Thanks for all the help

[corey012778]

been casting about 2hrs a day for the past 3 days, I mainly own muzzleloaders, so this should be fun to shoot.


casting up .490 out of wheel weight lead. heard good things about that set up. single cavity lee mold. rejection rate of 3 to 1 was around 4 to 1 but my last run was around 50/50.




also some bullets out of an lee 252-255 rf mold, dropping at 258gr to 260gr keepers. diameter of .2515
254g to 256gr as well as ones over 260gr rejects but perfect bullets.



going to try this out of sabots, mmp or harvester. only have knight sabots right now.

not pictured, .530 round balls I have an hornidy .452 j bullet back full of them and .459 405.

all the advises,reading all the past post and looking at all the new post. just to catch up really helped out.

[missionary5155]

Good morning
If you are having that many rejects you either need to heat the pot a bit more and / or let the mold get hotter... speed up the casting.
Generally with WW and a 50-50 mix I do not expect much more than 5% bad-uns. But I like my mold hot and the pot running at least 700. I normally use 2-3 molds at the same time so set up a rotaion and the boolits add up real fast.
I return my sprues to the pot and keep adding clean ingots as need to keep the pot to around 3/4 + full. I preheat the next ingots to get imersed also.
Now with a 6 hole mold that gets changed to running just one mold... but I have another getting warmed up nearby.

[reloader28]

I agree 100% with Missionary. Turn up the heat a little more, cast a little faster. With most of my molds running hot, I have very few rejects.

Fill the mold, put the previous sprue back in the pot, check the fresh boolits and put in the cooling pan (with needle nose pliers), knock off sprue, tap handle for boolit release and start over again. Takes about the same amount of time as to read this.

I keep the pot filled to around 75-80% full at all times with the next ingot warming on the side of the pot (be VERY carefull if you do that). I use 1/2lb mini muffin ingots which work good. I prefer them over the "normal" shape. With the right speeds and temps I can make a big pile of boolits with a 2 cav mold in a 3 hour casting session.

The boolits look good, especially if your just starting out. Youll get it figured out pretty fast and be an addict like the rest of us.

[corey012778]

I have been figuring that out, my .530 mold likes really hot to drop good round balls. been doing 2 molds at a time.

my .452 boolits are at the 5% mark as well as my other two molds. just the .490 mold is giving me the major problem. I am finding I want an double mold on that one, I don't think that single cavity is going to keep up with me. lol

[1Shirt]

RB's look good. Here is something that (if you are not aware of it you might want to try). Put a number of your RB's in a hard metal surface (like a cast iron fry pan, and put it in the trunk of your car, or on the floor boards or under the seat. Leave it there for a week or so of normal driving. You will find that the balls will no longer have a sprew on them from rolling against a hard surface. I didn't believe it until I tried it, and it worked. Have a number of trinkets in the form of medals that I won shooting RB's that I had done the above with (used to do maybe 100 or so at a time. Good Luck!
1Shirt!