Bottom pour vs ladle

[Wolfdog91]

For you guys who've been able to hang out around or chat with competition cast shooters, is it more common for them to ladle pour or use a bottom pour pot ? Been following some guys on Facebook and they all seem to ladle pour. Just curious
Thanks

[high standard 40]

I shoot handgun silhouette competition and I bottom pour only. This is for 7mm 150 grain bullets. I believe that shooters casting heavy, large caliber bullets do prefer a ladle.

[M-Tecs]

NRA Bullseye handgun shooter tend to bottom pour. BPCR it's a mix but most believe ladle is better for 600 and 1,000 yard bullets.

Personally 98% of mine are bottom pour with ladle used only for long range BPCR rifle.

[charlie b]

Go to the Cast Bullet Assn website. Look at the match results. They list each competitor's information, including load details and ladle or bottom pour, sizing, alloy, heat treat, etc, etc.

https://castbulletassoc.org/match-results

Select bench rest and then year. You'll get a list of competitions by club.

I use a bottom pour, but, I am not a competitor.

[lead4me]

I find that the bottom pour gives me a cleaner boolit. I like to use a light cover of wood ash on my pot. But because I like to cast in the winter here in Mi I use a big pot. It holds about 40/50 lbs of lead so a nice ash cover keeps it all in the melt. Using a bottom pour keep the ash in the pot where it belongs.

[jdgabbard]

Man, I don't think I've used a ladle since the 2000s. But even back then it was usually for larger heavier boolits. I have a good friend who does do some long range blackpowder shooting, and for some larger boolits I believe he still ladle poors to get a better fillout. Having said that, I moved away from the ladle as a matter of keeping a cleaner workspace that moves a little faster.

[Bigslug]

I have found that ladle pouring is a practice for an octopus. Since I only have two arms, I use a bottom pour pot.

(Not really sure how a mold is supposed to know or care what source gravity is filling it from anyway)

[porthos]

i ladle pour. i get perfect fillout. my bullets weight +- 1 tenth of a grain. out of a modern well made 2 cavity
mold. and after mold is hot all are perfect,no throw backs. i used to bottom pour long ago; but no more bottom pour.

[BLAHUT]

I use bottom pour only. Depending on temperature of pot, gives me different weights of bullets, I pour only pure lead, 500+ gr, I weigh all bullets before sizing and lubing and segregate by .01 grain, all bullets are shot with others of the same weight only. For competition or practice.

[jdgabbard]

I have found that ladle pouring is a practice for an octopus. Since I only have two arms, I use a bottom pour pot.

(Not really sure how a mold is supposed to know or care what source gravity is filling it from anyway)

By seating the spout into the sprue hole and turning upright you can effectively ’pressure cast’ larger molds that have a hard time properly filling out with alloys that are light on tin. Instead of a stream of molten lead being pored into the mold you have the weight of the lead in the ladle forcing the lead down into the nooks and crannies of the mold. It absolutely is very much more effective than bottom pouring. Bottom pouring’s benefits just outweighs ladle pouring in most cases.

[stubshaft]

Ladle pour for me as it gives me more control over the filling of the sprue. I also cast bullets over 400 grains and multi-cavity molds.

[Dusty Bannister]

Seems to me that you can pressure cast with both the ladle and the bottom pour pot. The difference is that the ladle holds a limited amount of alloy and must be refilled from time to time. The bottom pour needs filling when about half empty. The advantage of the ladle is that you can open up the nozzle easily and get a complete and rapid fill of a mold cavity. Doing that with the bottom pour pot can result in problems with the valve seat and make excessive dripping a problem.

For multiple cavity molds, the Rowell ladle is quite a handy tool, but it does not allow for pressure casting without major modification.

The majority of my casting is with the bottom pour pot, with an interrupted filling sequence. If one opens the valve and then moves the multiple cavity mold under the flowing stream the flow can bridge over the opening and end up producing rounded bases. Whichever method you choose, practice and proficiency does improve the product.

[samari46]

I could never get the bottom pour to work for me. Drilled and tapped the bottom pour spout and only ladle cast now. Frank

[MT Gianni]

I find ladle casting gives me the lowest variance between bullets. I will tilt the mold slightly and empty the ladle over it letting it run back into the pot on the few molds I have with venting issues. That has eliminated any problems in that area.

[imashooter2]

My competitions are all speed games. I only know of 2 others that cast their own. They use bottom pour pots. Most buy plated bullets. Commercial cast is less popular. They don’t like smoke.

[justindad]

With ladle casting, you can rotate the mold 90 degrees and slosh the lead around - makes sense you would get better fill out. Aggressive sloshing might give more porosity. If you have perfect surface fill out from bottom pour and ladle cast - would one typically have less porosity?

