Paper patch mold base flaws

[Quigley284]

Hello everyone, I am new to all of this and a new caster as well. I have been lurking around here since last July reading and learning and then trying to apply that to what I am trying to do. I am having trouble with getting finished bases on a .446 BACO money mold. I have two other mold from these folks. Once I learned what temperature they liked and got my timing down, they were easy to run and I got a very nice finished product. My problem is I get small circles of varying size in the end of the base of the boolit. I am using an RCBS bottom pour with the temp setting on 800 which is 825 on the temp gauge. I have tried to change flow rate up and down from normal. I tried different alloys. I am using an alloy of #2 and lead right now. I tried going up and down in temp. Hotter seemed to help some but then I would get fins on the corner of the base. I cleaned this mold when it was new the same as the other two. I gave it another scubbing today and ran some but no luck. I tried extra fluxing with saw dust. When I get good ones cast this boolit shoots very nicely when wet wrapped with 8# Seth Cole tracing paper. I shamelessly borrowed this combination from Kenny Wasserburger. I am at a loss how to cure this problem. Thanks in advance for any help you may have. Mike

[Skipper]

Use a casting dipper:

http://www.lymanproducts.com/includes/img/lyman//bulletcasting/casting-dipper.jpg

[Don McDowell]

MIght try loosening the sprue plate up a tad, might not be venting enough, also make sure there's no oil or grease etc, hiding under that plate.

[Southern Son]

Mike, I have basically the same mold. I have only ever used an RCBS dipper to feed it and I have had no trouble with it. When I started casting it was for my 45/70, all 500+ grain boolits. I started out using a bottom pour pot and I got no end of troubles with heaps of rejects (sometimes the reject rate was as high as 30-40%). Since switching to the dipper it am getting much better boolits and almost no rejects (my last casting session I cast 115 boolits for a competition and only 2 were rejects, including warm up boolits).

[405]

For big bullets..... seems this question is asked countless times on the Forum. One way that usually works is to use a ladle like the Lyman/Ideal pictured above. Don't use the ladle to simply pour the stream into the sprue hole.

Try this... half fill the ladle. Rotate ladle and mold 90 degrees. Lightly press ladle spout into sprue hole bevel. Rotate back upright. Hold for a second or two. Tip ladle away and allow a little more alloy to puddle on sprue plate. Let puddle completely freeze. Open sprue plate. All this takes a little practice but once mastered it usually solves poor fill out.

[1874Sharps]

Welcome to the forum and glad to have you! Perhaps you do not have a big enough puddle on top of the sprue plate. You want to have a nice puddle on top of that sprue plate that cools slowly after several seconds of liquidity. This gives the base of the boolit a little bit of molten lead pressure and helps the base of the boolit to fill out completely, all other things being equal.

[Boz330]

What Skipper, SS and 405 said. The bottom pour pots work OK for smaller lighter boolits but the results are better with a ladle with the bigger heavier boolits. I went through the same problems as well.:mrgreen:

Bob

[Quigley284]

Thank you everyone for all the suggestions. Last night after work I checked the gap on the sprue plate and it seemed tighter than the other two BACO molds that I have. So I loosened it up some to where it is similar to the the others. This morning I broke out the dreaded RCBS dipper and tried my had at that mold again. Man did I make a mess. Maybe I need a bigger pot. Anyway using the slow rotate while count to 4, that last 30 I made were with in 8 tenths of each other. It took a while to get the timing down for weight variation but they looked better from the start. I am sure I will do better next time. I had some rejects for the sprue plate not being centered on the mold but the whole lot looked good. Thanks for all the help. Now all I need is to this snow to melt, stuck in Minnesota and waiting on spring. Thanks again, Mike

[leadman]

I have the rings on the base occasionaly. I take a stick match and smoke the bottom of the sprue plate and they go away.

[Kenny Wasserburger]

Quigley,

You been gave some good advice on the dipper forget the bottom pour on these moulds.

If your mould is not well vented, you can file a notch in your spout on your dipper this will vent the lead while pouring and aids in filling out the bases.


Kenny
Wasserburger

[John Boy]

Quigley, Read - Print and Use this: The 8-Phase Casting Cycle ... http://www.longrangebpcr.com/8Phases.htm
In the article it recommends the melt temperature so the sprue puddle frosts in 5 seconds. Heat your melt to a temperature so the sprue puddle frosts in 8 - 10 seconds. Other than this change - you will have good bullets and the weight variances will be small IF you keep the same rhythm while casting.

Fins on the bullet bases: Holding the handles tight while casting and doing this has eliminated my fins (except with a speck of lead in between the mold halves) ... take the handles and see if they wobble any when you move the handles up and down. If they do, tighten the the nut so they don't. This 'centers' the mold pins when you SLOWLY close the mold handles.

Looseness of the Sprue Plate: Adjust the plate screw so that when you swing the mold with your hand, the plate swings open. Key is the looseness and there is no light between the top of the mold and the bottom of the plate when you look. This precludes trapped air in the mold cavity with a 5 second pour (ladle spout against the sprue plate hole) and the melt temperature so the sprue puddle frosts in 8 - 10 seconds.

Also, when the sprue puddle is cut BEFORE you open the mold halves, tap the handle bolt with your stick. This allows the molds halves to open so that one mold half is not pushing against the other one and the axis of the bullets are concentric

Casting bullets in the 400 + grain range, the melt has to be hot enough to fill the cavity all the way to the bullet base with NO trapped air. And I have not had success casting heavy bullets with a bottom pure pot. Plus keep your melt temperature with a 10 degree variance

[cajun shooter]

Quigley, You have been given the best advise by some of the top forum members that post on these pages. One of them even holds National records in the Long range game. When you can afford it do yourself a favor and buy a Wagge pot and a good ladle and use it for all your bullets over 400 grains.

