LittleBill
04-06-2013, 09:18 PM
Today I had a little time to sneak in another short casting session. I am looking forward to one of these days getting an entire afternoon or even a (gasp!) whole day. But work and other important stuff like that keep getting in the way. Today I ran my furnace about 100 deg hotter than last week, and had my molds sitting on an electric fry pan. I am going to have to cut a notch in that as I don't think it did the best job the way it was. In any case, the lead flowed a lot better, and I got very nicely formed boolits for the most part once I got the molds hot. I actually got the one too hot at one point. I knew that because when I opened it up, the boolits ran out all over the place. :oops:
I did up some more .45 ACP and .45 Colt boolits, and then tried out the new .357 mag mold I bought a few weeks ago. Below is a pic of 100 .357 150 gr boolits in the palm of my itty bitty hand. :mrgreen: I actually cast about 110, but they wouldn't all fit. They dropped at a fat .360, but not quite .361. Most are pretty good, but a few will be going back to the pot.
http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o159/FotoBill/100boolits_zps59c78474.jpg
Now for the question. I did some looking around, but did not find anything which describes the craters in the base of my boolit below. This is a 252 gr LSWC for .45 Colt. Some of the bases cratered like this, but not all. It happened in the middle of my run. At first I thought maybe I had too much sprue lube on the cutter, but that would have affected the first boolits, right? These were in the middle. Anyone have an idea what is going on here?
http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o159/FotoBill/craterbase_zps747ff7c3.jpg
Comments and suggestions are always welcome.
I did up some more .45 ACP and .45 Colt boolits, and then tried out the new .357 mag mold I bought a few weeks ago. Below is a pic of 100 .357 150 gr boolits in the palm of my itty bitty hand. :mrgreen: I actually cast about 110, but they wouldn't all fit. They dropped at a fat .360, but not quite .361. Most are pretty good, but a few will be going back to the pot.
http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o159/FotoBill/100boolits_zps59c78474.jpg
Now for the question. I did some looking around, but did not find anything which describes the craters in the base of my boolit below. This is a 252 gr LSWC for .45 Colt. Some of the bases cratered like this, but not all. It happened in the middle of my run. At first I thought maybe I had too much sprue lube on the cutter, but that would have affected the first boolits, right? These were in the middle. Anyone have an idea what is going on here?
http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o159/FotoBill/craterbase_zps747ff7c3.jpg
Comments and suggestions are always welcome.