Lightning Ross
11-05-2006, 11:04 PM
First off I am fairly new to casting.My equiment is not state of the art.Turkey cooker heater cast iron pot and a laddle.I have one double cavity 7mm Rcbs 1 45 cal lee six hole and a 357 six holer. Rcbs lube machine with dies for my bullet size and lube.From reading this forum I took my knolege and attacked the lee 357 150semi wadcutter 6 holer today.fired up the turkey cooker weiighed out 20lbs of clean ww ingots 1/2lb solder with tin went to work Lead looked about right nice and shineystarted to poor.First 5 poors junked the bullets mold got warmmed up. Found out right away I had to tip the mold strait up to get it to close right.I had better results with pouring a steady steam across the top so the sprue was one solid peice.I got better base fill that way.Open the mold and dumped into a bucket of water.All bullets released with just one light tap.After awile they got real sticky.I resmoked the mold helped some not much.Gave ath mold a whack to release the bullets and the wood handle came off and dunked the mold into the water .Thought I wrecked it.Checked it all over went back to work bullets came out slick. When they got sticky again I let the mold cool worked like a champ.Then to the sizeing and lube.I had trouble geting the bullet not to shear one side.Looked things over and I had the sizer to deep and was getting to much lube under bullet adjusted and all worked good .I have 100 lubed and ready to load and shoot I think I will start out in the 1000fps range to start with.A real learning exp.