Hey fellas, my name's Dan and I'm a noob at reloading and casting.
Dedicated hunter and fisherman, I decided to concentrate a bit more on my shooting this year. (That was before the current craziness started at the end of last year.) As the sportsman's situation has changed a bit, I decided it was time to move reloading up to the top of my to-do list, and quickly learned that I should be casting bullets as well. (Got the reloading press up and running, I'm good there.)
As far as casting goes, I haven't been able to find any bullet molds yet, so while I'm looking I thought I'd go ahead and start making ingots to feed my new Lee 4-20 pot. I went to some of the tire places around where I work and struck out on wheel weights, but was able to buy some scrap lead at a recycler. Using a propane burner and an old cast iron skillet, I turned out my first batch of ingots last weekend
So here's a question (first of a few)- I got two separate size muffin tins (large and small) thinking that when I had lead in the pot that the smaller ones might melt faster and allow me to keep the pot at a consistent level easier and allow more flexibility about how much to add if'n I didn't want to put a big ingot in. But now I'm thinking that I might have screwed up 1) because instead of just being able to put them in and rest them on the bottom of the pot by hand, I'll have to be careful to lower them in the pot with a ladle to avoid splashing and 2) that I'm probably overthinking it and it doesn't really matter, a big ingot will melt the same as a smaller one. But mostly I'm concerned about spashing lead around. Am I overthinking it?
So here's the next question - I did another batch this weekend, and the very last pour that I did, the surface of the ingots were hazy instead of shiny. One of the last things I melted was a flat plate about 1/4" thick that seemed a little stiffer than the other lead I'd been working with, but melted down just fine. After I skimmed the dross off (it had kind of a goldish tint to it) when I poured it in the mold some of that goldish tint was evident on the face of the ingot (in the second picture)
here's the shiny vs hazy pic
here's the one with the goldish/copper tint
Here's my questions - 1) Am I right in thinking that the difference between the shiny and hazy finish is a function of different temperature? Or maybe some contaminant? 2) What do you think that copper streaking is?
Thanks in advance for your input -