Snyd
10-05-2009, 11:41 PM
First off thanks to this site and ALL of you who post here. You have educated (and addicted me):smile:
So last spring I started gathering up wheel weights, this summer I smelted them down into lead muffins and ordered casting equipment. It all finally showed up a few days before I went sheep hunting, then back to work for a week, sick for a week, off moose hunting for a week then back to life, etc, etc...... Well I finally got a chance to try out my new stuff and cast some boolits. After getting setup, melting down 8 2lb muffins, messing with the heat, a mold not hot enough, etc. I finally started dropping some booits. I ended up with over 300 255gr .452 boolits and about 40 or so what figured are rejects. A guy I work with who casts looked at those and said he would shoot all but a couple of them. Anyway, what fun it is to end up with nice shiny projectiles from of all things... wheel weights!
Things I learned.
At first I was dropping the lead into each cavity one at a time (up down with the handle) like in the pic. Then I realized I could just do a steady stream and fill em all up. Once I got the melt and mould up to temp I had a pretty good rhythm going.
I need to redo my water drop system, I think some of my rejects are from hitting other bullets in the water. I'll do it different next go around.
I need some good sprue plate lube. I used a little parafin wax that I use for fluxing.
I think I need to get a thermometer to take the guesswork out of the melt temp and the mold needs to be up to a good temp as well.
I'm also wondering about cooling the sprue plate a little on a wet rag just before cutting the sprue.
Here's some pics of my first go round...
http://homepage.mac.com/perryschneider/.Pictures/boolits/b_02.jpg http://homepage.mac.com/perryschneider/.Pictures/boolits/b_03.jpg http://homepage.mac.com/perryschneider/.Pictures/boolits/b_04.jpg http://homepage.mac.com/perryschneider/.Pictures/boolits/b_05.jpg
So last spring I started gathering up wheel weights, this summer I smelted them down into lead muffins and ordered casting equipment. It all finally showed up a few days before I went sheep hunting, then back to work for a week, sick for a week, off moose hunting for a week then back to life, etc, etc...... Well I finally got a chance to try out my new stuff and cast some boolits. After getting setup, melting down 8 2lb muffins, messing with the heat, a mold not hot enough, etc. I finally started dropping some booits. I ended up with over 300 255gr .452 boolits and about 40 or so what figured are rejects. A guy I work with who casts looked at those and said he would shoot all but a couple of them. Anyway, what fun it is to end up with nice shiny projectiles from of all things... wheel weights!
Things I learned.
At first I was dropping the lead into each cavity one at a time (up down with the handle) like in the pic. Then I realized I could just do a steady stream and fill em all up. Once I got the melt and mould up to temp I had a pretty good rhythm going.
I need to redo my water drop system, I think some of my rejects are from hitting other bullets in the water. I'll do it different next go around.
I need some good sprue plate lube. I used a little parafin wax that I use for fluxing.
I think I need to get a thermometer to take the guesswork out of the melt temp and the mold needs to be up to a good temp as well.
I'm also wondering about cooling the sprue plate a little on a wet rag just before cutting the sprue.
Here's some pics of my first go round...
http://homepage.mac.com/perryschneider/.Pictures/boolits/b_02.jpg http://homepage.mac.com/perryschneider/.Pictures/boolits/b_03.jpg http://homepage.mac.com/perryschneider/.Pictures/boolits/b_04.jpg http://homepage.mac.com/perryschneider/.Pictures/boolits/b_05.jpg