[Quigley284]

Hello everyone, I ran some more of those BACO .446 Money's yesterday. I am truely amazed what a difference all your suggestions made. I ran 70 with a high of 532.9 and a low of 532.1. I have an Excel spread sheet that I had been using to see if my casting was going in the right direction. I sorted out the 7 low ones and ended up with a SD of .155 on the other 63. I am not sure I would have honestly been able to tell the difference, but I did it anyway. I put a clock across from my pot. It really helped to stay focused. I read that 8 step cycle a couple of times and that helped. The low ones I sorted out were when the pot was getting low and I was having to work to get the dipper full. I know it was getting me out of time. Can't wait to try these out. I need a different pot. I see BACO sells that Waage pots. I am so sorry that I waited so long to find this sport and these rifles and all these nice folks on these forums. I hope this summer I will have a chance to put a face and name with a forum name. Once again thanks for all your help, Mike

[405]

.8 extreme spread against 532.... Whew, I doubt many could match that! Seems excellent, as tight or tighter than any cast I know of. I'd say that variable is taken care of. Now you can work on the other 957 variables :)

[Southern Son]

That is damn good casting, Quigley. I don't know why, but using a ladle seems to make all the difference. You are right about getting out of time causing the variations in weight. I use a gas burner to melt the lead and my lead pot is an old gas bottle that holds about 15kg of lead. With that much lead, the temperature does not vary much and getting the ladle filled to the right level is never a problem.

[Red River Rick]

Bottom pour pots are great for casting bullets around the 300 gr. Anything heavy than that should be ladle poured.

The faster you get the lead into the mould, volume wise, the better the filllout.

RRR

[RMulhern]

Quigley,

You been gave some good advice on the dipper forget the bottom pour on these moulds.

If your mould is not well vented, you can file a notch in your spout on your dipper this will vent the lead while pouring and aids in filling out the bases.


Kenny
Wasserburger

Kenny

I finally located some 7# paper IN SHEETS and I bought two reams for testing. It works excellent. Thickness mics at .0015" and it's really easy to work with when wet patching; doesn't tear easily and rolls on the bullet with ease. I've been proud to find this stuff as I hate trying to work with 'rolled' paper; real PITA for me! Using the Norma cases and the .446" bullets that my BACO mould throws....these fit very snuggly into the case mouth when hand seated to a depth of .125" and when inserted into the chamber and extracted the lands leave impressions on the paper all the way around to the mouth of the case. The .446" bullet when wrapped will not work with the RMC thick-walled cases but after I run the as cast bullets through my .444" swage die....they fit like a glove into the mouth of the cases and the same into the chamber of my .45/110. Haven't had a chance to test enough with them yet at LR as the weather has been totally lousy with much rain and I haven't wanted to screw up the range by driving on it! Hopefully it will dry out soon. What initial testing I've done however indicates that this bullet is gonna be a good shooter for LR!

Hope you're doing well! Still got you on the evening prayer list my friend!!

Take care!!

[Kenny Wasserburger]

Rick,

Am on the mend or so they tell me sometimes I wonder? Glad you found the paper to suit your needs, the rolls I like better but that is a personal Peference.

On the subject of casting I ran my last batch of bullets 93 of them and had a .3 grain varriance in the whole lot with my Wagge Pot and my 20-1 alloy. Using my modified dipper with a notch cut in the side of the spout to help with venting issues.

KW
The Lunger

[Don McDowell]

Is the Waage pot that much better than the 20 lb lee pot to justify the expense?

[Lead pot]

I don't want to change the subject from casting bullets but I'm running out of my 100% 9# .0016 Southworth paper for my .446 swaged bullets. Rick where are you getting the 7# paper and what is the cotton %?

Kurt

[Lead pot]

Don I have 2 20# Lee pots and one 20# Waage I keep different alloys in so I don't have to change them out all the time and I cant see any difference in the bullet quality and weight variance between them.

Kurt

[RMulhern]

Rick,

Am on the mend or so they tell me sometimes I wonder? Glad you found the paper to suit your needs, the rolls I like better but that is a personal Peference.

On the subject of casting I ran my last batch of bullets 93 of them and had a .3 grain varriance in the whole lot with my Wagge Pot and my 20-1 alloy. Using my modified dipper with a notch cut in the side of the spout to help with venting issues.

KW
The Lunger

Kenny

I use the sheet paper because I make a main template from an entire sheet and then run that into the printer and I can run off 50 sheets if that's what I want. I then cut each sheet individually!!

:lol:;)

[montana_charlie]

I'm running out of my 100% 9# .0016 Southworth paper
Kurt,
Dean Becker (powderburner) sent me two sheets of some 9# onionskin that we had been talking about. In the envelope, he included some cut patches made from some paper from a different source.
They measure right close to .0016".

If I understand correctly, that paper comes from this source...
http://www.suppliesnet.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=3288

Dean believes it to be 100% cotton rag.

CM

[Lead pot]

TNX. CM.
I have several boxes of 9# and 7-1/2# that mikes out at .002 and .0021 that is 100% cotton but for the .446 bullet I need at least .0017-8 to fit my .243 long tapered throat or it needs a little help getting the cartridge chambered or seat it a little deeper in the case.

Kurt