Need help I feel totally lost in this casting endeavor.

[CSWI SAMI]

So been trying to cast numerous times and I know I will prob sound stupid but what am I doing wrong. I thought I've been melting lead but now I'm thinking I've been melting zinc. I'll attach pics. Please help.

[CSWI SAMI]

The second pic down looks like lead to me. My pot was on about 700. I got my whT I think is lead from scuba weights.

[slim1836]

They will use anything in these weights. Try straight wheel weights, or add a little pewter to it, preheat your mold on a hot plate, and turn up the heat some more on your melting pot.

Make sure the mold is clean and don't smoke it. Others will ridicule me on this, but a clean mold should not need to be smoked. Others with more advice will chime in.

Good luck and don't give up.

Slim

[MT Chambers]

From your pics it looks like you have gone from a mold/melt that is too cold to a mold that is too hot(frosty), your metal is prolly alright, I'd add some tin if you have not already.

[RickinTN]

Some smoke and some don't. I'm a smoker myself if need be. A thermometer I think is a necessity....others disagree. Your shiny bullets appear the mold may be a little cold. I've found smoking the mold to make it more forgiving in not producing the wrinkles you have. It also appears you're not filling the cavities completely. Make sure the cavities are full with a generous sprue puddle. I like to pressure cast (Hold the nipple of the ladle to the hole in the sprue plate) thus forcing the melt into the cavities.
Good Luck,
Rick

[CSWI SAMI]

thanks guys. How do I get Tin? I don't have any sitting around that I know of. I have a lee bottom spout melter and lee molds. What number shoud it be on for the heat dial. I had it on the 7, I assume that meant 700.

I don't have a hot grittle or hot plate that I can put the mold on but I'm certain a thrift store can fix that tomorrow. I heated my mold up at least I thought I did. I placed it on the top of the melter for a while.

How can I tell if the metal I have right now is lead or zinc or something else.

Thanks all all for the words of encouragement.

[sqlbullet]

Pic 1 - Mold too hot, frosty bullets
Pic 2 - Mold too cold for complete fill out
Pic 3 - Mold a little to cold. Some incomplete fill out
Pic 4 - this looks like the kind of dross you get if you don't flux enough
Pic 5 - To blury to make out, but looks like a cold mold again.

You say you running your pot at 700°. I find 650° to be a low end and 700° to be the high. Go for a consistent cadence for 20-30 casts. Don't stop and gawk at you bullets. Inspection is for later. Don't let you pot go above 700°. Add lead like your sprues when it hits about 690°.

Heat control of both the pot and the mold is the trick.

[jsizemore]

The numbers on you Lee bottom pour mean nothing. You'll need a thermometer to figure out which number is your reference for a particular temp and then watch it change as your lead level drops in the pot and it breaks in.

[canyon-ghost]

Pour hot and fast. Fill the mold, watch the sprue turn dull (solidifies), then wait another 15-30 seconds to cut sprue and drop bullets. The 15 to 30 seconds lets the heat soak into the mold. The longer hot lead stays in the mold, the hotter the mold will get.

That's how you preheat a mold with hot lead.

To cool a mold while pouring: After dropping the bullets, leave the mold open and wave it through the air once. Instant cooling fan for molds.

Trust what you see, and use your eyes.

Good Luck,
Ron

PS: Most of these techniques a guy can learn on iron molds and a Lyman manual (Cast Bullet Manual #3 or #4).

[bangerjim]

Agree.......temperature is you problem.......probably not Zn!

Preheat your molds on an electric hot plate to casting temp.

Also are running 2% Sn? Most get excellent fills with 2%. Try it.

Don't rely on dive weights to be consistent anything!!!!!! They make them out of any lead they can find. After all, they care about the WEIGHT, not the make-up of the lead. I have all versions. That is why I always get an x-ray shoot at the scrap yard when I buy dive weights.

