First casting..... SUCCESS ! ! ! !

[BCRider]

I'm not a Cast Boolits Newb anymore!

As this is being typed my first batch of home cast round ball are cooling.

I followed the steps seen around here and from You Tube. Mold and ladle well pre-heated and skimmed every dozen casts with a wood stick to remove what could be lifted off the surface. Right from the get go the balls popped out of the mold in fine style. Only once did I get a chip of lead between the halves and out popped a pair of "angel balls" from the shapes of their "wings" :D They were easily dumped back in and successful pours continued.


Some advice please?-
The cast balls were still too hot to fondle but it would appear that maybe a fifth of them have a small patch of frosty looking surface at one point or other. The lead poured easily so I'm wondering if I'm cooling the mold too much. I wait for the sprue lead to freeze then knock the sprue plate off so the sprue falls back in the pot. I then wait for a 5 to 7 seconds more to be sure the balls are fully frozen before opening the mold and tapping the halves to knock the balls out. Is this too long? Or despite appearances am I cooling the pot too much by dumping back in the frozen sprues? For this first pour I was only using about a 1/3 of a pot which quickly reduced to a little less than 1/4 as I worked. The pot being the Lyman Big Dipper model. So the amount of lead wasn't very much at all by the end.

Anyhow, I can hardly wait to use these in my Uberti Remington 58's this weekend.

[TES]

Frosty lines in the ball can be several things...

mold is not hot enough.

Your pour rate is too fast and you are getting over fill from the cavity you are pouring in and into the next cavity before you get the down spout lined up.

Your pour rate is too slow.

You need to flux more.

You need to clean your pot more often.

Casting perfect boolits aint easy! I don't care if they are perfect as long as they weren't cast to hot and hold no cavities they shoot all day long.

[Vinne]

Good for you. Enjoy you new found vice!!!

[BCRider]

Yeah, I can see how I won't be buying round ball at least from now on. I'll ease into the lubed boolits since I don't have any sort of lubrisizer at the moment.

TES, I'm pretty sure now that it's the mold being too cool. I found minor cold flow lines in probably 1/5 of the balls. The rest had the odd slightly frosty patch but for the most part they are bright and shiney like newly minted coins. So if I'm too slow it's not by much.

I'll also watch for the "dribble" from the first hole going into the second. I may have done that once or twice. But on the whole I'm pretty sure I managed to avoid that faux pas.


Another slight issue is that about 1/3 of them have a small but noticable joint line difference in the two halves. I'm going to get into the habit of lightly tapping the blocks before pouring to aid in bumping them into perfect alignment to see if that helps. But this is strictly a very minor issue. Not even enough to call it a "problem".


Good news is that even with the slight cold flow marks all the balls are useable.

[leeggen]

BCRider, you might wantg to read "From Ingot To Target" has about all the answers a new caster could get other than on cst boolits. Congrats it is very satisfying to acomplish this casting task. Great enjoyment.
CD

[mroliver77]

You didnt state your lead or alloy. I get some impurities once in a while and get odd spots in boolits. Happens when using lead from many sources.
For Handgun out to 20-30 yards and rifle to 100 yards it takes a pretty big flaw to make much accuracy difference.
I have tested culls against the most perfect boolits I cast with little to no difference in accuracy at closer ranges.
My (pure) lead balls are always very shiny when dropped.
Keep up the good work and have fun! It dont hurt to cast a pile and throw them back in the pot to be poured again. Experience and technique are what you are looking for right now.
J
J

[Cherokee]

Congratulations on your new addiction !! The balls sound fine, I'ed get out there and shoot them......

[BCRider]

Thanks guys.

The lead for this is a stash of old scuba weights I've packed around for years. I changed over from the "lump" weights to sacks of lead shot "soft weights" many years ago but could never bring myself to get rid of the old one piece lumps. I used the art pencil test to determine that the lead used for these cast weights is indeed very much on the soft side. If it's not pure soft lead it's darn close to it according to the pencil test.

Being a little sensitive to the idea of the pot erupting from something stupid I might do I was wearing a full coverage leather welding jacket and helmet along with a set of motorcycle gloves for this first effort. I must have really looked like Homer Simpson dressed up for the hot lab :D Today I'm going to pick up a clear full face shield guard and some long guantlet work gloves.

A question about a flux for the pot. This first trial I went with simply stirring the melt with a wood stick and using it as a spoon to lift out the lumpy or crusty bits. I'm "top pouring" with a ladle so I'm wondering if I can even use a flux like wax or sawdust since I'll obviously end up with it in my ladle. Or can I just brush it away and dip? Or is there something else that works best for a dipping setup like I'm using.

I read through the part about fluxing in Ingot to Target but they didn't cover that. At least not that I could find in the section on fluxing.

[Shiloh]

We need pics.
You are however, now hooked.

Shiloh

[repawn]

Thanks guys.

