2 Important Tips I've Learned

[johnd5412]

Friends,

I have only cast about 10K boolits so I consider myself to still be a noobie. That said, I have learned 2 very important things. 1) I use WW lead and I have only recently learned that its all about the mold temperature. I used to cast with the temp too low and I got wrinkles but still shootable boolits. However, I now dump my molds in the lead until they reach about 650 degrees F and I'm in the game making beautiful boolits on the first throw! Frosted boolits are your friend too. 2) The second most important thing I have learned is that my star sizer loves bullets with a bhn around 14-16 (air cooled). I used to water cool my boolits (22-24 bhn) only to struggle with the star sizer (I even bent the handle) but now its like cutting through hot butter and I'm ready to marry my star sizer; its that good, I doubt I'll ever break out the Lyman sizer again. I just ran about 800x .358 boolits through the star in about an 45 minutes or so. I can even run my 50 cal boolits through the star sizer w/out getting them stuck in the die, now it is just too easy.

Sorry if this is not new info for most of you. I'm hoping to help other noobies or maybe reinforce what you already know.

cheers,
John

[nagantguy]

To good tips, well stated! My biggest casting hurtle was mold temp, once in the beginning out of anger and desperation I heated the mold with a tourch, beautiful boolits began to fall like rain!!!! I also used to water drop everything, ow I know it's not always needed, and sometimes not desired.

[geargnasher]

On the mould temp vs. alloy temp and what to do to control it, I agree it's one of the most important and satisfying things to master about bullet casting. The topic even got made into a sticky, worth a read even if just for reinforcement: http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?236488-Something-I-learned-last-weekend-about-temp
Preheating the mould up to casting temperature somehow is a huge time and frustration saver.

The tricks with alloy and various quench techniques or even oven hardening or oven annealing are just tools to use to make bullets to do a specific job better. Water-quenching is fine, but most of the time it makes bullets much harder than needed or than what the gun wants, so as you discovered there can be a price to pay for the convenience. Unless you're using an alloy rich in tin and antimony, you should be able to water quench them and still size them easily if you do all your sizing within the first 24 hours. It takes time for the precipitation-hardening of water-quenched antimony-containing alloys to take place, so there's still a window of opportunity for easy sizing if you NEED to make your bullets harder by water-quenching.

Gear

[btroj]

The Star sizer doesn't like to size a hard bullet down much. I avoid that by using a slightly larger Lee push thru first, then final size and lube in the Star. It also helps to run a previously lubed and sized bullet back thru every so often to leave a light lube film in the die. Makes a huge difference.

Gear makes a good point about sizing soon after water dropping. If you are lazy, like me, that doesn't always happen. That is when a Lee push thru can save your bacon.

Abother way around some of this is to get a small convection oven, easy to find for 50 bucks or so, and a PID. You can then air cool, size, then heat treat and quench. Follow that with a run thru the sizer to lube. This also gives you the ability to fine tune hardness by adjusting your heat treat temp.

never forget there are many ways to skin a cat. Just find one that fits the way you do things.