Oil in your mold will NOT cause the problems you picture above. It is all based on temp and Sn. Also your pouring technique.

banger

[canyon-ghost]

The photos make me wonder if your mold is dirty, oily or something in the cavities. In order to cast good bullets, you are going to have to pour more than that with a clean, hot mold. Now, the bottom two pictures look really bad, something major-league wrong there. It takes a lot of rhythm and pace to pour consistently.

[Garyshome]

Make sure your molds are Real Clean. I drop them into a 5 gal bucket about 1/2 full of water, this leads to almost instant inspection times. I also use a thermometer, I smoke the molds [usually only the first time]. Correct temp is critical although Frosty the boolit is my friend.

[Yodogsandman]

A PID temperature controller is awesome for controlling your pot temperatures! Just like a hot plate with a cover box will heat up your molds, great! I use both now but, I've cast tens of thousands of great boolits without them. I still don't own a lead thermometer. The learning curve is certainly much harder, though.

I mostly agree with sqtbullet's observations and suggestions above but, prefer my pot at 725F.

Without the PID, my 10 lb Lee bottom pour requires it set to the max to get the right temperatures. A Lee 20 lb bottom pour only needs about 6 or 7 on the dial. Adding the sprues back in will cool your melt. Add them back into the pot when taking a break from casting or to reduce the heat of a pot that's running too hot.

Without the hot plate and PID I would start casting by casting boolits as fast as I could depending on the cooling of the sprue and not even look at the boolits until I noticed them coming out evenly frosted. Pour a big sprue puddle and watch for the sprue to take 5 to 6 seconds to freeze. During this time, I wouldn't add any sprues back in. Then I would start inspecting them quickly when they dropped from the mold. Inspecting for mold fill out on the bands, base fill out and any voids larger than a pin hole. This would slow my cadence allowing the mold to cool slightly to begin casting good, unfrosted boolits. Normally that best temperature is just below the boolits frosting point. At this point, I would start to add some sprues and poor quality boolits back into the pot as needed to control the pot's heat. When I took any breaks, I would add all the sprues back in and place the mold on top of the pot to retain some heat. A metal coffee can over all of it in the winter helps.

Enjoy yourself! This is lots of fun!

[30Carbine]

Cswi sami pm me your address I will send you 1 lbs. of already ingoted pewter tin. a member here helped me out recently so in the spirit of the holidays I will send you some. remember it takes very little, there is an alloy calculator here use it it is your friend. remember like the guys above said 2%..

[runfiverun]

the alloy is a bit off but not enough to make bad boolits.

the LEE pot numbers correspond to absolutely nothing, they are just a place to give you a reference to point the dial at.
my first 20 pound pot wouldn't get over 625-f turned all the way up, I finally figured out how to adjust the little strips inside to make it hotter.

had you cooled your mold off a little, the grey boolits in the first picture would be bout perfect. [they are still shootable]
casting is all about controlling your mold temperature.
generally through casting pace, sometimes through other methods like a damp rag, or by maintaining that pace and turning down the pot temp.

[CSWI SAMI]

The replies are great and encouraging. Thanks much! This is great. I'm gonna try casting again tomorrow.

[RogerDat]

Link to a decent lead thermometer at a good price. Clip it on the pot so that it is a little above touching the bottom, you want to measure the lead temp. not the bottom of the pot.
http://www.amazon.com/Tel-Tru-LT225R-Replacement-Thermometer-degrees/dp/B0055777EU

Once you know what number on the pot "works" for temp you need to cast write the dial number down as a start setting for next time.

Several mentions of "sprue" without the definition. No offense meant to the OP if they already know but figure for completeness....
Sprue is the nice big puddle on top of the mold from pouring lead in. You need that puddle to be large enough that as the lead inside the mold cools and contracts it can suck some more lead in from the still molten bottom of the puddle.

