ladle pour or bottom pour?

[Greg_R]

A curious question. When pouring smaller boolits, like the 124 grain .356 And the 113 grain .309 the bottom pour pot seems to work fine. The .452 250 grain, .459 405 grain, .309 230 grain and 1 Oz shotgun slugs I need to ladle pour to get good results. Why is this? Something I am doing wrong?

Ladle pour the smaller boolits works well also, just a lot slower?

[Vinne]

You didn't say what kind of problem you were having so I can only guess that you are getting bullet wrinkles. I have the same problem when I go from 9-115 gr to a 40-180 gr. The 9s pour so much better than the 40s.

In my experience, it has to do with the mold. On the molds with large bullets you have larger holes and therefore less mold. This means that you may have to run a hotter mold in order to make good bullets. The slow bottom pour may take too long to fill a large cavity mold. I also have run a hotter pot to get the same results. Try both to see what works best for you and the room/weather conditions.

[Greg_R]

Bullet wrinkles and failure to fill out. I do not have a lead thermometer so I do not know what temp I'm running, but I am basically running the pot just about as hot as it will get in order to get good boolits.

[w5pv]

When I bottom pour 45 255's or 230 gr lrn I use a hot temp on smelt and water drop the bullets turn out real good.I shoot these and they seem to be ok and soft enough to expand some.

[Vinne]

Greg, try turning the pot up a little more when you bottom pour those big boys to see if that helps.

[1_Ogre]

Greg, I have a Lyman 10 and 20lb pot. One of the boolits I cast is a 325gr for the 45LC. Sometimes they don't fill properly or are incomplete. From my experience, the nozzle on most bottom pours isn't enough to allow enough lead to flow quickly enough to keep the mould and lead hot enough and you end up with partial fills and or wrinkles. I took my 10lb pot apart and drilled the spout nozzle bigger to allow more flow. Amazing, I don't have the partial fills or wrinkles anymore. Just what I've found.

[DerekP Houston]

44/45 is largest I cast but I do turn the lee knob up to 8 for those. still need to pickup a propane torch to heat the pins up with. I put the spout right against the sprue plate and force the lead in fast for those. 38/9mm/380 I just pour a big blob along the sprue plate and they still fill out fine.

Edit: as noted below this relies on the weight of the lead in the pot to create the pressure. I typically run my pot full down to half then refill it with prewarmed ingots.

[country gent]

The big bullets need a faster fill rate to get all the alloy in while still molten. The ladle normally have a faster pour than the bottom pours do. Another plus with the ladle is the larger stream of lead has more mass holding heat better. I pour 40 and 45 cal bullets that are 1.3-1.5 inches long, 40-400grn and 45s from 500-550 grns with a ladle. You can run hotter or heat mould on a hot plate but this may sloww your pace down with extended cooling times and such. I have fits trying to pour the big 45s with my old lee production pot, the flow rate just isnt there. A ladle Lyman, rcbs or rowel ( lees offering is a joke as a ladle) will pour ig heavy long bullets quick fast and easy. A modification that helps the Lyman and rcbs ladles is to open the spout hole up from 3/16 hole to around .200 - .210 increasing flow a little more even. When pouring these big bullets for consistancy I dont pour a sprue but pour a ladle full of lead into the sprue hole letting the excess run back into pot. This keeps bullet molten as long as possible and allows for better fill out and off gassing. If you set on bottom pour try a pressure pour with the mould held tight to the spout and open handle for 3-5 count lower mould and handle together to form sprue. This uses the pots pressure ( weight of alloy in pot) to force fill mould and keep it molten longer also. This takes some practice to get the right sprue each time but may help you out.

[Dusty Bannister]

A few things to consider that have not been mentioned by others. If scale is building up in the nozzle area of the pot, that will restrict the hot alloy flow. Acting just the same as limiting how far the shut off rod comes off the valve seat. For those large bullets you need hot and fast filling of the mold. Additionally, keep an eye on the level of the melt in the pot. A well filled pot has a lot of pressure trying to push the alloy through the nozzle. A half filled pot has a lot less force to move that alloy into the mold.

