Mmacro
03-22-2021, 08:42 PM
I am new to mixing lead alloy. In the past I poured fishing jigs, sinkers and the odd pure lead balls for BP shooting.
Today I dove into the deep end and decided to fire up the Lee Pro 4-20 to mix up some #2 alloy.
I had enough material to do 20 pounds, so I doubled the 10 pound recipe from the Lyman cast bullet manual. And that’s when I had my epiphany... apparently 20 pounds of #2 isn’t the same volume as 20 pounds of pure lead...
I had put all my lead in first and then started to add the Linotype and tin only to discover I couldn’t fit all the Lino and tin in the pot. So I spent the next few hours pouring Lee .5 and 1 pound mini ingots, rebel ting the first and last several ingots to balance the mix, and repeating several time to make sure the mix is even for future pouring.
Beside the valuable lesson of sticking to 10 pound batches of fresh alloy... I got lots of practice dialing in the temperature for the alloy and pouring nice, neat ingots.
Today I dove into the deep end and decided to fire up the Lee Pro 4-20 to mix up some #2 alloy.
I had enough material to do 20 pounds, so I doubled the 10 pound recipe from the Lyman cast bullet manual. And that’s when I had my epiphany... apparently 20 pounds of #2 isn’t the same volume as 20 pounds of pure lead...
I had put all my lead in first and then started to add the Linotype and tin only to discover I couldn’t fit all the Lino and tin in the pot. So I spent the next few hours pouring Lee .5 and 1 pound mini ingots, rebel ting the first and last several ingots to balance the mix, and repeating several time to make sure the mix is even for future pouring.
Beside the valuable lesson of sticking to 10 pound batches of fresh alloy... I got lots of practice dialing in the temperature for the alloy and pouring nice, neat ingots.