How hot? Lead pot.

[trevj]

Ran a small batch of small bullets last night.

Lyman 225107 single mold, straight wheel weights.

Wanted to see how the mold would do, and how I would.

So.... Melted a potfull of WW alloy, started trying things out. Had my digital thermometer in the pot, but it reads Celsius only. I had not looked up the equivalents. So the first bunch come out cold and wrinkled. I tweaked up the temperature sme. Still wrinkled, repeat a few times.
Oh. I had the mold sitting on the edge of teh pot, staying warm, too.

I started getting decent fill, then worked on pour and unmolding technique. I was getting good bullets. At 600 degrees C (1100F !!!) on the digital temperature readout.

No trouble keeping the mold warm, mind, but this seems a tad hot to me.

I picked up enough lead-free solder today to do up another pot of alloy to about 2 percent more tin than the straight WW alloy, and gonna try some lower temps.

How high should I be seeing on the temperature?

Cheers
Trev

[Dale53]

I cast a lot of bullets made from WW's + 2% tin. My casting temperature is 650 degrees fahrenheit.

Dale53

[Bret4207]

650-750 F will do most lead boolit alloys under normal conditions. You were too hot. Please realize there is a huge difference between the relatively unimportant pot temp and very important mould temp. Your mould temp is the important thing. You can have your lead at 2000 degrees and if you aren't pour fast enough to get the mould temp up you'll still get wrinkled boolits.

In general terms get your alloy up to 650-700 degrees and start casting fast till the mould gets up to heat. When you start getting nicely filled boolits that are showing frost slow down a bit or use a fan or the Bruce B method to coll the sprue a bit.Then adjust your tempo to keep the mould temp up.

I used to say, "Turn up the heat!", but a few weeks back I realized I was saying it wrong. Mould temp is the important thing as long as your alloy is hot enough in the first place. Sometimes the melt needs to be comparatively hot, over 750 for instance, because of ambient temps or the particular alloy your are using. Usually 650-750 will do it.

[mold maker]

Lots of varibles involved.
Boolit size and design
Ambient temp.
Cycle speed
Air/forced cooling mold
Mold cond.
Alloy
What is considered acceptable
Generally the smaller the pill, and the slower the cycle, the hotter the melt.
exp. The Get Rich Slow, loaner mold (358/180 gr) 4 cav. alum. mold required a hot (725*) fast cycle to keep the mold and sprue plate hot enough for good results. (Outdoors at 38-50* with light breez, WW w/2% tin)
If casting a .45 heavy boolit, a slower cycle and cooler melt temp works.
Each different caster, mold, alloy combo is as individual as personalities.
Thats why you should keep good records of what does and doesn't work for each mold, just like the Case, Primer, Powder, Bullet, and Results, for re-loading. No use in re-inventing the wheel, every time you start to cast.
As you gain experience you will mentally adjust much of this just by looking at the mold, but you never stop learning .

[trevj]

Yep. Kinda figured that the pot was a bit warm! I started out with evening sunlight behind me, and finished with very little light, and had a definite glow to the metal, and the wooden stir stick was burbling when I stirred the pot with a bit of beeswax.
The metal was not boiling, and there was not a huge amount of dross, though, considering that I had no top cover on it.

I told a friend that I had been casting, and that I had picked up a bit of solder to add to the pot. He asked me if I wanted some solder! Well heck, of course I did! So he digs into his basement, and comes up with two ponds of lead-free that he had salvaged from a shop clean-up where he had worked! Bonus! Enough tin to do me for a good long while, casting little bitty bullets! FWIW, I am casting 22 caliber only, for now.

Gonna try a little more reasonable temperature this weekend.

Cheers
Trev

[13Echo]

I think you're starting to run into significant vaporization of lead at 1100 F. Casting that hot is not a good idea and may lead to lead poisoning.

Jerry Liles

[shooterg]

Always the chance his thermometer is not reading correctly.

[Slow Elk 45/70]

+1 on the reading not being correct, I would check the thermometer against a known heat value that is close to correct or try another thermometer. 1100* ???? way to hot if this is correct. I use 750* as a MAX., I try to stay around 700*. IMHO

[Tom Herman]

Trev,

I tend to cast hot, about 750-800 degrees with my Pro-Melt pot, except for the .455 Webley where you really have to pour on the coal. That one goes as hot as I can get the pot, about 850 degrees F.
Alloy here is 50/50 scrap lead to wheel weights, plus 2% tin.

Happy Shootin'! -Tom

[sheepdog]

What kind of pot are you using? I didn't think most pots (Lee, Lyman,etc) could get that hot

[GLL]

What is the model and wattage of your pot?

To get 1100 degrees F requires a pretty "significant" pot ! :) :)

Jerry

[R. Dupraz]

Mold and pot temp.---Just hot enough to make good bullets. Anything more is unnecessary.

[trevj]

Got part of the trouble sussed out tonight. Ripped the cover off the heat control on My old Saeco pot and found that the knob was pointing off in the wrong direction, and was about 90 degrees (angle) out of sync with the supposed calibration marks.

The temperature probe is a type K thermocouple.
Fairly accurate. Way overkill for this job.

Ran between 350 and 380 Celsius, (660-710F) tonight, and made good progress on WW + 2% tin, more or less. Ran about 2 cups of 37 grain slugs.

Worked much better!

Cheers
Trev

[yarro]

I have to have my probe a couple of inches from the side to get a good reading. If it is near the elements in the side it reads hot.

-yarro

[trevj]

I have mine simply sitting in the bottom corner of the pot.

With the variation caused by the temperature control (not terribly precise), all I wanted to know was the approximate temperature, which this reads quite nicely.

I watched the temperature readings when I was using the probe to stir the pot, and they were pretty much the same throughout. It's not a very large pot.

I should build a bracket to hold it clear of the pot. Probably about the same time I build the bracket to allow me to fit the mold under the spout at the same place every time. Could happen. :D

Cheers
Trev