Second try at casting 40SW

[popper]

Lee 401-175-TC and 401-175-SWC. These things sure are shiny and have some pits that look like corrosion. Used a copier for the pixs, the camera doesn't do closeups well. Boiled and cleaned before casting, lubed SP and pins with 2 cycle oil. Corners are fairly sharp. Is this contamination from lube or in melt? Using melted MBC bullet and sawdust for flux.

[rsrocket1]

Are you using a bottom pour melter or ladle?
Sawdust hangs around the top forming a nice anti-oxide layer, but is a pain to try to dip through without scooping up junk.

If using a bottom pour melter, get a paint stirring stick and run it across the bottom of the melter.

As was told the caster of the frosty boolits, in reality, after tumble lubing them and getting them banged around, you won't see any of the imperfections and neither will your gun.

[ku4hx]

It's a mite hard to pick out inclusions and defects from such small pictures, but you do seem to have some of both. Mind you, nothing wrong with shiny boolits.

I'd flux again and get the temp of your melt up. The traditional lube boolit does seem to have rounded edges and a bit of tin in the alloy will help with mold fill out.

I stopped casting the SWC version because I could never get them to feed well. The TC boolit feeds perfectly for me and is extremely accurate in my guns. I like my boolits to have between 1% and 2% tin and cast with just a bit of frost on most of them. You need to do that which works best for you.

[popper]

Bottom pour pot. The base is frosty like I expected, but the rest looks polished. It's commercial melted bullets, I'll probably add some lead to soften them a bit. I think I got the sprue cutting OK but maybe dropped them a little early. I see a few nicks where the hot bullet hit the mould corner. I had some this morning when I started that didn't fill out at all, others were frosty on one side only so maybe it is the mould temp. After I get a sizer I'll try the SWC in the XD for feeding, dummy rounds of course. Thanks.

[thegreatdane]

if it's a regular XD, they don't like SWCs too much.

[sig2009]

if it's a regular XD, they don't like SWCs too much.

They don't work in xd's. Period.

[sig2009]

Lee 401-175-TC and 401-175-SWC. These things sure are shiny and have some pits that look like corrosion. Used a copier for the pixs, the camera doesn't do closeups well. Boiled and cleaned before casting, lubed SP and pins with 2 cycle oil. Corners are fairly sharp. Is this contamination from lube or in melt? Using melted MBC bullet and sawdust for flux.

Lee just received that same mold from me for the same problem. Bullets started casting great. Then after about 2 hours the cavities were shot. Here is the thread I started with pics. Call Lee and send it back care of Bill in the service department if your bullet look like mine

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?t=139662

[mpmarty]

dirty mold and too cold

[popper]

I'll try again next week but clean the mould again. What .40 SA does the SWC work in? I've been dreaming of a single stack, maybe Sig or Kimber. I know the bullet is longer so has to be seated deeper by .06". That should put the ridge near the case mouth. I suppose I should weigh these too so I need to get another scale. I use a FA digital which works good for powder. They use a strain gauge so I really don't feel good about putting a lot of weight on it. That deforms the load cell and causes errors.

[plainsman456]

I use them in my Browning HI-Power and it likes them.

[geargnasher]

Three pours a minute, cut the sprue by hand when it's halfway set up, run the pot at 675 degrees.

DON'T scrape the bottom with a stick, only the sides. Scraping the bottom will force ash to slough off the stick and get trapped under the melt. The trapped junk on the bottom migrates to the spout and causes drips and little pits in the surface of the boolits.

Tend the bottom of the pot with a long-handled, stainless steel spoon (thrift store or dollar store has them, don't rip of the next restaurant the next time you have iced tea!).

The three stages of mould heat: Left is too hot, right is too cold, middle is just right. Notice the lack of fillout of the sharp edges at either extreme. All were cast with alloy about 675 IIRC. Also note the crater in the middle boolit base, this happens when you cut the sprue while it's still soft, it's a good indicator that you're in the right temp range when cutting it, and the divot hurts nothing.

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=28007&d=1293562439

Gear

[rsrocket1]

Gear, If you scrape the stuff off the bottom, won't it float to the top unless it's more dense than lead?

I am not sure because my pot started clean and new and I have only used clean ingots made by a long time caster. I scrape all sides with the paint stick. I have virtually no dross, only tin oxide which mostly all goes back into alloy when fluxed with a layer of sawdust or powderized charcoal briquettes.

[geargnasher]

No, dross and ash won't if it's trapped UNDER the melt. The pressure from the weight of the alloy bearing down is great, and the surface tension of the lead is also very high. You won't get ash to penetrate the surface of the lead at the bottom of the pot, it's like pushing a piece of lint through a jar of honey. The only way to get it out without draining the pot is to use a metal tool to scrape it to the sides and bring it up to the top.

Oxide skins from boolits and sprues returned to the pot can get trapped on the bottom sometimes because they cool, denser metal sinks in the melt. If it makes it to the bottom before it melts, the skin can get trapped down there, and won't melt because tin oxide has a much higher melting point than the melt temperature.

Gear

[popper]

The moulds were dirty. Cleaned them again and now there are clean, again. Made up my thermocouple temp gauge today so I'll be checking the heat next time I cast. Cost is not much more than a thermometer and I can set up a PID when I get around to it. Loading a few hundred plated today, got 4" of rain last nite so I'm inside today. The T/C cycle fine(by hand), the SWC cycle OK but get dents in them(not good). OAL is same as the T/C. Anybody have a link to the XDtalk forum that addresses this problem. Mine is a .40 XDm.

[thegreatdane]

Nope, but I am a member over there - same name.