Wrinkley boolits

[DCP]

Please help

I only get Wrinkley boolits


pot was 700 degrees with ww

102 grain lee 380 die- 2 boolits



I think mold is not hot enough?


So how do I get it hot enough and keep it hot?


Thanks

[docone31]

Lee Molds need to be hot. With your two holer, rest one end of the mold in the pot. They actually float. Give it about 30 seconds.
Try casting. If they are still wrinkled, try cutting the sprue, and let the casting sit for a bit. Letting the castings sit in the cavity increases the molds heat. Once you are up to casting temp, then moderate the temp by adjusting the speed of the cast.
Good luck.

[Russel Nash]

I will gingerly balance the mould and the mould handles so that the mould is actually dipped part way into the melt.

That gets the mould warmed up real good.

Maybe if you watched my hatcam video here, that would help:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTrD8...eature=channel

The other nice thing about having a warm mould is that I can push the sprue plate over with my gloved thumb and NOT have to beat on the mould with a hammer or a stick.

I think some other guys will be chiming in, in a minute or two to tell you about degreaseing the mould. For that I use automotive brake cleaner...preferabbly outdoors.

[Matt_G]

+1 on all the above.
You could also increase the temp of your alloy. With my iron moulds I will run the alloy at 720 or 730.
Aluminum needs more heat than iron does. Try running your alloy hotter.

Another excellent way to get and keep your mould up to temp is to invest 10 bucks into a hotplate.
Got mine at Ace Hardware for 9.99 plus tax.
They are usually around 750 watts, so don't put it on the same circuit as your lead pot.
Especially if you have a 20 pounder.
That's pushing a standard 15 amp circuit too dang hard.

[machinisttx]

Fill your mold and cut the sprue, but don't open it for a few extra seconds. When you do open it, get the boolits dropped and the mold refilled again asap...and repeat. By doing this, you're letting the mold absorb more heat from the boolit and bringing it up to temperature a little faster. After you've done this a couple of times, speed up a little at a time from the pace you were using last time. Gradually increase your pace until the boolits start dropping without wrinkles, and keep an eye on them from there on out to see if you need to vary the pace.

[38 Super Auto]

Just about every Lee mold I have ever owned needed some work to produce consistently good bullets. I think most Lee molds suffer from poor venting. Many times, I get good bullets from 4 or 5 cavities of a 6-cav mold, regardless of tin content or alloy temperature.

I'd check the "Lee-menting" techniques to dress your mold cavities, and improve venting. You'll get more consistent bullets and better mold release.

[mooman76]

I don't usually have trouble getting the lee mould working good right off the bat excluding the6x which are a bugger to get hot. When you dip the mould make sure you get the sprue plat in there too or it cools the lead off quicker and you don't get good fill out right away. I also like to start out a little hotter at first until I get going good and I gradually turn the heat down befroe it gets too hot. It should take about 2-3 seconds for the lead to cool enough cut the sprue. If themould isn't quite hot enough I will sometimes pour the lead over the sprue plate letting it run back into the pot. I do top pour though which makes it easier I guess. Keeping it hot is through you casting speed and a smaller bullet uses less lead so it doesn't heat or kep the mould as hot so more heat is needed. Adjust as you need it. Have everything ready and close by so you don't have to slow down.

[MtGun44]

Increase the heat and scrub the mold cavities with a toothbrush and Comet.
No need to smoke the cavities.

Get some Bull Plate Lube from The Bull Shop, scroll down for link. Apply a TINY
amount on the bottom of the sprue plate and on mold alignment surfaces with
a Q-tip barely wetted. Mold will not gall, the sprues will cut easier and you will
be happy.

Bill

[shotman]

Kroil Kroil Kroil all you need

[Linstrum]

Everything that has been suggested so far is all good info, follow it and hopefully it will cure your troubles. Casting good boolits is not hard AT ALL once you get everything where it should be as far as temperature, cleanliness, and lubing of critical points all go.

If you still have trouble, consider the following from my own experience about some molds that were so exasperatingly finicky and cranky that I wanted to tie them to a rock and throw them back through the main office window of the factory where they came from.

First of all, I'm speaking ONLY about my own molds and my own personal experience using them.

In 45 years of casting with Lyman, Saeco, Lee, and a bunch of molds I made myself, if after first cleaning, lubing, and getting the mold and metal hot, and there is still trouble, every single problem with wrinkley boolits, cavity fill-out, lack of uniform weight, and rounded edges and corners at the boolit base and lube grooves have all been caused by poor air venting. The air has to get out of the mold cavity before the molten metal can get into it, and to make matters worse, as the molten metal starts to enter the cavity, it further heats up the air in the already-hot mold. That causes air pressure inside the mold cavity to go up enough so it momentarily pushes on the molten metal going through the sprue hole, which slows it down enough to interfer with fill-out caused by premature freezing. Wrinkled boolits are usually, but not always, from premature freezing. Contamination of the cavity surface with a volatile material like oil will form a thin layer of gas between the molten metal and the cavity wall, and that also makes wrinkledy boolits. MtGun44's advice will cure that very well.

The way I figured out there was poor air venting was very simple: I noticed that all the molds that gave me absolute fits had weak and shallow venting lines cut into the block mating faces. The molds that didn't give me trouble and worked great had deep and very prominent venting grooves cut into them. So I took one of my molds that was giving me nothing but trouble and cut the venting lines a bit deeper and wider and that was all it needed to work like a champ! No more trouble with wrinkled boolits, no more indistinct rounded-over details on the lube grooves and boolit bases, no more trouble, period.

At first I had done the obvious things like getting the mold hotter, getting the alloy hotter, adding alloying constituents to decrease the alloy surface tension and still did not have much change for the better in getting rid of wrinkled or indistinct detail in my boolits.

