help. ingots look galvanized

[mhurst]

new to casting and cast 80# of ingots from ww and half turned out looking galvanized. not sure what went wrong

[lwknight]

Its perfectly normal. It just means that you have a little antimony in the alloy and it cooled slowly.
The more antimony the smaller the mosaic till its just a matte.

[rsrocket1]

The surface of the lead alloy "crystallizes" when it freezes. You can watch it happen when you cast your boolits and use that freeze moment to mark your timing as to when to cut the sprue. I tend to wait about 5 seconds after seeing the puddle "freeze" before opening the sprue plate. Too soon and you end up with lead smearing on the top of the mold. Way too late and the plate is really hard to open and the boolits stick. Just right and you get a clean cut and the boolits drop out with a light shake, bliss.