Hey all
So I had my 2nd casting session recently, after Lee sent me back my 6-cavity 9mm 356 mold. It apparently had not been lubricated well enough, and had developed tiny lead burrs that kept it from closing properly. That was why I was having so many "connected" casting failures on my first round. I don't want my boolits to literally have wings - figurative ones are just fine.
Now that's fixed as I am now using Gulf wax to lube the mould, so I started round two. I re-smelted pretty much everything.
I came out with quite a few much better boolits. Water quenched just so I could handle them faster. I had a couple problems where the same cavity kept sticking - so clearly I need to look at what is causing that. But, overall I had a much better casting session. About 99% of the boolits looked usable to me. Although I think I am still cutting the sprue plate too early, as the sprue hole area seems to smear just a little bit from time to time.
Anyhoo - on to the next step, which is where I had some problems. I have a Lee sizing die of course, to match my 356 casts. While sizing most of the bullets went nice & smooth (properly lubed & dried with Liquid Alox) a handful of them were a REAL bear to get through the sizer. Maybe about 30-50 out of 1,000 took a LOT of force to go through the die. I'm a big guy - and I was surprised how hard those were to size.
I took a photo of the before & after. There were a bunch of bullets (not just 30-50) with a great deal of shiny lead exposed, as opposed to the duller/lubed surface visible. The bullets on the right are before (lubed) and on the left are immediately after sizing.
010 by ZombieApoc, on Flickr
Here's a photo of the punch. You can see a ring of lead around the base of the punch. I cleared that off maybe 10 times during the session. It had far more metal accumulating there than I anticipated.
008 by ZombieApoc, on Flickr
What am I doing wrong if these boolits took that much force to get through the sizer? Could I have damaged the die? The only way I can avoid putting too-big of boolits through there is to size every one with a caliper. That seems excessive. But, by the time I figure out if the boolit is "too big" - it's already stuck in the die, and it's easier to push it through than pull it out.
Love to have some advice here. I'll post more casting pics shortly.
ZAG