The lead for this is a stash of old scuba weights I've packed around for years. I changed over from the "lump" weights to sacks of lead shot "soft weights" many years ago but could never bring myself to get rid of the old one piece lumps. I used the art pencil test to determine that the lead used for these cast weights is indeed very much on the soft side. If it's not pure soft lead it's darn close to it according to the pencil test.

Being a little sensitive to the idea of the pot erupting from something stupid I might do I was wearing a full coverage leather welding jacket and helmet along with a set of motorcycle gloves for this first effort. I must have really looked like Homer Simpson dressed up for the hot lab :D Today I'm going to pick up a clear full face shield guard and some long guantlet work gloves.

A question about a flux for the pot. This first trial I went with simply stirring the melt with a wood stick and using it as a spoon to lift out the lumpy or crusty bits. I'm "top pouring" with a ladle so I'm wondering if I can even use a flux like wax or sawdust since I'll obviously end up with it in my ladle. Or can I just brush it away and dip? Or is there something else that works best for a dipping setup like I'm using.

I read through the part about fluxing in Ingot to Target but they didn't cover that. At least not that I could find in the section on fluxing.

I am still new and I am ladle casting - I use both wax and sawdust - stir it in - skim the dross - I haven't had any issues with it. As far as misaligned mold haves - had that too - the answer for me was to put it on the table when closing it - it helped in closing the mold evenly.

[Smoke4320]

another caster hooked .. congrads. many silver pours for you

[mroliver77]

Wax or sawdust will not bother your ladle. Get a big ole spoon to use to flux. I put wood handles on them. Put enough flux on to cover the top of the melt. If using wax I light the smoke with a match. Stir flux into the melt getting it under the surface. Scrub sides and bottom of pot to loosen any clingons. I stir and scrape at least 1 minute to get impurities to top. When top is covered with fluffy dross or ash scoop it into a metal can and cover with a tight lid. Now you are ready to cast. If your melt is too hot you will create oxide layer quickly on top. If your alloy has some contaminates it might make lots of oxides on top really fast. I use combination of wax and sawdust for this and flux often.
Jay

[Wayne Smith]

Congratulations! I assume you are using a Lee mold? DO NOT tap the mold. Set the mold on a flat surface when closing it and it will align. I use welding gloves and hold the mold in one hand to guide the alignment.

I wouldn't worry about spots on the balls. Those will not affect their shooting ability, and nobody is evaluating their beauty but you!

[BCRider]

Wayne, yes it's a Lee mold. Thanks for the tip. The second session will be tomorrow and I'll try that out. And as you surmised the few that are slightly cockeyed ARE in the vertical direction.

Once I've got enough cast up I'll likely inspect and set aside the very best to use when I'm trying to be serious about my C&B accuracy testing. But 90% of them will be used for cowboy action giggles. And that doesn't put any sort of major need for accuracy on us.

[johntkd]

ok the "frost" on the finished ball is most likely caused by over heating the mixture and hurts nothing, in fact some powder companies think frosted bullets work better, secondly a brown ash on the top of the mixture is made up of mostly tin,assuming you do not add wax and or sawdust your mix will get a brown ash **** looking stuff on the top of it. I used to heat my lead in a large pan and pour right from it, used to stock bait shops with sinkers black powder conicals and balls, jigs etc recently upgraded to a bottom pour lee furnace and now wonder why i used to do all that work with a pan the 65 bucks i spent was the best 65 bucks i have spent on anything remotely reloading or sinker making ever.out put has been at the least tripled as well

[BCRider]

Thanks John, that's helpful as well.

No brownish tin on the surface that I could see. In fact once the melt was skimmed of the initial dross it stayed clean other than a thin grey surface skin which I took to be a lead oxide layer or similar. As mentioned up above these scuba weights appear to near dead soft and pure or a very low level alloy of lead.

I'll turn the pot setting down a hair and cast faster since it looks like my initial method produced too hot a pot by a hair and too cool a mold by a little bit. Bonus is that the production rate will go up! :D

Gotta clean up the house a bit then I'm going to dive into my second batch of shiney lead ball production.

[johntkd]

I have never ever preheated a mold in my life, sinker bullet or jig and in 35 years of casting have had about a dozen bullets and about a dozen sinkers I had top remelt. do use aluminum molds not brass ,cast or steel.with the bullets I have not seen any use yet for my resize dies either except one time when i did 100 bullets straight without a stop in a 2 cavity mold the last ones actually resized which i attribute to the mold being so hot.....

[41 mag fan]

OMG....we need pics of your balls......lmao...that sounds sooooooo bad!!!

[johntkd]

omg....we need pics of your balls......lmao...that sounds sooooooo bad!!!
roflmao seriously

[41 mag fan]

roflmao seriously

Think thats bad john...I'd love to get a picture of my wifes face if bcrider would post a pic of his casts, and i ask her if she'd like to check out this pic of a guys balls he posted!!!