[trapper9260]

I used both till my bottom pour died on me for the use, I do ladle cast and I see I can get the same speed as the bottom. I use the ladle I use for smelting . Yes it is clean and I can push them out fast , better for a 6 cavity mold also. Dose not take long to fill it . It works for me. One of these days I will get another bottom pour to replace the one that died on me, due to worn out. Did replace the heating elements more then once .

[country gent]

I cast long heavy for caliber bullets, 38 calibers at 350 grns, 40 calibers at 420 grns and 45 cal at 500-550 grns. All my moulds have the sprue plates vented.
I ladle cast not pouring for a sprue but slowly pouring the whole ladle into the hole letting the excess run back into the pot. This helps with fill out and off gassing of the mould. I use a modified lyman ladle that has the spout opened up to .205 dia. When filling the ladle it is pushed to the bottom of the pot and 1 "Swirl" around the bottom of the pot. The ladle stays in the pot when not filling the mould

[Larry Gibson]

Bottom pour (Lyman Mag20) for cast bullets up through 300 gr. Ladle pour for the larger bullets. Key is, with the alloy at the right temp, to use the spout adjustment to get the alloy into the cavity as quick as possible and to leave a good sprue. I like to see the alloy roil back up out of the sprue plate hole a bit to form the sprue. With the ladle (Lyman with the pour hole enlarged) I have used the technique shown in #3 CBH with complete success since the late '60s.

[Shuz]

I float a thin layer of new kitty litter (diatomaceous earth) on top of my alloy. This keeps air from oxidizing the alloy and also helps keep temperature of the alloy more constant. Since impurities generally float to the top, I find I get boolits with less inclusions by using a bottom pour furnace. Mine is an RCBS Pro Melt, and I love it!

[Ithaca Gunner]

I ladle pour, when I started casting some 50 years ago I just cast .58 Burton bullets of 400-500grs. wt. from a Lyman 20lb. cast iron pot on a Coleman stove for N-SSA compitition. I got my first electric pot in the 90's, a LEE 10lb. bottom pour and expanded my casting to include .45 bullets for a Springfield .45/70. I never could get good bullets from the LEE pot bottom pouring, too much lead I suppose so I took the linkage off and plugged the hole with a roofing nail and used it as a ladle pot. In the 90's Rapine set up at Nationals selling his molds and had expanded his line to include electric pots he had made somewhere, all were ladle type pots and I bought a 20lb. pot from him which I use to this day for 95% of my casting. Maybe if I had sprung the dollars for a Lyman or RCBS pot in the beginning things would have turned out different, but it seemed the LEE pot didn't pour fast enough to fill out a bullet over 300grs. plus I had to cut out the ''rest'' for the plug of the molds when casting hollow base Burton bullets.

Until about 2000 I cast over 2,000 hollow base .58 bullets a year. Now I rarely cast them although I still have four .58 riflemuskets and a .45 Springfield, most of my casting is 200gr. or less except for .44/.45 handgun. I may benefit from a bottom pour pot now.

[wv109323]

I shoot NRA bullseye pistol. I know of no one that ladle casts for 38 special or .45 acp. We require under 2" accuracy at 50 yards. So accuracy is possible with bottom pour for 200 grain boolits.
I think the larger bullets may benefit from ladle pour. I think it has to do with getting the lead into the mold before it can cool and pressue casting. The weight of lead in the spouted ladle adds pressure for complete fill out of the bases.

[Wolfdog91]

I cast long heavy for caliber bullets, 38 calibers at 350 grns, 40 calibers at 420 grns and 45 cal at 500-550 grns. All my moulds have the sprue plates vented.
I ladle cast not pouring for a sprue but slowly pouring the whole ladle into the hole letting the excess run back into the pot. This helps with fill out and off gassing of the mould. I use a modified lyman ladle that has the spout opened up to .205 dia. When filling the ladle it is pushed to the bottom of the pot and 1 "Swirl" around the bottom of the pot. The ladle stays in the pot when not filling the mould

Vented sprue plates ?

[GregLaROCHE]

I use a Lee bottom pour, but some times it hard to get the alloy flowing as fast as I’d like for 400-500 grain boolits. I wonder if ladle pouring would fill the molds faster.

[justindad]

Does anybody else shake their mold while doing bottom pour?

[jdgabbard]

Does anybody else shake their mold while doing bottom pour?

I do more of a swirl as soon as I have a good size sprue on the sprue plate. Seems to help get crisp corners with alloys that could use more tin. I also notice it creates a little larger of a dimple, which leads me to believe that it may help in drawing in a little more alloy, which would reinforce the idea that it helps with fillout. It might not do anything, I don't know. But yes, I do it.

[charlie b]

Does anybody else shake their mold while doing bottom pour?