Some times pressure filling helps. But it might also be that when holding the mold below the nozzle, ambient air temp is sucking the heat out of the stream before it even gets to the mold. With those large cavities, there is a lot of air that has to leave the mold. Blocking the venting is not going to help with fill out.

I primarily bottom pour all my casting. The only things I can control are the alloy temp (PID) mold temp (casting tempo) speed of fill, and loss of heat (amount of clearance between nozzle and sprue plate). And you can also control how the flow enters the mold, either off the side of the tapered hole, or right down the middle of the hole. Since I cast in an unheated shed, the only control over ambient air temp is whether I chose to cast at that temp or not. You just need to learn to adapt for the conditions. Good luck.

Looks like Country Gent types and thinks faster than I do. Oh well.

[gwpercle]

I don't know, I bought a bottom pour pot thinking my production would increase. I found I could make a lot of imperfect boolits quicker, but I wanted perfectly filled out, no rounded edges boolits.
It didn't work out for me., bought a big magnum melter and went back to pressure casting with a Lyman ladle. But that's how I learned, maybe that old saying about an old dog learning new tricks is right. I just got frustrated with the bottom pour , I knew I could cast with the ladle
I think a 6 cavity mould might be best for mass production, but the single and double cavity moulds I have just didn't respond to bottom pour perfect bullets. It's probably me . I still have the bottom pour and might try it again.
Gary

[rockrat]

I went to a RCBS pro-melt. Don't have any problem with 850gr 50 cals. Just have to adjust the flow. I run my pot at about 710 degrees

[Greg_R]

Thinking the answer to my problem is the flow rate as many of you suggested. I have a Lyman ladle and it puts out a much thicker stream of lead than the bottom pour Lee does. I have a 4 pound Lee pot and a 10 pound Lee bottom pour. Thinking I need the Lee 20 pound magnum melter for my larger boolits, keep the 10 pound bottom pour for the smaller ones. Thanks guys!

[Sasquatch-1]

Before you give up on the bottom pour try adding a half pound of tin to about 10 pounds of alloy. From what I understand, and this may be wrong, tin reduces the surface tension and therefore allows the mold to fill out better. Sources of tin are pewter, picked up cheap at yard sales, and solder which can get a little expensive.

You may not need quite as much tin as I suggested.

[Le Loup Solitaire]

Generally the addition of 1-2% tin will improve the "flowability" of an alloy and contribute a lot to the fillout and sharpness of the bullet. Tin though is pretty costly to buy across the board so if you can obtain it otherwise it will go lighter on your budget. When used with antimony it will produce harder bullets that are also a bit larger. I have used a lot of WW metal and have added tin by using solder as a source, mainly when casting rifle bullets. LLS

[Victor N TN]

Has anyone suggested pre-heating your molds before you start casting. My main 45 acp mold is an OLD, H&G mold before WW2. It's a 6 cavity 230 grain mold. At the time, my main pot was the 10 pound Lee Production Pot. When the pot gets hot and I start casting, I turn it wide open on the temp. It never shuts off. That mold in particular really takes the lead as fast as I can do the cycle thing.

I have bought a new NIB RCBS furnace, but due to health concerns I haven't been able to actually use it yet.

Good luck.

[Greg_R]

I dip my molds in the alloy until lead will no longer stick to them before I start casting. I turn my pot all the way up. Even then I have a hart time getting good bullets unless I use the ladle. I like my bullets to have a small frost to them, something I have heard is good for LLA. The bullets out of the 459-405-HB always seem to come out shiny, except for the time I got the mold too hot and the alloy would not set??? I am open for learning, noob that I am, but I really think ladle pour is going to be what works for me.

[54bore]

I bought the Lyman ladle, it's nice and works well but within a week I ended up buying a Lee 4-20 bottom pour, I have a feeling my like brand new Lyman ladle will get very little use from now on, the Lee bottom pour works flawlessly and is so much handier to use

[hickfu]

I have only tried bottom pour casting with my 20lb pot and I have never had any issues with fill out even with my 4 cavity 540gr monsters. I keep the temp the same on all of them, I pre-heat my molds on a hot plate at med-high as soon as I turn on the lead and its plenty warm enough when the lead gets to temp.

I do want to try ladle casting at some point..