My First Cast, A couple of Questions

[BigBlack]

My Setup

Big pot with homemade bottom pour valve for smelting over a turkey fryer.

Heated wheel weights (no stick-ons)
Once melted removed clips and one zinc weight found floating on top
Then dropped in a couple candles (small ones) and waited for them to burn off and stirred
Removed crap off top to uncover the beauty
Used cupcake pan to make ingots (was a pain since it was not cast but sheet metal, have since ordered some cast ingot molds from the web).

With my nice ingots I loaded up my lee pro 4 20 and waited for the lead to melt.
While the pot was melting I put my bullet mold (lee 356-102) on top of the pot to pre heat.
Once everything was ready I started casting.

Needless to say I messed up more than I was able to keep.

Attached you will find pictures of my best. The “completed cartridge” is only a dummy round. No primer or powder, I plan on keeping it as a memoir. Now to my questions.


Is it normal to have a tiny bit more crap to skim off in my production pot from my “clean” ingots? I had about a table spoon full.
Those who use the lee bottom pour, what have you found to be the best practice on positioning the bullet mold under the “nozzle”

Thanks any input would be much appreciated.

Paul

:castmine: (now)

7889

[docone31]

There will always be slag. Even with making ingots and melting them. Lead oxides rapidly.
I struggle with my bottom pour. Finding the sweet spot is important.
I use the Lee rest for the mold. You can put something under the mold at the right height if you need to.
I like to have the sprue hole directly under the spout, just enough so I can see the metal entering the mold.
It looks like the mold itself is a little too cool. The first of the three castings, the lube land looks a little rounded. All in all, not too bad.

[Dennis Eugene]

Save yourself a step next time and instead of makeing all your smelt into ingots ladle some directly into your Lee pot and start casting right away. Dennis

[bishopgrandpa]

The picture looks like there is a roll crimp applied. If so, you have a problem. They should have a taper crimp only.

[BigBlack]

they are taper, my back ground (desk pad) was not the best for a photo

[RustyFN]

I'm too new myself to give advice, I just wanted to say congrats and welcome to casting.
Rusty

[454PB]

Welcome to the addiction and the forum.

You done good.

If you are using a bottom pour pot, there is no reason to skim the dross from the surface. In fact, that dross helps to shield the melt from oxygen, which is the cause of the oxidation (dross). Flux it well once it's up to temperature, then leave it alone until either the pot is empty or you add more alloy.

[runfiverun]

like 454 said get it to temp, flux it ,and apply a barrier. if you add metal
gently you can leave what you use on there and go again.
looks lke your mold could use a bit more heat.
some molds like to have the hole lined up and lead shot in them ,and others like to have it
dribbled in kinda off the side of the hole.
it's a venting thing.

[JIMinPHX]

Those boolits are pretty close to being what you want. A little higher temperature should fix up your minor fill out issues.

& yes, it is normal to get a little crud on top of the pot when you melt down your ingots.