Dumb question

[FergusonTO35]

Hey guys, got a dumb question for you. Do Lee molds work well when you ladle the lead into them from a regular pot rather than using a bottom pour design? Does the Lee ladle work well for this purpose? I'm casting .38 Special and 9mm Luger boolits. Thanks.

[geargnasher]

They ladle fine as long as you can do it fast enough to keep the moulds hot enough to fill out well.

Gear

[Elkins45]

They work fine---i only recently started using a bottom pour. I used Lee molds, a ladle and a Coleman stove for 20 years before I bought an electric melter.

When I say ladle, I'm referring to the Lyman design, not the Lee. The Lee ladle is just a glorified spoon with a lip. It doesn't hold enough lead for anything but the smallest two cavity molds. The extra $ for a Lyman or RCBS is money well-spent IMO.

[FergusonTO35]

Hey there fellow Kentuckian. I thought the Lee dipper was awfully small for that purpose. Since I need a furnace and a casting ladle I guess I'll pick up the Lyman Big Dipper kit on payday. Sportman's Warehouse in Lexington has it for $70.00 or so, it includes the furnace, ladle, ingot mold, bullet lube, and a book.

[mooman76]

I have only ladle cast for allot of years and do fine with lee moulds. I also do fine with the Lee ladle and I don't use it for just small moulds. It works good on all 2c moulds as long as they aren't the really big heavy weights.

[dragonfire]

If your ever in The nelson county area i have a lyman ladle i can part ways with for on the cheap if it will help ya out.

[FergusonTO35]

I used to go to Bloomfield quite a bit when my wife worked there, not so much anymore. How much do you want for it? It would probably be cheaper to just mail it to me than spend gas money. Let me know!

[MtGun44]

Yes. I started casting with the little Lee ladle, and recently did a casting session at my
vacation cabin in the mountains, and cast with a Lee mold over a camp stove with a Lee
ladle, and it worked just fine like it did back in 1976 when I started casting.

Bill

[MikeS]

I don't know about Lyman's bottom pour pots, but I have one of their "Big Dipper" pots, and it's quality is about the same as a Lee pot. I don't think either company actually makes their pots, rather they just relabel somebody else's pot. I would recommend you get the Lee 4-20 pot, it holds twice as much alloy as the Lyman pot, and it's bottom pour mechanism is all off to one side, so if you want to use a ladle there's plenty of room to do so. It might be slightly more expensive than the Lyman 'kit' but with it you have the option of either using a ladle, or the bottom pour spout. When using it for ladle use, you can use the adjustment screw to close the bottom pour spout tight, and it won't leak (unless you've used it already, AND gotten some crud into the valve area).

When it comes to a ladle, if you're planning on using some 6 cavity moulds (or larger) you might want to get a Rowell #1 ladle, rather than a Lyman or RCBS as it holds much more alloy, and used properly it takes the alloy from the bottom of the ladle, so even if there's some dross on the top of the alloy in the ladle it won't matter. The only advantage the Lyman ladle has is that it's pour spout is made so it can fit up against a Lyman sprue plate (or most other moulds) if you want to do pressure casting (pouring the alloy from ladle to mould with the 2 in contact with each other, rather than pouring from the ladle into the sprue hole normally). When I switched to using the Rowell ladle, rather than the Lyman, it made a world of difference for me. Now I mostly use the bottom pour method of casting, but still use the Rowell ladle when casting pure lead.

With the Lee 4-20 pot, and a Rowell ladle you get options as to how you cast, and having options is a nice thing. One other thing, the Rowell ladle is large enough that if you want to empty out your pot, you can use it to get lots of alloy out of the pot (rather than running it all thru the bottom pour spout, or picking up the pot to pour it out into ingot moulds), as a full #1 ladle will fill a 1lb ingot mould.

[FergusonTO35]

Thanks alot friend. I already ordered the Lyman kit but I may end up getting a Lee bottom pour also someday. Ya can't have too much boolit making stuff!!