John in WI
08-17-2012, 10:40 PM
I am planning on doing some more casting tomorrow. I have made some of dead soft lead, using paper in the tip of the mold. Someone suggested using aluminum foil instead so I tried it with an alloy 1:1 WW:lead with a bit of solder in in.
The problem I'm having is that aligning the aluminum foil is tricky, and by the time I get it right, the mold must be cooling off. So in the last batch probably 3 out of 5 had a wrinkle in the tip.
I tried speeding up the casting, but that pretty much resulted in getting burned. I tried heating up the alloy further, but that's not helping against a cold mold. So I'm wondering if I can try to align the aluminum foil in the mold, then re-heat the mold by setting it with a corner in the melt for maybe a minute? The casting would take forever at that rate, but if it would bring down the failure rate I would do it!
The other question I have is, now I have probably 20 boolits with a bit of aluminum foil in the tip. Aluminum melts quite a bit above lead, so I'm wondering if I can just re-melt them and skim off the aluminum? I really don't want to contaminate the whole pot (it's a small Lee "drip-o-matic"), but I'm also not sure if that tiny of a quantity would make much of a difference.
I'm hoping this slightly harder alloy will resist having the boolits literally torn in half on impact against phone books. Trying to dial in the perfect hardness vs. speed. (It might be a solution in search of a problem :guntootsmiley: )
The problem I'm having is that aligning the aluminum foil is tricky, and by the time I get it right, the mold must be cooling off. So in the last batch probably 3 out of 5 had a wrinkle in the tip.
I tried speeding up the casting, but that pretty much resulted in getting burned. I tried heating up the alloy further, but that's not helping against a cold mold. So I'm wondering if I can try to align the aluminum foil in the mold, then re-heat the mold by setting it with a corner in the melt for maybe a minute? The casting would take forever at that rate, but if it would bring down the failure rate I would do it!
The other question I have is, now I have probably 20 boolits with a bit of aluminum foil in the tip. Aluminum melts quite a bit above lead, so I'm wondering if I can just re-melt them and skim off the aluminum? I really don't want to contaminate the whole pot (it's a small Lee "drip-o-matic"), but I'm also not sure if that tiny of a quantity would make much of a difference.
I'm hoping this slightly harder alloy will resist having the boolits literally torn in half on impact against phone books. Trying to dial in the perfect hardness vs. speed. (It might be a solution in search of a problem :guntootsmiley: )