[BCRider]

OMG....we need pics of your balls......lmao...that sounds sooooooo bad!!!

At the risk of pandering to your obvious infatitude and daring do as pertains your wife here ya go! :D

This was tonight's production. It rained a little earilier today and rather than risk some raindrops blowing in under the cover I've got I elected to work on some other stuff instead. But around dinner time it cleared up and got sunny and so I did some casting after dinner.

Only a couple of the balls are frosty from right at first. The rest are all bright and shiney. The ditch like voids from the cold mold from the other day are gone but I've still got a few with cold "lines" although there's no groove.

Wayne, I tried your method but I found that it was easier to just lightly tap the top faces very lightly as I was closing the halves and knocking the sprue plate into place. That way the stick of wood I was using didn't need to be put down and picked up. I was able to see when it went right by looking down the sprue hole and seeing any gap go away as the blocks jumped into perfect alignment. In practice this was easy and quick to do. Thanks for pointing out that the Lee blocks are not as self aligning as one would like to expect. My nice cleanly cast balls thank you as well as they feel FAR more handsome what with no nasty separation lines...... Apparently I've been infected by 41Mag fan.... sorry :D

Anyhow what you see below is roughly 130 to 140 newly minted round balls. Also note the leather welding jacket, new ALL leather work gloves and full face shield. And the ball cap to protect the top of my rather "shiney" head in case of a lead rainfall.... :D

And yes, I'm going to clean the BBQ quite completely before I use it again. It just happens that it lives under an overhead walkway that gave me shelter from the rain the past few days. I wasn't thinking ahead to lead pot fumes in connection with an eating area at the time.

72278

[41 mag fan]

You got some nice balls there BC......LMAO!!

[Foto Joe]

BCRider, I see I'm not the only one that has finally given up on finding factory made food for my toys. I'll be interested to hear how your scuba weight RB's ram into the chambers though. In the tens of thousands of scuba weights I've hefted over the years I always assumed that they were pretty hard, especially since they continuously get dropped on boat decks etc. and hold up pretty well.

Although I haven't actually cast anything other than ingots at this time, this thread did answer quite a few questions for me. I'm curious though, do you have any idea at what temperature you're casting? After finishing my ingots last week I spent a few of my Cabelas points and had them send me a Lyman casting thermometer so when my molds finally do arrive I'm going to have to figure out where my starting temp should be.

[BCRider]

Joe, I tested them using the artist's pencil set. It's not as accurate as a proper Brinell test but all the reading I read about this method suggested that it's certainly going to steer the user decently well about grading the lead alloy makeup at least in a multi step manner. For the most part I'm happy if I can grade the lead on a scale of 5 or 6 options from dead soft to hard alloy. And the details describing the pencil testing seems to suggest that it'll easily let us decide at least on a 1 of 5 sort of scale.

Not a clue to the temperature. I turned up the dial on the Lyman pot to "two notches past the mid point screw". It's roughly 3/4 of the total travel. The lead being nicely liquid at that point and it easily melts the frozen sprue lead dumped back in within a couple of seconds.

[Foto Joe]

That's right about where I settled on the thermostat on mine (same Lyman). I had it cranked all the way up for a bit but I was getting that oxidation skin on the surface so I backed off. It'll be interesting to see what my first RB's look like. A couple of years ago 45-70 Ranger from THR gave me a box of RB's that he had cast from who knows what. Trying to load those things was way too punishing on the loading lever so I kinda got turned off on casting RB's after that. Hopefully using the almost pure tape weights I smelted down I should be able to get some nice RB's.

BTW, it's nice to see a familiar name on here. I haven't been around THR too much lately as there just doesn't seem to be much new going on.

[mroliver77]

In 35 years you have only had to cull 12 boolits? Do I understand this statement correctly?
Jay


I have never ever preheated a mold in my life, sinker bullet or jig and in 35 years of casting have had about a dozen bullets and about a dozen sinkers I had top remelt. do use aluminum molds not brass ,cast or steel.with the bullets I have not seen any use yet for my resize dies either except one time when i did 100 bullets straight without a stop in a 2 cavity mold the last ones actually resized which i attribute to the mold being so hot.....

[johntkd]

In 35 years you have only had to cull 12 boolits? Do I understand this statement correctly?
Jay

that was correct until today I had to dump the 8th one in my brand new mold But that was due to a drip from my new melting pot that i messed up with so now the number is 13 lol but that bullet was prolly usuable ill post pics of the bullets later the mold arrived at noon and by 1 i had 150 bullets cast. already fired one as a test lol

Keep in mind i was casting sinker much longer than bullets from over 30 different molds, so i had tons and tons of casting exp before i ever touched a bullet mold as I stocked many many bait shops in the Detroit St Clair shores area with sinkers.