Am I paranoid? Boolit pic.

[Seeker]

Made a post in the lead and alloys section titled "First Smelt" and just had to come here for some input. I had cast some nice boolits a few days ago and they turned out really shiny. Today I smelted some wheel weights and was concerned about the frosty look of the ingots, such as the reason for the other post. Even though I sorted the wheel weights very carefully using a pair of side cutters, I'm still paranoid about zinc. This is a pic. of some boolits I just finished up with these new ingots from WWs. They look frosty and when I slid the sprue plate to open the mold, it felt as though it was breaking the sprue instead of cutting it. The lead puddle on top of the sprue plate was falling right off in my hand. I was casting at 775 degrees. The mold was filling out beautifully. I warmed the mold on top of the pot for just a few minutes and on the 3rd pour, it was filling out nice and with no wrinkles or anything. The mold is a Lee double cavity 452-200-RF. The boolits measure .4515 on some but most are .452 and .453 and weigh on average 211 grns. Am I too paranoid or what?
138700

[dubber123]

Too paranoid. I like frosty boolits. I'd much rather have a well filled out frosty boolit than a shiny, undersized one with rounded bands and bases. A little tin added will allow better fillout at lower temps, and give you shinier boolits. I shot plain WW's for years with complete satisfaction though. Have fun!

[Springfield]

Those are not what I would call frosted, and look pretty good.

[pworley1]

Frosty bullets are fine. It is normally caused by the lead being hotter than needed. As for as I know this is not a problem and can be corrected by gradually reducing the heat until the frost goes away.

[oldblinddog]

Those boolits are not frosty. That is what you want them to look like.

[williamwaco]

Frosting is fine and is not caused by zinc. Most frosting is caused by mold temperature.
I strive for slightly frosted bullets.

Don't worry about zinc. If you have any significant zinc you will have "oatmeal" on top of the melt. I think it looks more like whipped cream (silver of course).

[Yodogsandman]

Good job!.They look great! Choot em!

[Maven]

What Yodog.... said!

[plainsman456]

Looks like all you need to do now is size and do some shooting.

They look good.

[mongoose33]

You're casting at 775 degrees? Too hot. IIRC, tin starts to oxidize at somewhere around 750.

I cast at 700, and I preheat my mold in a mold oven on a hotplate.

[Roy Acuffff]

Your bollits look just fine :lol: . I would drop my temp. down about 50 or so degrees. I am thinking that 775 is a little warm.

Roy

[RED333]

Them boooits are junk, send them to me for proper disposal, asap.
Of course you pay shipping.:kidding:
They look good from my house, size um, load um and shoot um.

[dilly]

As others have said, those bullets aren't frosted. The only thing I wanted to add its that when a bullet is frosted, if you take a towel and rub the bullet a bit the frosted texture will come off. There is no reason you have to do that, but it demonstrates just how superficial the frosting is.

[osteodoc08]

I think you have your answer. Keep up the good work

[trapper9260]

I think you have your answer. Keep up the good work

I am with you on this also.Use them.

[gray wolf]

Those bullets look fine, but if you are casting at 775* -- well that's a tad warm, say about 100 to 125* warm.

You must be casting with a slow cadence and letting the mold cool ( are you looking at the bullets in-between filling the mold )

I would say try 675* and cast at a faster pace, it will help save your tin
and definitely keep a little charred saw dust on top of your melt to prevent oxidation.

But whatever you did it seems to have worked for you cause the bullets look OK.

I think as you cast more and pick up the pace filling the mold you will find you can do it with a lower pot temp.

Good questions, good bullets, good job.

[gpidaho]

I have some alloy that either has a little zinc or some other contaminate that I picked up in some pewter. It has some silvery foamy crud on top when melted also some purple coloring. Still, the boolits cast with good fill out and shoot just fine. I'm not going to worry about it. It will be used up soon. GP

[snuffy]

I don't want shiny boolits! I want them to look like that/yours. I figure if I achieve that appearance, I'm at the right temp and I have plenty of tin in the alloy.

