crgaston
04-15-2008, 10:42 PM
I did my first smelt and cast today...wheelweights smelted in a turkey fryer, then cast in a Lee 4-20 bottom pour. Overall it went pretty well...got about 80 good bullets and five for setting up my dies. Figured I'd start small.
Couple of questions though...
1. I was getting some orange-ish rust-looking crud on the top of my melt in the Lee. Looked like it was coming off the sides of the pot. Is it really rusting that fast???
2. My bullets are thumbnail soft. Did I skim off my tin? When I was sifting out the steel clips in the smelt, there was all this dark charcoal-looking stuff on top of the melt. I assumed it was dirt from the nasty ww and skimmed most of it. They were air-cooled, BTW.
3. The mold worked great, I think. It only took a few casts to start making good-looking filled out bullets, although about half of them are frosty on the tumble-lube bands only, and only in a small area of them. What's causing that? Is it a problem?
4. Sometimes both bullets would drop right out. Sometimes they would take several whacks on the hinge pin. Is this a timing issue? I tried varying the time to open the mould and didn't detect a pattern, but I didn't cast that many bullets, either, so ??? The mould is unmodified at this point. A Lee-menting may be in order.
5. Also, the bullets appear to be slightly out-of-round by about .003-.004, and not along the mould line or perpendicular to it, so it's closing fine.
6. Has anyone ever had Lee remove the gas check shank from an RD mould? I asked Lee and they said it would be no problem. I'm thinking that at .45-70 pressures a gas check might just be extra work. If anyone has prior experience with this I'd love to hear about it. If I'm going to Lee-ment, should I wait until after it's modified?
7. What is the deal with solder these days??? I went to several places looking for 50/50 and found none. It was all lead-free. Is lead-free solder a decent source of tin? Do the bismuth or silver have any negative effects?
Lastly, anyone got any load reccommendations? I've got Accurate XMR 2015, IMR4895, and H322, and I'm loading these for a Marlin 1895. Not looking for mega-loads...I'm thinking 1500-1700fps will be plenty.
Thanks in advance to anyone who has enough free time to answer,
Charles
Couple of questions though...
1. I was getting some orange-ish rust-looking crud on the top of my melt in the Lee. Looked like it was coming off the sides of the pot. Is it really rusting that fast???
2. My bullets are thumbnail soft. Did I skim off my tin? When I was sifting out the steel clips in the smelt, there was all this dark charcoal-looking stuff on top of the melt. I assumed it was dirt from the nasty ww and skimmed most of it. They were air-cooled, BTW.
3. The mold worked great, I think. It only took a few casts to start making good-looking filled out bullets, although about half of them are frosty on the tumble-lube bands only, and only in a small area of them. What's causing that? Is it a problem?
4. Sometimes both bullets would drop right out. Sometimes they would take several whacks on the hinge pin. Is this a timing issue? I tried varying the time to open the mould and didn't detect a pattern, but I didn't cast that many bullets, either, so ??? The mould is unmodified at this point. A Lee-menting may be in order.
5. Also, the bullets appear to be slightly out-of-round by about .003-.004, and not along the mould line or perpendicular to it, so it's closing fine.
6. Has anyone ever had Lee remove the gas check shank from an RD mould? I asked Lee and they said it would be no problem. I'm thinking that at .45-70 pressures a gas check might just be extra work. If anyone has prior experience with this I'd love to hear about it. If I'm going to Lee-ment, should I wait until after it's modified?
7. What is the deal with solder these days??? I went to several places looking for 50/50 and found none. It was all lead-free. Is lead-free solder a decent source of tin? Do the bismuth or silver have any negative effects?
Lastly, anyone got any load reccommendations? I've got Accurate XMR 2015, IMR4895, and H322, and I'm loading these for a Marlin 1895. Not looking for mega-loads...I'm thinking 1500-1700fps will be plenty.
Thanks in advance to anyone who has enough free time to answer,
Charles