Good glue for Leementing

[truckjohn]

Hey all,

Tried out Lee-menting a new 452-255-RF Lee mold.

Seemed to run pretty good -- until I sat the corner too deep into the hot lead.....
and smoked all my epoxy..... and turned the mold back into a #$%^&*( wobbly gobblin.

Ok, so I didn't have a thermometer in the lead while I was casting...
Checked it after it started getting dark, and I noticed a "Dull red glow"
coming out of my pot..... Yikes, 1050 degrees on my pyrometer...... (Yes, I was outside, and up-wind of the pot.)

Note to self, Setting #7 on the Lee Pro 4-20 is *Way* too hot.
I really need to wire up a *Real* thermostat control.....

Well, I was getting really, really good fillout and perfect sharp corners everywhere..... Dropping OK from the dry, clean mold with a couple little taps without any grease, release goop, smoke, etc....

(I haven't done any lapping at all..... and definately will have to do some to get both slugs to cast the same size. One runs larger than the other.)

SO anyway....

What is the glue of choice when "Lee-menting"... This stuff was completely brown/black after about 50-shots.... and on the 52nd shot-- I set the corner down in the lead and totally wiped out my epoxy..... I need something that will hold up way better than the 90-second epoxy I had laying around.....

Thanks

John

[grumpy one]

I think you may find that most easily obtainable glues are a bit marginal, and won't stand up to what you've just been doing. Seems I recall Oldfeller mentioning a couple of items, neither of which is available here in Australia. You could search the site and find what they were - one was a type of loctite, but I had no success at all with the types available here.

I did an internet search of materials and ended up using a type of industrial silicone sealant that has a fairly high temperature rating - it's on the outside of the tubular pack. Don't use the cheap stuff. I've cast about 300-400 with it so far (single cavity, mostly cast frosty) and it hasn't changed colour or changed anything else that I can see. The giant tube cost me about US$3 here, and such things are usually a lot cheaper there. Don't know what I'll do with the other 99% of it - probably ignore it and later find it's gone hard in the tube.

If you do some internet checking you'll find that epoxy is not the answer, the stuff has no high temperature capability worth mentioning - even the exotic grades aren't anywhere near adequate.


Geoff

[Springfield]

I sure must have missed something. Why do you need glue for a bullet mould?

[Treeman]

Springfield, You need glue if you are bumping up cast diameter by shimming the mold blcks with aluminium foil. You also need it if you are trying to take the wobble out of handle slots on a Lee mold (so far I don't really get the point of that-The alignment pins and slots bring my Lees back to gether the same every cast.)

Truckjohn, there is a Copper clored High temp silicone that is good to over 700 degrees. Most epoxies breakdown in the 400s.

[Cloudpeak]

JB Weld says it's good to 600 degrees. Maybe not enough?

Cloudpeak

[RU shooter]

I used the permatex copper or orange colored Hi temp silicone and worked great holding a steel .001 shim to the aluminum

[hunter64]

I have tried the aluminum foil route and for me it was very inconsistant. I was getting .430-.434 out of a keith .44 style mould. I think I will got with RU Shooter's idea of a 1 thou metal shim and try that out. I also used the copper 600F glue.

[Springfield]

When I used the aluminum foil tape it came with it's own glue. Once pressed into place by closing the mould it stayed there on it own. And I have found if I close the handles most of the way and raise the top of the mould the moulds close better. If not then the weight of the handle pulls the right side down out of alignment. Saved a lot of wear and tear on my moulds by doing this properly. Works for me.

[lurch]

Just a thought and have never tried (haven't needed to) but...

Has anyone tried kapton tape for bumping up the mold? This stuff is (or rather was) used to mask off areas of circuit boards when the went through a wave solder machine. Most have a silicone adhesive and are good to 500F or so. Don't know how it would hold up in the long haul, but that stuff is pretty tough.

[hiram]

Veral Smith of LBT recommends Permatex Copper silicone. Its a high temp gasket maker so it sticks to metal. It will work as a glue for foil. You can also use it in loose mold handles. Cost me about $8.

[shooter575]

I find it odd that your Lee pot will get that hot.I have 3,two 20 lb and a 10.None will go over 875 with a full pot. When it gets down to1/2 full the temp will rise to 950.There is a thread some months back on a simple home temp control I seem to recall.

[truckjohn]

I find it odd that your Lee pot will get that hot.I have 3,two 20 lb and a 10.None will go over 875 with a full pot. When it gets down to1/2 full the temp will rise to 950.There is a thread some months back on a simple home temp control I seem to recall.

My pot set on Lee 20lb pot set on #4 runs 750.
I cast up about 200 bullets today -- I got plenty of frosty bullets
set at #4 on my pot.

#7 on the pot was running at 1050F.

Not sure how hot it actually was on 10 -- but pretty damn hot.

Thanks

John

[MT Gianni]

My lee 20# pot runs 725F between 7-8 when it is full. At 1/2 full I drop it to 6 to maintain temps. Gianni

[lurch]

I noticed today that the bottom inch or so of my LEE pot will get dull red at the end of the run at the setting that keeps me in the 700F range when the pot has a good 1/2 to 3/4 charge in it. This has got to be caused by the method that is used for sensing temperature in that animal. I just bought a PID controller off of Evil Bay and will be converting the thing over to a real temperature control in the next few weeks to hopefully avoid such occurences. In the meantime, the name of the game is this:

DON'T LET THE POT GET BELOW 1/3 FULL...PERIOD!

This should keep lead in contact with the area of the pot where the heating coil is wound and temperature under control with the LEE sensing method. I have not taken the pot apart to see exactly what it is they do but is is probably either some sort of element resistance sensing scheme (not likely since that would require some electronics and I don't thaink that is in the LEE budget) or a thermostat bulb on the element in the control compartment - much more likely. Anybody alreday done this? I'll report back when I get digging into it. At any rate, it does not work well when the level in the pot gets down toward the bottom.

[lurch]

Wow. I didn't realize jus how simple the LEE temperature sensing mechanism was. After digging around here some more I found a thread on curing the ills of a LEE pot that won't get hot enough and just had to go look... All I can say is that I'm amazed it works as well as it does. Just a simple thermostat in the tower behind the pot. I wonder how much care is taken at the factory to get the same amount of heating element in the tower for each one. Realizing that most elements have some distance form the ends that are not heated, the whole thing works off of heat conduction from the element and radiant heat off the back of the pot to make the tower get warm. All this is supposed to be correlated to the actual pot temperature. Now I know why the bottom of the pot gets red hot if there isn't much lead in it - less radiant heat off of the back of the pot when the thing is getting low on lead as the top of the pot will eventually cool down with respect to the bottom where the element is....

Definitely time to get the PID controller going on this puppy.

[Mallard57]

I found a thread on curing the ills of a LEE pot that won't get hot enough and just had to go look...
Hi,
I was wondering if you could hook me up with that link?
Thanks,
Jeff

[lurch]

Try this:

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?t=7204&highlight=production

The thermostat tweaking info is on the second page. Mine goes plenty too hot from the factory on the higher settings. Be careful - use a thermometer.

Lurch

[SharpsShooter]

My Lee 20 pounder when full to the rim will hit 1000*+ wide open, around 850* when set on seven. It takes about 35 minutes to get there, but if you need good fillout, it isn't to tough to get.


SS

[tomf52]

I've used J-B Weld with good success.