[MtGun44]

First. Those are not frosty. Second. Frosty is fine, works great for me,
and seems to indicate hot enough to get super good mold fill out.

[runfiverun]

your mold temp changed.
and actually for the better, those are exactly what you want.
any shinier is too cold, and any white popping up is gonna give you rounding of the square parts [frosting]

[Blammer]

frosted bullets hold more lube. :)

na, them look good, size, load, shoot.

[44man]

Frost is OK as long as boolits don't drop smaller. Too hot can reduce the size. Drop your lead temp a little.
The worst are Lee TL boolits, get hot spots that round off edges. I cast slower with them.
I use 800* for pure but everything else is about 725 to 750* and timing control. I tend to a little hotter then most because I cast slower.

[Seeker]

I cast 100 or so last night @ 700-725 and they turned out good. I screwed up 1/2 way through and it cost me some time. The sprue plate became a little sticky so I touched a stick of lube on the screw and some got into the first cavity...boy! that was hard to rectify. A lot of tries later with wiping out with q-tips and alcohol, re smoking, I finally got good bullets again.....I'm learning here.

[44man]

You are doing good. Small stuff will go away. For a mold, less lube is better.

[snuffy]

I cast 100 or so last night @ 700-725 and they turned out good. I screwed up 1/2 way through and it cost me some time. The sprue plate became a little sticky so I touched a stick of lube on the screw and some got into the first cavity...boy! that was hard to rectify. A lot of tries later with wiping out with q-tips and alcohol, re smoking, I finally got good bullets again.....I'm learning here.

SMOKING? Why? Forget the lee instructions, clean your mold of the soot, you'll get better/bigger boolits. As for lubing the mold, use synthetic 2 cycle oil for that. Use a Q tip that is dipped in the oil, then scraped nearly dry on the mouth of the container. Apply just a trace to the alighnment pins, sprue plate screw, under the sprue plate and the mold pivot bolt. The 2 cycle oil is high temp so it doesn't carbon up a motor. IF you get some in the cavities though, it will take a clean-up to get back to good casts.

Your temp is still a bit high, 700 should be the top, with 680 being the lower end. I have that Lee mold in a 6 cavity, it's a very accurate boolit. Using 675 set by my PID, I can really get rolling getting a pile of boolits in short order. No waiting for the mold to cool, or forcing cooling by touching a wet rag.

[GLL]

Am I too paranoid ?

Yes ! ;)
They look good to me !

http://www.fototime.com/59BA7E2FB4051F9/orig.jpg

Jerry

[Seeker]

I appreciate all the replies and advice. You guys are great.Thanks to all.

[Cmm_3940]

Congratulations, you have discovered Sb. It's a good thing.

[Toymaker]

If frosted bullets really bother you, take a piece of flannel and rub them down. They'll be shiny and purdy. Don't rub inside the lube grooves though. As mentioned, the frosting helps hold the lube. No way that I'd call your bullets frosted. They look very good. Don't know what mold you're using, but if I had a comment I'd say that I like the edges to be sharper, not rounded. Carry on - you'll get better and better as you adapt and overcome.

[tmc-okc]

I am relatively new to casting boolits. Haven't cast one yet but I have smelted about 200 Lbs of COWW and have about 150 Lbs of SOWW and Pure that I need to cast to ingots and another 30 Lbs of what I believe is 50/50 solder/lead. I have accumulated just about all the necessary tools. Even had an electric hot plate for my mould until my wife saw it and confiscated back to her kitchen. Due to many things including work schedule my off duty time is pretty much occupied. But I will find some time someday.

I feel ashamed that I don't have anything meaningful to contribute to this group of outstanding gentlemen willing to teach me how to cast great boolits.
So in return, and not meaning to be a wise A_S, I see most of you use either no symbol for the word "Degree" or you chose to use an * to indicate the word "Degree". It is pretty simple to type the ° sign as in - "you need to turn your pot down 125°. " Or as in "Turn your pot up to 700° "..

Hold down the Alt key while at the same time typing the numbers 0176 and you get °..
If you chose to use it - OK. If you chose not to use it that is still fine as I have no problems understanding what you are saying with or without it.

