the lead might still be soft getting towel impressions.
You could also have a little zinc in your mix. But chances are you are too hot. Fully frosted boolits can also be too small or not fill out. Crank down the heat.

[mooman76]

Last weekend I found just the opposite to be true. I was dropping some sample bullets from a couple new mould I got. I was dropping some to air cooled and some were water dropped. Being it was a 6x I had the lead cranked up pretty high. The ones that were dropped air cooled were frosted badly, some to the point I couldn't use them. Then I dropped some to be water cooled and they came out good. They weren't nice and shiny but they had little to no frost on them. You're running your lead to hot, you need to turn the heat down some. It's obvious I was running too hot too. I was rushing the job because I had other stuff to do and I just wanted to get a few samples so I would know what my mould would drop.

[cheese1566]

When the pot was full, I was getting frosty's. I turned down the heat, paused, and slowed down. I noticed when the pot got down to about 1/4 full, the sprues cut very easily, the fill was great, and they were nice and shiny.

But when I refilled the pot, melted, fluxed, and cleaned, the process started over again. This same condition happened several times.

It seams ironic to me that as the pot level dropped, the sprue cut easier and the casts improved.

The shiny ones were dropped into water. Now I don't see them and suspect these are the ones with the "galvanized" crystal look.

Looks like I need a good thermometer. Maybe I will look into the PID idea again.

[HeavyMetal]

When you described the galvanized look my first thought was you were using an alloy with a fairly high antimony content.

This alloy is usually from a lot of small size clip on WW's and can be mistaken for frosting.

Running the melt cooler is only going to give you incomplete fillout of the boolits. In this particular case, and yes I'm guessing, I would try to add a little tin. This should get the antimony to "mix" a little better with the lead and the crystal's should smooth out and look better.

A little lead free solder should do the trick 2 to 3 % of the pot volume should work fine!

You can load and shoot these boolits but loong term they can wear out a sizing die. I did two lyman 451 dies, that became 453 dies, back in the 70's!

[243winxb]

frosted bullets - your pot temp is too high and/or your mould is to hot. A frosted bullet can loose Diameter, when compared to a non-frosted bullet.

[Recluse]

Water dropping will not change appearance but you would be better off with a five gallon bucket of water set on a low stool next to your bench. 3" of water and a towel is not enough and the lead might still be soft getting towel impressions.
You could also have a little zinc in your mix. But chances are you are too hot. Fully frosted boolits can also be too small or not fill out. Crank down the heat.

Yes and no.

I water drop everything, and like Cheese, I often see nice, shiny boolits in the mould and then after I pull them out of the water, they're kind of dull, galvanized looking.

Guess what? That's the minerals in the water adhering to the boolit surface. Just like if you boil water, then pour it out you'll often see the sediment on the bottom of the pan depending upon the mineral content of your tap water.

When I cast at the hangar, where I'm on well-water, I get that "galvanized" look even worse.

We have a water distiller. I made the wife mad one night when I took several gallons of her freshly distilled water and used it to drop my boolits in. Virtually no change in boolit appearance--nice and shiny.

Light frosting has never worried me. In fact, for some of my TL boolits, I intentionally try to frost--makes the lube adhere better.

[Trey45]

Over the last 2 days I've been casting and water dropping Lyman 429421 out of straight ww ingots. I've noticed some discoloration on some of my boolits, while others are shiney. It's not the best pic in the world but you can still see how some are dullish in color while others have a shine to them.This is a random sampling, just grabbed a handfull and put them in the bin. I haven't noticed when the shiney ones drop, or when the dull ones do. I keep my heat on my lee dripolater constant, I set it between 8 and 9 and leave it alone. I stir often while adding more ingots to the melt, I keep kitty litter on top of the melt too.

[anachronism]

Your mould got hot. The really easy sprue cutting is a dead give-away. If you went through about 3/4 of a pot without breaks, it's no wonder. As long as your weights are consistent, and the bullets are full dimensioned, you don't have a problem at all.

[snaggdit]

I'm with Recluse. I've seen several posts where it turned out to be the water, at least for the crystalline/galvanized result. Frosting means extra heat, I like some frosting for tumble lubing. I take my breaks and switch molds when I suck the 20# pot dry (almost). Using BruceB's speedcasting method with ocassional taps of the bottom of the mold to the wet cloth I can maintain mold temp through the pot of lead. When the frosting gets plainly noticable, I cool the mold for a few rounds. Takes about 6-12 more before I do it again.

[Nora]

I've seen several posts where it turned out to be the water, at least for the crystalline/galvanized result.

This was the case for me. I'd asked this before as well. The response to my post was the water. So I filled one 5 gal bucket with tap water from the garden hose, and another with filtered water from the kitchen. The tap water gave a galvanized look wile the filtered did not.

[Charlie Sometimes]

Your mold is too hot, and the water is a problem too, as others have stated. I have cast with temperatures too high, had the easy sprue cutting (you get smearing and tear out on the boolit base as another indicator of incomplete cooling/ too hot mold) and I have watched the air cooled boolit frost right before my eyes on the folded towel- right where it dropped. It looked good when it landed, but quickly got the galvanized, satin, crystaline gray appearance.