38SPL
12-29-2012, 11:52 PM
Well, today was the big day. I spent yesterday afternoon smelting some wheel weights into ingots, and today I loaded up the new Lee pot for some boolit fun. I got a Lee 358-148-WC mould for Christmas and scrubbed it up really good to get it nice and clean. I'm almost out of .38 wadcutters so I figured this would be a good mould to get started with.
Melting the alloy was pretty easy...just plug in the pot and off it goes. I used a thermometer to dial in the temperature to around 750F (lots of really good info in those stickies!) and cleaned off the dross. I went to my shop to grab some sawdust for flux and, as luck would have it, I had cleaned up recently. No sawdust. Fortunately my daughter has a hamster, and I'll bet she never notices the handful of wood chip bedding that went missing (the new stuff...not the stuff from the cage :-D). Stirred in the wood chips and I was ready to go.
Using another handy tip I read here, I had a hotplate ready to go next to my pot for warming the ingots and my mould. Unfortunately the pot and hotplate together pull more current than the outlet can handle. So, I set the mould on the edge of the pot to warm. I managed to dip the end of the mould in the melt and got crud all over it. After a little cleaning up, I was ready to cast.
My first shot filling the mould didn't look much like the YouTube videos. It didn't take very long to fill the cavities, and the extra just ran off like water. I gave it five or ten seconds before knocking off the sprue plate, and liquid lead poured out of the cavities. I popped the mould open and a couple of little white, frosty boolit bits fell out. Lesson 1: don't get the mould too hot.
I let the mould cool for a while and tried again, with somewhat better results. Unfortunately I had a h*ll of a time getting the mould to close. Those Lee alignment pins should be called misalignment pins. There is so much slop, between the hinge and the loose-fitting blocks, that it's a miracle I ever got the two halves to line up again. Of course, I had some solid lead between the blocks from the too-hot casting attempt, so I had to stop again to gently scrape as much off as I could get to.
Back to the pot, and I managed to knock out 80 or 90 boolit-looking thingies. I had to use my gloved hand to wiggle the blocks into alignment after each casting or I could see lots of daylight between the block halves. After inspecting the results after they had a chance to cool, about half of them are worthy of loading up and shooting at the range. Not too bad for my first time ever. All the rejects are either bad pours (big wrinkles) or excessive flashing due to the blocks not lining up right. I'd have another 20 keepers if the blocks would just line up.
Tomorrow I'm going to try the Lee-ment procedure and polish up the mould cavities. Hopefully I can find out why the blocks aren't locking together right and get it cleaned up. So far I haven't done anything to the mould except scrub it clean. One of the cavities drops every time, and the other one takes a few blows on the hinge to drop. I'll look into that some tomorrow, as well.
I wish I could thank everyone who helped make my first casting experience a semi-success, but with all the hours I've spent digging through the stickies in the evening, I wouldn't know where to start. So, thanks to everybody! This would have been a lot harder without your help.
Melting the alloy was pretty easy...just plug in the pot and off it goes. I used a thermometer to dial in the temperature to around 750F (lots of really good info in those stickies!) and cleaned off the dross. I went to my shop to grab some sawdust for flux and, as luck would have it, I had cleaned up recently. No sawdust. Fortunately my daughter has a hamster, and I'll bet she never notices the handful of wood chip bedding that went missing (the new stuff...not the stuff from the cage :-D). Stirred in the wood chips and I was ready to go.
Using another handy tip I read here, I had a hotplate ready to go next to my pot for warming the ingots and my mould. Unfortunately the pot and hotplate together pull more current than the outlet can handle. So, I set the mould on the edge of the pot to warm. I managed to dip the end of the mould in the melt and got crud all over it. After a little cleaning up, I was ready to cast.
My first shot filling the mould didn't look much like the YouTube videos. It didn't take very long to fill the cavities, and the extra just ran off like water. I gave it five or ten seconds before knocking off the sprue plate, and liquid lead poured out of the cavities. I popped the mould open and a couple of little white, frosty boolit bits fell out. Lesson 1: don't get the mould too hot.
I let the mould cool for a while and tried again, with somewhat better results. Unfortunately I had a h*ll of a time getting the mould to close. Those Lee alignment pins should be called misalignment pins. There is so much slop, between the hinge and the loose-fitting blocks, that it's a miracle I ever got the two halves to line up again. Of course, I had some solid lead between the blocks from the too-hot casting attempt, so I had to stop again to gently scrape as much off as I could get to.
Back to the pot, and I managed to knock out 80 or 90 boolit-looking thingies. I had to use my gloved hand to wiggle the blocks into alignment after each casting or I could see lots of daylight between the block halves. After inspecting the results after they had a chance to cool, about half of them are worthy of loading up and shooting at the range. Not too bad for my first time ever. All the rejects are either bad pours (big wrinkles) or excessive flashing due to the blocks not lining up right. I'd have another 20 keepers if the blocks would just line up.
Tomorrow I'm going to try the Lee-ment procedure and polish up the mould cavities. Hopefully I can find out why the blocks aren't locking together right and get it cleaned up. So far I haven't done anything to the mould except scrub it clean. One of the cavities drops every time, and the other one takes a few blows on the hinge to drop. I'll look into that some tomorrow, as well.
I wish I could thank everyone who helped make my first casting experience a semi-success, but with all the hours I've spent digging through the stickies in the evening, I wouldn't know where to start. So, thanks to everybody! This would have been a lot harder without your help.