I thank everyone on this forum for your time and all the invaluable info you have provided. I am astounded with your knowledge & abilities !

Ron in OKC

[44man]

I don't. 700--Nope, nothing happens. My puter is illiterate! I guess you need to put up with my asterisk. I have been told how before but it never worked.
But thanks anyway.

[Seeker]

****! I can't find the Act key on my smart phone.

[tmc-okc]

44 Man, don't use the number keys at the top of your keyboard. Use the number keys on the number pad on right side of keyboard. Make sure Number Lock is "on"-- Should work for you.

Seeker, don't have a smart phone so no help here.. LOL

Ron - OKC

[dondiego]

°Dang! It worked. I love learning new computer stuff!

[44man]

44 Man, don't use the number keys at the top of your keyboard. Use the number keys on the number pad on right side of keyboard. Make sure Number Lock is "on"-- Should work for you.

Seeker, don't have a smart phone so no help here.. LOL

Ron - OKC
700°, Wow it worked. I be a puter genius now! 8-)

[Seeker]

This phone ain't so smart...spell check is wrong a lot of the time and I don't know how to get rid of it. I'll try again.....Alt...see? Hey it worked that time!
I'll try the 0176 next time I'm on the computer to get the punctuation right but I ain't gonna change the way I spell boolits.

[44man]

We bese a bunch of geniuses. Gots to remember the number!

[mjwcaster]

We bese a bunch of geniuses. Gots to remember the number!

I never remember the number.
I just open another browser window and search for 'alt degree'
Turns out that ALT 248 works also, one of each below.
°°

The Alt codes allow some interesting things, I used to know many of them by heart, back when programming paid the bills, but that was another life time ago.

Now I just search for them.

¼ 0188
½ 0189
¾ 0190

[Toymaker]

tmc-okc - hope you and yours are safe in okc after last night. Youngest son said it was pretty rough.
ALT 248 works also. 700°

[RogerDat]

Instead of 700° you might look up the non-print & invisible characters available via alt+numbers. Can be fun to name files using chars that Windows can't display. Me I'm too lazy for alt+248 700* seems easier.

Yes paranoid, nice looking boolits, ask the target or game animal on the receiving end to tell you if they don't work.... bet they won't say anything is wrong with any of them. :wink:

[1Iron]

Ron,
Good tip. Thanks.

1Iron

[robg]

they look fine to me id just shoot em .if they shoot well that's what matters at the end of the day:-)

[Shiloh]

I would think twice about shooting those.

Shiloh

[Ivan77]

Oh if yall have an iPhone/pad just hold the number 0 and the ° symbol pops up.

[BenW]

You mentioned your ingots look frosty.

If you dump them while still quite hot in a metal bowl or non-flat surface, are they prone to cracking? After cracking do they leave some "sand"? If so, that's the hallmark of a high (relative to tin content) antimony alloy. My clip on wheel weights do that all the time and look like they have a sand-blasted appearance. If you cast boolits straight from that alloy with no added pure or tin and cut the sprue too soon, it will not cut sharply and will leave a dimple in the base of the boolit, as well as leaving that "sand". That, along with frosting, is an indication that your mold temp may be a little high OR that you're cutting your sprue too soon.

As a side note, purple/blue ingots typically indicate pure (or very close to) lead ingots cast hot. Also look for a scaly surface on the air side of the ingots for colder-cast pure ingots. The scaly look will be like the sugar glaze on a cold donut.

Zinc will have a frothy "foam", often called oatmeal on top. This appears as low as 0.3% by weight zinc. High zinc alloys (meaning noticable amounts of zinc) need to cast hotter, and the crud won't disappear until the lot temp is around 750 or 800. The crud can be reduced somewhat by adding sawdust on top. Zinc/lead alloys will form a "skin" when pouring from a bottom-pour spout that forms a tube while casting, almost like a hose. It will "inflate" during casting and go flat after the pour has stopped. The sprue will be a LOT harder to break and when dumped into a metal bowl will have a high-pitched ring to it similar to a dropped penny, versus the thud from regular lead.