I do but only because my tremors cause my hands to shake anyway :)

[megasupermagnum]

I think you will find a decent correlation between the size of the bullets they are loading, and the method they use. To be fair, either method could be used perfectly with the right setup. As they come downpour's tend to have a smaller hole, which allows a more accurate pour, but also limits the flow rate. Ladles tend to have larger holes which are less accurate, but also allow tremendous flow rates.

Based on my experience, almost all handgun bullets are best done with a bottom pour. Speaking from my own experience, it's easier for me to be consistent when sitting and all I do is lift the handle to pour, especially when we are talking 4-5-6, sometimes 8+ cavities. Then to throw the quantities pistol shooters are using, ladle pouring is more labor intensive at that level. Handgun bullets are generally small, not too many shooting much over 230 grains except for magnum revolver rounds. A bottom pour is perfectly suited to filling small bullets like that.

By comparison a BPCR shooter using a 45-70 or similar is usually not using under a 500 grain bullet. Bottom pours really struggle with such large bullets, the flow rate simply isn't high enough to fill out a bullet like that. Can it be done? Sure. But a faster flow rate is a boon to casting large bullets. You can use lower pot temps, run lower mold temps, and in general make it easier on yourself to produce competitive quality bullets.

I really don't know what would be ideal for a rifle shooter of a smaller bore say 35 caliber and under, and I'm not sure it matters that much for the relatively low volume of shooting. I prefer a bottom pour for 30 caliber bullets myself, but have mostly been using a ladle lately testing different alloys, and you can definitely make bullets just as good quality with a ladle.

I'm assuming you could drill out a bottom pour pot without too much fuss, and I'm sure you can find ladles with small holes too.

[doghawg]

For plinkers like the 125 gr. and 158 gr. Lee's I use the RCBS bottom pour. For bigger boolits the majority of my casting is with the ladle and either of two Waage pots. I always seem to get the best uniformity and since I'm a little OCD, the best looking boolits with a ladle. Too old to change now.

[Gtek]

Vented sprue plates? I have taken a sharp fine file and made one 45 degree pass on each top inboard edge, some two. One easy smooth stroke covering edge to edge, remember cannot put that metal back. That's what I would call it, unless your talking the new Lee swirly fly cut thing.

[justindad]

Vented sprue plates? I have taken a sharp fine file and made one 45 degree pass on each top inboard edge, some two. One easy smooth stroke covering edge to edge, remember cannot put that metal back. That's what I would call it, unless your talking the new Lee swirly fly cut thing.

I have had good results with that too, except I used a grind stone. Adds a bevel to the parting line at the top of the block only.

[M-Tecs]

Than there is the LBT vented spue plate. They look kind of cheesy but they work very well. https://americanhandgunner.com/ammo/lead-bullet-technology-lbt-leads-the-way/

[tmanbuckhunter]

I started ladle pouring when I got into BPCR. Once I unlocked the secrets of +/- 1/10th of a grain variation in my boolits, I started using locking mold handles and ladle pouring EVERYTHING. It adds very little time, and the results are 100% worth it. I'd rather sacrifice an extra 15min to get the best boolits I can possibly get for all purposes.

[MT Gianni]

I remember Harvey Donaldson claiming in the 70's that "very few casters know how to use a ladle today". He went on to say that it was important to fill the ladle from the middle of the pot. I have Your's Truely, Harvey Donaldson but he never really goes in depth on what other techniques might improve ones bullets.

[racepres]

Ladle Poured some just yesterday. Ensuring that I have Not forgotten How!!! BTW, Results were Great!!!

[almar]

I used to bottom pour only when the only thing i had was the little Lee laddle but i tried the rotometals laddles and now its all i use. You find a "system" that works best and you keep perfecting it. It works best for me and i get less rejects.

[T-Bird]

I ladle pour everything, Tried a Lee 10# bottom pour back in the '90's, never could get it to stop leaking, pitched it. Since then used RCBS side pour ladle.I have few, if any rejects after everything gets hot.

[huntinlever]

I use the Rotometals Rowell Ladle #1, and really like it. But then I only cast 2-cavity 45-70 bullets, currently 400 grains. I'll inevitably also get another 425 grain mold from Accurate. Never had much luck with bottom pouring but that's on me, I'm sure.

Edit: My experience duplicates T-Bird's. Couldn't get the Lee to stop leaking and moved to ladle pouring, and haven't gone back.

[charlie b]

Yeah, that Lee 10lb had a weird 'plug' for the bottom pour. Conversely my 20lb Lee does not drip.

I just like the convenience of the bottom pour. And these days I can still cast when my tremors are acting up. Trying to pour with a ladle when your hand is shaking results in lead all over the bench. :)

[John Guedry]

I only have 1 heavy mold a Lee 405 gr hollow base. If it had 2 cavities my bottom pour might not work well.