Thanks to all. 1st smelt under my belt

[R8ed]

I just wanted to thank everyone here at Cast Boolits.
Monday I did my first smelt. Started off with 150 lbs.
It was mostly window caming and some lead wool.
I used an old Chinese Dutch Oven on a turkey fryer to melt. Tools were all SS, a ladle, spoon with holes drilled and a Fry Daddy slotted scoop. I added 12" wooden handle extensions to each.
For ingot molds I used non-stick bar type baking pans. I cast 78, 2.5" x 2.5" x 1"bars. The first bars I cast had lots of bubbles on the bottom. I think from some manufacturing residue. Subsequent pours had no bubbles.
Some bars have a blue sheen to them, kind of like the blue sheen chrome headers get near the exhaust manifold.. Would this be from over heating?

Thanks again
Ed

[bruce381]

pure or nearly pure lead will sometimes be blue, when casting if fillout is not great you may need a little tin.
have fun

[Vinne]

Great to have you join the scene.

[MrWolf]

Congrats on your first smelt and welcome to the madness!

Ron

[websterz]

Lots of fun isn't it? I enjoy smelting and casting ingots almost as much as casting boolits... almost.

[R8ed]

This past weekend I finally did a test cast, sort of a dry run.
I still don't have an alloy yet, just high purity lead so I knew I wouldn't produce any keepers.
I had built a small spray paint booth a few ago and haven't been using it lately so I decided to use it as a vent hood for casting in my shed. (Shed also has a large powered roof ventilator. )
I mounted my 20 pound Lee bottom pour and a Presto electric skillet in the spray booth side by side. They just fit. I was concerned using the mold that close to the skillet would be too cumbersome. The skillet will modified for a mold oven and ingot heater.
I did not preheat the mold this time. I just wanted to use the setup outside and see if the vent fan would get hot and if my mold was prepared good.
Once the pot heated up I was able to cast 75, 115grn, LRN in a very short time. I then use the skillet to heat a water bath and melted my stock pile of carnauba cheese wax.
The bullets came out wrinkled and with rounded edges which I expected due to straight lead and cold mold, but my compact work area/vent system worked out fine.
The only problem I ran into is that I neglected to put paper liners in the mini muffin pan before filling with wax.
Over all I very happy the way things are progressing.

Thanks to everyone at Castboolits.
R8ed

[Mitch]

my pure lead most allways has the blue colors.
sounds like a good setup

he is hooked would some reel him in lol

[R8ed]

Thanks Mitch.
When a guy at work found out I'm starting to cast he told me he used to be a plumber and might have some lead.
Yesterday he gave me cast iron lead pot, cast iron laddle and about 30 lbs of pipe and ingots.
All for free. Can't beat that.

I'm working 6/12s for a couple more weeks. My first full weekend I'll do my second smelt and first alloy. I was able to get 4lbs linotype at a local BP shop.
I need to work out a rattio but I can't get the alloy calculator to work.

R8ed

[Mitch]

http://www.lasc.us/Fryxell_Book_Chapter_3_alloySelectionMetallurgy.ht m

this is a very good site if you go and read it will tell you all of what you need to know.I have been castig for about 3 years now and have found this site very usefull.

I did not see where you said what caliber.rifle ,pistol or anyinfor on what you want to cast for.

But here is something that might help lino is suppose to be 84% lead(PB) 4%Tin (SN)12%antimony(SB)and that is if it have not been remelted many times and lost some of its SN and SB from cleaning the remelt.