I'm not saying that cold alloy and/or a cold mold won't give troubles, they most certainly do, and PLENTY of it! But boolit casting can be done quite successfully over a pretty wide temperature range as long as the temperature isn't too low.

Now I even cut vent lines on the underside of the sprue plate, I cut an "X" that intersects the sprue hole in the plate with a jeweler's saw and all the boolit bases are now sharp-edged and the gas check heels are sharp and the right size so the gas checks have enough meat to crimp onto and stay put. Having good sharp edges on everything also makes boolit weight more uniform from one boolit to the next.

Have fun and good luck!

rl619

[Bret4207]

You have two temps to think about- pot temp and mould temp. Pot temp you obviously control by the setting and by blocking any drafts around the pot. Mould temp you control by your casting tempo. The more often you mould is filled with hot lead and the less time it sits empty the hotter it will get. The guys covered the normal causes of wrinkles.

[Pat I.]

Get the melt up to about 780 degrees and don't trust the dial on your pot. Pick up a thermometer.

[DCP]

Wow good boolits


You might think I was 12 again when I got some good ones. The wife just laughed at me and said "I thought you didnt dance"

90 % good. Then I took a beak


When I went back

I had some finning and they stopped falling out of the mold like at 1st

50 % good


Thanks for the all the help

[Bret4207]

When you have a good run going DON"T STOP FOR ANYTHING! not till the pot is empty anyway.

[Suo Gan]

If they look like raisins, clean the mold of all oil and see if that helps. Cleaning is especially helpful for new molds. I take out all the screws, remove the sprew plate, and give everything a good wash in warm sudsy water. I then bring the mold up to temp on a hot plate with a steel plate on top to dry it. Clean it good and see if that helps.

When I first started I had the same problem. Wrinkly friggin boolits one to 500. I filled coffee cans with the suckers. Zinc??? No. Alloy hot enough??? Yes! Mold cold??? No!! Mold Clean??? Bingo!!!

Man that should have been easier!
Good luck my friend.

[casca]

I have an old fashion hot plate sitting with in arms reach, if I get stalled or answer the call of nature , on the hot plate the mold goes.
also leave the next mold to be used warming on the hotplate I believe the hot plate will get as hot as the lead will >

just my .0009 euros

casca

[7br]

I generally sit my moulds on the edge of the pot when I start it up. This heats them up as the pot heats up. If I still am getting wrinkly boolits, I put the blocks into the melt. To me, the blocks are hot enough when the melt does not stick to the mould. It is kind of neat to put the mould into the melt and have enough heat sucked out of the surface to make an impression of the bottom of the mould.

Couple of tips I have picked up. Use the pink eraser on the end of a pencil to clean the mould cavities. Took out some nasty lube that I got into one of my moulds during a soft point experiment.

To smoke a mould, first you have to get the correct size rolling paper. Oh wait, that is a different subject. Wood kitchen matches or butane lighters work well. You want just a slight film of soot on inside of the cavities. Not sure why this works, but it has for me on a couple of occasions.

[lwknight]

A thin layer of oil or lube can cause wrinkles no matter how hot your molds and melt are.

[Linstrum]

The cause of wrinkling when there is a slight amount of oil inside the mould cavity is from the gas generated when the oil is flash super heated by the casting alloy hitting it. All natural hydrocarbon lubricating oils start to generate out-gasing at about 375°F, well below the melting point of boolit casting alloy. Having good venting will help prevent "oil wrinkling" because it allows the out-gassing generated by the hydrocarbon lube oil to escape, but of course the proper solution is to make sure there isn't any oil or lube inside the mould cavity to begin with, as lwknight and many others have already pointed out.

But the bigger picture, though, is it makes me sad and a bit frustrated when I read posts about beginning casters (and even advanced ones) here who go to absolutely enormous but futile efforts to cure their mould fill-out problems by doing everything except what needs to be done! Using 1000°F super-heated alloy, or using 650°F cool alloy, scrubbing out mould blocks for hours on end with all sorts of exotic solvents and cleaners, lubricating the sprue plate, de-lubricating the sprue plate, adding all sorts of expensive stuff to their casting alloy, using plain 100% lead, sooting the cavities, de-sooting the cavities, and on and on with doing everything EXCEPT WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE, which is to very simply spend ten minutes with a jeweler's hack saw or needle file and cut half a dozen vent lines approximately 0.020" deep and 0.040" wide into the mating surfaces of the mould blocks. I suppose this extreme unwillingness of casters to cut vent lines into a mould block comes from two erroneous ideas: 1- that casters think that every mould block always, always, always comes from the maker perfectly made and correctly vented, and 2- that they will instantly destroy an expensive mould if they even breath too hard on it, much less take a cutting tool to it! Well, I have been making moulds for 45 years and you're not going to destroy your cranky, finicky, un-useable un-vented mould by carefully taking a jeweler's hack saw or needle file to it and cutting six vent lines to the CORRECT depth and width to let the darned air out! Really, you won't!

Nearly every mould that I have ever bought has not been adequately vented! The only moulds that I have that came from the maker adequately vented are some older Saeco and Lyman moulds that I bought over twenty years ago.

Quite often I get away with casting using whatever alloy I find that looks like it will make good boolits, using dirty sooted moulds I haven't cleaned since I bought them, using 700°F alloy contaminated with who knows what, and my boolits come out beautifully just about all the time! I just about never have any troubles casting, from 65-grain .22s on up to 1930-grain 20mm slugs. Why? BECAUSE I MAKE SURE THAT ALL MY MOULDS ARE ADEQUATELY VENTED!

[Bullshop]

Linstrum
Thank you ever so much for your ventin on venting.
I am with you 100% buddy.
BIC/BS