gunnut1
03-31-2016, 10:17 PM
Hey y'all, I am somewhat new to boolit casting and needless to say, I have some questions.
In the past couple of weeks I have sucessfully cast several hundered boolits. Most if them have been OK but a fair number have not been prefect but they either got shot or got thrown back in the pot. I was using lead of unknow composition so I feel that is part of the problem with the imprefect boolits.
But alas, Mr. Murphy is alive and well. I bought some lead from a guy on one of the reloading groups I blong to on Facebook. He told me the lead was mostly wheel weight. I finally got a chance to day to melt some of the lead and something happened that I would normally blam on heat but I don't think heat is the problem. I fired up the pot and melted three muffins. The temp of the lead never of much over 700 degrees and everything looked fine. Alittle dross but not much. I did not flux the lead. I use good ole beeswax to flux. I did not have time to drop any of the lead to make boolits. I had to leave to meet the XYL for dinner at our favorite Italian place so I turned the thermostat down all of the way and unplugged the pot. When I got home I looked in the pot and there was a dark blue color on top of the now cooled lead. It looked like the lead had been really really hot but I know it never much exceeded 700 degrees because my lead thermometer told me so. I did not see this when the lead was hot.
Here is a picture.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v103/kd5day/lead_zpsppnv0gvm.jpg (http://smg.photobucket.com/user/kd5day/media/lead_zpsppnv0gvm.jpg.html)
This is a shot of the cooled lead.
Can anyone tell me what is going on?
In the past couple of weeks I have sucessfully cast several hundered boolits. Most if them have been OK but a fair number have not been prefect but they either got shot or got thrown back in the pot. I was using lead of unknow composition so I feel that is part of the problem with the imprefect boolits.
But alas, Mr. Murphy is alive and well. I bought some lead from a guy on one of the reloading groups I blong to on Facebook. He told me the lead was mostly wheel weight. I finally got a chance to day to melt some of the lead and something happened that I would normally blam on heat but I don't think heat is the problem. I fired up the pot and melted three muffins. The temp of the lead never of much over 700 degrees and everything looked fine. Alittle dross but not much. I did not flux the lead. I use good ole beeswax to flux. I did not have time to drop any of the lead to make boolits. I had to leave to meet the XYL for dinner at our favorite Italian place so I turned the thermostat down all of the way and unplugged the pot. When I got home I looked in the pot and there was a dark blue color on top of the now cooled lead. It looked like the lead had been really really hot but I know it never much exceeded 700 degrees because my lead thermometer told me so. I did not see this when the lead was hot.
Here is a picture.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v103/kd5day/lead_zpsppnv0gvm.jpg (http://smg.photobucket.com/user/kd5day/media/lead_zpsppnv0gvm.jpg.html)
This is a shot of the cooled lead.
Can anyone tell me what is going on?