First try at casting boolits. A few questions

[zidave]

MidwayUSA finally got a few molds in stock so I ordered one for my wife's 380.

For some strange reason I don't have any alcohol on hand so I boiled the mold in soapy water to remove the oil on it. Used some boolit lub on the alignment pens and the sprue plate screw. Then used a Bic lighter and smoked the cavities.

I let the mold heat up and got my ladle and attempted to pour some fresh melt into my brand new mold. First few tries the melt just sits on top of the sprue plate, not actually going through it into the cavity. I chalk it up to inexperience and continue on trying to figure out a technique. A few times I left the sprue plate back just to pour some melt into the cavity to make sure the mold was staying hot.

Only a few times could I get the melt to actually flow into the cavity and mostly fill it out and most of the time it wouldn't fill it 100%

Can anyone enlighten me as to why I can't get it to flow into the cavity?
I'm going to guess and say it's not filling out completely because I'm lacking some tin?

72263

[williamwaco]

First guess - the sprue plate is too tight and the air can't vent out of the cavity.

Second guess, everything is too cold and the metal is freezing in the ladle spout when it touches the sprue plate.

Try pouring from a height of about half an inch above the sprue plate.

[treadwm]

Second guess, everything is too cold and the metal is freezing in the ladle spout when it touches the sprue plate.


What he said! I just started casting recently and I ran into the same problem. It is harder than you think to get the mold hot enough. I now use an electric skillet to heat my mold. It has temp control so I set it to 400 and let the mold sit for 15-20min. When I start casting, I run thru 10-15 pours with very little pause and no eyeballing the bullets. You need speed here. once they start looking good, I start adding a 2-3sec pause before dropping to try & find the speed that keeps them casting good w/o getting too hot. Do not be tempted to crank up the heat on your pot.

One other thing I noticed is that on a bottom pour pot, if the lead looks like fast drops, it isnt going fast enough. For me, that also caused the silly putty looking cold cast too. I used a thin wire to unclog the port.

Keep going! You'll get there.

[Gohon]

Mold and Sprue plate are to cold.

[Three-Fifty-Seven]

,,old?

[zidave]

Are you pre-heating your mold?

I did but it would seem I didn't let it get hot enough

[johntkd]

I would venture to bet your lead is not hot enough more than anything especially if your melting in a pot and scooping out molten material with the ladle the first little bit of lead your pouring is prolly bridging it all up and acting like a dam when melting the lead leave the ladle in the pot with it use a heating pad to hold ladle when pouring into mold, if heating directly in the ladle let it sit on the heat a few minutes after all is liquid and try again, I have never preheated a mold in my life, if the lead is hot enough it will fill.
I am not knocking the preheat of the mold when i say that its a matter opf personal preference but i would bet lots of money the lead you are pouring is just on the verge of melt and thats the issue

[zidave]

Thanks for the responses everyone. I'll give it another go tomorrow and report back with my results.

[462]

Pre-heat your mould to the 375-degree range. A mould oven (search) is fast and very efficient, as it gets the entire mould up to temperature.

[zidave]

It is officially an addiction now!
I got my mold nice and hot and it all started working great. Flowed right into the cavity and filled out the entire thing.

After casting probably 150 I ran out of propane so that was the end of my fun for the day.
I just sat down at my bench and they are all measuring from .356 to .357 so I'm going to try shooting them without sizing them.
Weight is from 102.2 on up to 104.1 and this is Lee's 356-102-1R mold so it seems to be on track.

Thanks for the help everyone.

7230272301

[mroliver77]

Lookin good Dave! I would rather my stuff be a little too hot than too cold. At that size lube and go. If you are going to use Alox remember that you want a very lite coat, barely enough to discolor the boolit. Most of us started out goobering them up and got frustrated.

When you shoot you own you will be pumped!! I like using a boolit catcher and then I can repour and shoot em again! :)


I prefer to preheat my molds and most times the first drop are keepers.
Jay

[zidave]

I'm going to try my hand at pan lubing first. Found a few recipes to make my own. If that doesn't work out I'll probably order some Alox

[MtGun44]

+1 on pan lubing over mule snot.

Also, a couple of tips. Ditch the smoking of the mold, not useful and will
reduce the diam a bit, almost always in the direction of badness. Also, boolit
lube is a terrible mold lube, doesn't work well, burns into nasty guck. Get
some Bull Plate Lube from member bullshop (PM him, but they are moving
soon, so might be a delay). Very sparing coating of this on the mold
alignment features and bottom of sprue plate will help a lot.

Bill

[41 mag fan]

It is officially an addiction now!
I got my mold nice and hot and it all started working great. Flowed right into the cavity and filled out the entire thing.

After casting probably 150 I ran out of propane so that was the end of my fun for the day.
I just sat down at my bench and they are all measuring from .356 to .357 so I'm going to try shooting them without sizing them.
Weight is from 102.2 on up to 104.1 and this is Lee's 356-102-1R mold so it seems to be on track.

Thanks for the help everyone.

7230272301

Thats the secret to good casts...you have to have a hot mold.
When you go to pouring a hot liquid, and it hits a cool mold, first thing it will do is start to solidify.
To get a cold mold to cast, you'll waste 15+ minutes trying to get it up to temp, which is just a straight out waste of time.
Have you got a thermometer? They are invaluable, esp for beginners.
Keep your pot at 700-725* . Anything much higher and you'll start burning the tin out, which will affect in fillouts.

Looks like also, you might try pressure casting. The 2 boolits you have pics of looks like rounded bases. Try pressure casting and leave a big sprue puddle on the sprue plate as that'll help with base fillout

[mroliver77]

I am not an alox fan either but would rather tumble lube than pan lube. What little TL i do is with a modified Felix lube and a light dusting with mica. This would be on lite plinking boolits for my .30's. I like to shoot 85 - 100 gr boolits over a couple gr of Bulls Eye and tl works great.

[zidave]

Pan lubing was a success. At least until I try shooting them.

Used a recipe I found on here consisting of paraffin wax, petroleum jelly, and STP oil treatment then added a green crayon.

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