So say you want Hadball mix use the lead pipe or plumers lead you got from the plumer it should be pure lead or very close.a 50/50 mix of pure lead and linotype would be 2%SN 6%sb with a Bhn of 16
so 4lbs of lino
4lbs of PB
=8lbs of 2%Sn6% SB or harball at 15 bnh
if you want to split again add another 8lbs of PB
=16lbs of 1%Sn 3%sb at 12 bhn
might want to add 1% more tin on this one for better fill. it seems fill better for me if you have 2% sn
here is how I do my batches of alloy with known lead alloy content.or your linotype
100lb batch to be alloyed.if you want lyman number 2 mix from you lino.each lb of lino has .04lb of SN and .12lb of SB and .84lb of PB.Lyman Nuber 2 is 5%SN and 5%Sb and 95%PB.so 100lbs of lyman number 2 would need 5 lbs of SN and 5 lbs of SB.
I figure the the Sb first here becuz it is the highest % or alloy in lino.so 5lb of SB you need divided by .12SB the linos has in it.you get 41.66lbs this is how much lino you need to get 5lb of SB.now 41.66 X4%=1.644lbs of s=SN in the 41.66 lbs of lino you are using.so you will need to add another 3.356 lbs of SN to get the 5lbs or 5% you need for lyman Number 2.
so 41.66 lbs of lino
3.356 lbs of Sn needs to be added
55 lbs of lead
this will make 100lbs of 5%SN 5%SB 95%PB at 15Bhn

Now you can go from there and make any size batch you want.
you need Microsoft excell to read the lead calculator.

another thing to keep I mind when calulateing alloys by Bnh.first you need to use the base bnhof 8.6.this is all on the rotometals site.
so 1% of SN adds .29Bhn and 1% of Sb adds .92 bhn
many are confused by the 8.6 bhn number best way I can describe it is the initial adding of SN and SB to pure lead is the constant that rotametals came up with.i can tell you I was confused by this to I have a LBT hardness tester.i did not know this when I fist tried alloying my first batches of lead I needed to start with 8.6bhn not 5bhn with pure lead.and you can guess I kept getting hardness of 3 to 4 bhn to hi.this is what the lead calculator is based on

I hear ya about the work hours I am doing 11s plus around 5 to 8 hours on saturedays.
Hope this helps you out abit

[R8ed]

Thanks Mitch,
Im casting for 9mm to start, then .357mag and 35 Rem in future.
I'm going to do some small test batches starting at 3:1 and work to 1:1 and see how things work out.

R8ed

[Mitch]

I do not cast for 9mm but do cast for the 357.would have to look at the max charge weight for Winchester 231. but I can run the max for 231 with bhn of 12 to13with no leading.unless you want full house loads the 3 to1 will work great.

Just remember fit is king in cast bullets my S&W 357 have a bore of .357 and cylinder throats of .3585.i size my boolits to .3585 to.389.

Happy testing let us know who it works out

Bob

[RogerDat]

Congrats on your smelt. That lead came for windows can go rainbow colors, real good pure lead as a general thing (yes there is some with zinc frame but the lead stuff is sweet).
Over in swapping and selling there is this guy selling 50# boxes of Linotype for $100 shipped, works out to $1.75 a lb. + shipping http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?275305-The-official-linotype-buy-for-1-75-per-pound-plus-shipping

I still have one 12# box of linotype for sale at $30 shipped if you are interested in a smaller purchase. Works out to $2.00 a lb. + shipping http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?275439-Lino-in-12-lb-boxes

I don't know the seller of the 50# boxes but that is a good price and would cover a lot of plain lead or WW lead. Mine is more I decided to offer some smaller purchases to people that might want some but not want to buy so much at once. My next casting is going to be lino and lead came ingots. Figure as was suggested in earlier post I can soften or harden by shifting the ratio.

[R8ed]

Thanks Roger.
I've got two fifty pound boxes on order from jevyod.
Thats nice of you to include a link to another members sale along with yours. That seems to be the type of people here.
I swung by the scrap yard yesterday and picked up 100 lbs of lead. It was in clean 5lb ingots strips of 5. Each strip had 5 square ingots connected by sprue. There were a bunch more, several hundred pounds probably, but I should have enough to last a couple years.
I've read a couple places suggesting to add a little bit more tin to a lead/lino mix, but I don't know.
I'm really looking forward to my vacation. I may skip turkey hunting and just hangout at camp to smelt, small batch alloy and test fire. I've got some bees and carnauba waxes and mollygraph grease packed to go also.
I can't wait. I feel like a kid waiting for summer camp.