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Hi everyone, let me start by saying I'm brand new to this so bear with me if this has been covered before.
If I'm smelting wheel weights to make ingots, which are then going to be melted in a melter, why wouldn't I just go ahead and cast my bullets out of the smelting pot using a ladle (right into the mold) instead of making ingots to melt later????
Am I missing something here or is this just too easy?
Many do exactly that and it is practical as long as you are smelting small quantities on a small burner. But as pot and burner size increase it becomes inconvenient.
It is possible to do that, but....WW's usually are not clean to start with and you will have a lot of oxides, crud and dross plus the clips to contend with. They would be a nuisance and would tend to clog and take up space in the ladle. You would also have to constantly clear a clean spot in the melt to dip from. If you don't mind doing that over and over again then go for it. Trying to flux all that debris is also possible, but skimming it all is kind of distracting and not the fastest way to do things. Such a practice is definitely not recommended for a bottom pour pot as the crud will most certainly clog up the pouring valve and require cleaning it out. You also do not need or want inclusions/crud of any kind in the mold cavities or in/on your bullets. In sum, its probably better to clean up the metal separately before using it. LLS
He just wants to skip the ingoting and remelting. He isn't suggesting he wants to try to pour without cleaning up the metal.
That is precisely how I began casting boolitz. I made many thousands of them a few hundred at a time. I would melt the wheel weights, fishing sinkers, plumbers lead and whatever resembled lead. I would pick out the ww clips, drop some beeswax into it as flux and ladle cast until the little LEE melting pot was empty. Then I would clean it out and begin again.
Nothing is wrong with that method and you can make adequate boolitz. Later on when you want to make more, faster - your methods will probably change to smelting your lead prior to casting. But for now, in small batches, your proposed method will work fine.
It works fine, I just tried it last weekend at another member's house. He had a two-cavity .50mould that was too big for the 10-lb Lee pot so he had a nice setup with a turkey fryer burner and iron pot set in a small steel trash can, after the usual fluxing and skimming routine it made it really easy to ladle away and not make a mess since the large pot makes a big target for all the drips and sprue plate overflow. He also had the burner dialed-in to keep it at a very constant temperature.
Gear
I know for a fact that there is at least one crazy, cranky, grumpy old coot on here that only casts with a large ladle filled with used wheelweights that he simply scrapes the dross from with his teeth. :Fire: It works for him and it may work for you.
Personally I like to smelt and blend my alloys in big (200-400LB) batches and make ingots for consistency but that is just my method. Whenever I add an ingot to it's specific (smaller) casting pot I know that not much has changed by doing so. It is a piece of mind kinda thing for me and it results in more consistent lots of boolits.
i use 2 pots one to smelt in 1 to cast from mostly to keep as much **** out of my alloy as possible , however i rarely make ingots i smelt the wheel weights clean and ladle it into my casting pot that hold 45 lbs or so of metal ...
Thanks everyone. I will be doing very small batches to begin with as my time, space and resources are very limited right now. I plan on using a two cavity mold for my .44 once I decide on a bullet weight.... I'm using an old Charter Arms 3" Bulldog that I love, but my hands don't anymore, so I'm working on some plinking loads that I can have fun with but not hurt for days after shooting. Right now I have some 160gr SWC from Hunters Supply that I have loaded over 4.6 gr of Bullseye that I haven't shot yet but have heard great reviews of. If those work for me then I'll have to figure out what bullet weight to buy a mold for since Lee doesn't make one in that weight....
maintaining a consistent melt temperature has always been a concern of mine, plus the alloy changes every time you add more WW. That said, there is a tremendous sense of accomplishment every time you look at a couple tons of nice, shiny ingots all stacked up in neat little rows like soldiers.
For pistol boolets it probably does not matter.
Rich
A couple of tons??? I've only seen pictures..... My pile is only a couple hundred lbs.
I always have used big melts, for consistency, and my #68 .45 ACP SWC'S have always grouped into 3" at 50 yds, from a match 1911, held in a Lee machine rest. However, unless you are a top BE competitor, or a hunter using swc's, this sort of accuracy is pointless. For combat practice, ie, 10" at 20 yds, some pretty wrinkled, unfilled out, frosted, underweight bullets still do just fine. :-) I almost never throw back any cast bullet anymore, as long as it looks somewhat like a bullet. I won't use it for any 50 yd stages of fire, or indeed, any stage at a match, but it'll serve just fine for 10 yd El Presidentes on silohuettes.
Yep, you can use one pot for smelting then ladle pour into your molds from there. One drawback is noted above; getting the melt clean. I usually clean/flux as much as possible (or as much as I feel like) before I cast ingots and clean/flux again when I'm casting from my small pot (20 lb. bottom pour), to get the melt as clean as possible. Temperature control may be more difficult with a burner, but not impossible and I did fairly well with a single burner coleman stove before I got my electric pot.
Apart from big batch consistency the reason would be smell and fumes unless casting outdoors.
I smelt outside and cast inside.
Wheelweights of both kinds are nasty to melt down indoors. You got that penetrating burnt paint smell that stays in the clothes and walls for days. The sticky bit on the stick-ons smell like burning tires.