Seventh picture down on this page shows a nice sized sprue puddle. http://www.gunsamerica.com/blog/bullet-casting-101-part-1/

Even a little tin in the melt changes it a lot, flows better and actually has a lower melt temp. As to sources, always available but sort of expensive is tin water safe solder from plumbing section of big box hardware/lumber stores. Read the label not all solders are tin and get the kind without a flux core. Scrap pewter from Salvation Army or other thrift stores is another source, pewter is almost pure tin. Dented ugly pewter stuff you can sometimes get for cheap. Read the thread on pewter pictures and hallmarks, not all that looks like pewter is and some items will have petrified yak dung or something like it packed inside as weight.
http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?127929-Pewter-pictures-and-hallmarks

If your diving weight had a 5lb cast into it and actually weighed 5 lbs. it is probably plain lead. The size of the mold is designed so that when filled with plain lead it will weigh what the mold casts into it. But as others have said people would buy the mold and fill them with whatever lead alloy they had available.

I would not load a whole bunch of these bullets if they are all plain lead, plain lead is too soft without a little something to alloy with it and make it harder. Wheel weights or range scrap or something with Antimony (Sb) in it and tin helps a little bit to harden but not as much as antimony.

[Mike W1]

I almost hate to bring this up, but not quite! If you shop a bit on ebay for about $10 or more than the price of that thermometer you could build a functional PID controller. Then you can set the temperature and it'll stay there. It takes one variable out of the equation. I have 2 Lees and the dial setting meant nothing. One set at 4 produced the same as the one running on 8. Go over to Casting Equipment, read a few stickies, build a PID and you will not regret it. And you won't need the thermometer cause you'll have a better on already. Been there, done that.

[62chevy]

Lube load and shoot the boolits in the first picture. Frosted or shine makes no difference to your gun.

All the above advice is great.

[leadman]

Some of the mold manufacturers recommend smoking the mold. I have found that it does help a stubborn mold as it does absorb any oils in the mold cavities. A wooden match works very well for this.
Thermometers are nice to have but not an absolute need. You can do the trial and error method and end up with good results. Even with a known alloy temperature the cadence you cast at is another variable in how hot the mold gets.
Placing the mold on the top of the hot alloy works. When the alloy no longer sticks to the outside of the mold you are in the casting temperature range. Again trial and error for mold temperature so when you find it you can record how long the mold was in the alloy and what the pot setting was.

It is nice to have all the goodies (I do) but for starting out the above methods work with no additional expense. The pewter you are getting should help the fill out of the alloy in the mold.

[GoodOlBoy]

I mentioned this in another thread but dive weights with very ROUNDED edges tend to be factory dive weights of usually good quality lead, or lead alloy. Dive weights that have SQUARE-ISH/ROUND-ISH edges TEND to be shop cast in molds. They can be of anything and everything. I think the posters above are right on about temp issues.

GoodOlBoy

[mold maker]

I have a dive weight mould and for years, used it to get rid of alloy that didn't behave in boolit moulds.
I marked them as ???lead, and the weight.
They sold for more than replacement lead cost, so it was a win win situation.

[georgerkahn]

Just a friendly addendum re using a wooden match. It took me a long time, not being the sharpest knife in the drawer, so to speak, before I learned/discovered that wooden matches have wax in their burn stuff -- simple solution it to make sure you wait a couple of seconds after ignition before you apply the wooden match's flame to your mould. I learned the hard way, what a difference a couple of seconds makes... well worth the wait! With the now-less-time burning match, too, I hold it with a pair of needlenose pliers or tweezers.
BEST!
georgerkahn

[CSWI SAMI]

All,

thanks again! Ive been away from the casting pot for a few days now in preparations for Christmas. I attempted casting one other time since the first post only to have similar results. I need to acquire a hot plate and some other things included with all the advice.

I do want to give my appreciation to the awesome forum members on here. I have never been so welcomed before on any other forum that I belong to. The outpouring of support has been great. It's been really nice.

Thank you and Merry Christmas

pete

[62chevy]

Not a problem Just pay it forward when you get to the point of casting good boolits. I started last year have learned a bunch but still have a ton to learn.