yes, MORE questions!

[sergeant69]

1. flux....i see where some are using wood shavings. i throw some on top of the melted WW, light em, wait till they turn to ashes and stir em in. i see where brownells sells MARVELUX flux but i never hear about it. is it any good/better than mesquite shavings? i wouldn't know a properly fluxed boolit if it ran up and bit me on the butt. back "in the day" i used candles swiped from my mother-in-law for fluxing the 148 gr WC .38's we qualified with.
2. my old "found" lee mold, .44 cal # 42?-255-SWC. i guess it is supposed to throw 255 gr pills but weighing em shows a consistant 258.5-259 grs. also, the boolits show a line around the boolit where the two sides meet. sides and top. not finning, just a line. no big deal to me but is that ok? i don't anticipate competing w/this cast in the next olympics anywhere, but want it for defense and hunting pigs and maybe whitetails at short ranges w/my 629. haven't even shot it yet (the boolit) as waiting for the lube get here.

[qajaq59]

Sargeant if you see pieces of dirt in your bullets, you didn't flux it right. And I don't own a mold that drops the weight that is stamped on it. So I guess you're going to be fine. Just shoot em and have fun.

[gray wolf]

There is a very recent post--perhaps on page two or three now, it relates to fluxing with saw dust ( wood shavings ) same thing. look it up and read it, you will find some very good info.
on the proper way to use it.
As for the MARVELUX flux --it is a big no,no, with many on the forum, I think we covered that also.
I think you are referring to what I call the parting line on the bullets, caused by the two mold halves. Some molds show less, some a little more. If it just appears as a demarcation line
I would say that is normal. It just shows that two sides of something came together.
If it is anything else-- bring it up and we will help.
Bullet weight can vary with different metal, a 4 grain difference is nothing to get upset about.
Lee molds can vary a little.

[sergeant69]

thats what i wanted ta know. thanks

[lwknight]

That mold is probably rated to weight for #2 alloy. If you have a lower % of tin and or antimony then they will cast heavier.

For flux, you can't beat plain old wax. Some just don't like the smoke but, I tried all types of wood chips and saw dust and what not. Plain cheap wax RULES!!

Marvelux gunks up everything worse than bullet lube.

[sergeant69]

That mold is probably rated to weight for #2 alloy. If you have a lower % of tin and or antimony then they will cast heavier.

For flux, you can't beat plain old wax. Some just don't like the smoke but, I tried all types of wood chips and saw dust and what not. Plain cheap wax RULES!!

Marvelux gunks up everything worse than bullet lube.

by plain cheap wax you mean like the blocks of it you can buy to make ur own candles? cause i got dat!

[gray wolf]

any wax--we are looking for Carbon.

[JohnH]

Just for an experiment, take some of those boolits with marks and incomplete fill out and even holes in the bases and sides load 'em up and shoot 'em. I'm willing to bet that the results will surprise you.

[Blammer]

while it's burning, STIR it into the melt.

parting lines showing on the boolit are fine, no big deal and the wt on teh side of the mould is usually a "gauge" as to what it may cast.

[sagacious]

1. flux....i see where some are using wood shavings. i throw some on top of the melted WW, light em, wait till they turn to ashes and stir em in.
There's your problem. You're not fluxing, you're just stirring ashes into your molten lead..... and the result will be specks of ash/soot/gunk in your bullets. This is the opposite of fluxing-- by stirring in the ashes you're making your lead dirtier than it was before. This is a common pitfall for those new to pouring lead.

Use wax for fluxing. Wax leaves much less residue/ash than sawdust. Any old candle ends will work fine. Toss in a marble-sized chunk and immediatly stir the molten lead with a long-handled spoon or other implement while the wax is still liquid. The wax may/will flame up, and you can light it to keep it from catching unexpectedly. Just be aware of that. Good luck.

[geargnasher]

Ashes do little, it's the carbon BEFORE it turns to ash that needs stirring into the melt, but not UNDER the melt. It will float to the top unless trapped underneath by surfact tension. Now before you chemists flame me, I know what constitutes wood ash, but we all know that the black stuff does the best job. :D

Another tip, I keep boolits that get rejected or damaged during sizing and toss a half-dozen or so in the pot when I reduce the oxide layer during casting. The lube melts off and poofs within a few seconds, that's when I stir like crazy, scraping the bottom and sides of the pot occasionally and working the quickly forming ash into a pile against the side of the pot where it can be scooped out.

On long sessions with a bottom-pour and something like an SC hollow point mould or other low-volume, high-temp situation, that's where the sawdust really shines. Put a half-inch layer over the melt after you're finished cleaning and reducing the melt, just leave it there and as it smolders to ash it seals the surface against oxidation and reduces the sprues as you toss them back in (if you do). I've also tried Kitty Litter for this and it works well with clean, freshly reduced alloy. One tip on KL though: I experienced higher alloy temps for a given pot setting than without, it definitely insulates!

Gear

[Buckshot]

............Part of the benefit of fluxing is returning oxides of tin, antimony and lead back into solution. They're all formed by oxygen bonding with them. As soon as I get my rocket certified I am going to flux in space so I don't have to bother with them :-) Until then I will light the smoking flux material, wax, or sawdust on fire and stir. The flames consume oxygen off the top of the melt and in my experience really seem to be extra beneficial in cleaning up the crud on the surface.

The oxidation is REALLY evident when dipper pouring as you're constantly disturbing the surface and exposing fresh alloy to the atmosphere (oxygen).

When you flux you need to reach way down into the pot and pull the spoon (or whatever) UP the sides of the pot. Also across the bottom and up the sides. Everything that you'd realisticly put into, or GETS into the lead pot should be lighter then the lead alloy, and float to the top. However that's not so even though the particles ARE lighter.

There's a term for it but it eludes me and I'm just going to call it surface tension (ST). The ST will pin small particles against the walls and to the bottom of the pot. Through alloy movement within the pot, (stirring, and flow to the valve in a bottom pour) and also thermal convection a lot ends up on the floor of the pot, and eventually into the valve well of a bottom pour.

If you start seeing flecks of crud on the surface of your boolits, you'll know it's time to empty the furnace and clean it out. Hopefully you're only using your casting furnace to melt nice clean ingotized alloy? Do all your rendering of wild wheel weights and uncivilzed scrap in a seperate container. Even if you are using good clean ingots in the casting furnace, you will still have to clean it after an amount of time anyway, but no sense rushing it with cruddy alloy.

................Buckshot