Changing my bullet casting equipment out/buying lead
I decided to go back to casting with a propane stove and a cast iron pot.
Dave Gullo from Buffalo Arms in Sand Point Idaho turned me onto this when I started casting the big 550 grain bullets for my 45 2.1 and 45 2.6 black powder cartridges years ago.
I am now using a little 10 lb Lyman top dip furnace, and while it works fine, the 10 lbs goes pretty fast and I find myself having to add lead often and wait for it to heat back up. The propane stoves heat up faster and are easier to adjust to keep the alloy at a steady temp, using a 20 lb pot in the stove also makes it easier to be consistant.
That and I don’t trust electricity to be on all the time.
I used to use a double burner stove up on my mountain that I cooked iwth during the summer, and yes I did wash it off well before cooking on it. Well, granted, I am 63 and I still play with BB guns, so maybe I did not wash it good enough. 😉
So I just ordered off of Ebay a single burner cast iron propane stove which I will hook up to a 5 gallon bottle.
The other advantage to the propane stove is taht with a bigger pot, lets say one that holds 50 lbs, it allows me to mix up a large batch of alloy and keep it more consistant.
Also on Ebay, I found a seller selling lead for $1.60 delivered that is melted down plumbing pipe, which is pure lead. I contacted him and found I can get if for $1.30 delivered, that beats Rotomeatals by 70 cents a pound and their lead is cast into 6 lbs ingots I have to chop up. This stuff is cast into cute little ingots that weigh 11 oz, which are perfect for casting.
This comes out to $2.62 for 150 bullets that will have the same FPE at 780 yards that the FX Boss in 30 cal has at the muzzle in a rifle that is more accurate and cost half as much.
Yeah I know how about my time? I get a good retirement, so the time is free. 😛
Regards
Roachcreek
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Viewing 15 replies - 1 through 15 (of 15 total)
I put a 225 grain Lee bullets up the ass of a spike elk running straight away one day out of a 338 Win.
Dropped him like a rock.
That bullets was good for under and inch at 100 yards.
RC
😆
never had a indexing woman.
I have been this precise with some casting situations, but the rifles that i have shot with cast bullets were all working guns, 30-30 winn lever guns , and a 338 winn mag with a 2x scope , or 4x cant remeber need to get it out and check it.
but i had fun doing it, the 338 was what i played with the most since it had glass on it, have a fine bullet for that gun ,Lyman 33889 , 257 1/2 grain i believe as cast with check and lube , with the alloy i was using.
pic of the 30 and 338 bullet
i think the best i did with the 338 was a inch to a litlle over an inch at 150 yards , but with that bullet there all touching 🙂
PB,
Anal is indexing.
My 45.2.6 Starline brass had a notch cut in the case head the same place on each case.
Each reloading die, the sizing, expanding, powder compressing, seating die and the crimping die which only set the mouth to have no flair or crimp was marked to go into positon in the Rockchucker the same way.
The fired cases were processed with the mark in the same position going into the dies each time.
The single cavity Hocke tapered bullet mold was indexed with a small mark so I could index the bullet into the bullet sizing die, which was marked for indexing and into the seating die and to the already indexed case.
The bullets were weighed and discarded if they were over or under a one grain limit.
The loaded round was then placed into the Borschardt with the filed notch setting at 12:00.
Some where along the way two things made me stop indexing.
One was wind at our club range, which when shooting acrossed a canyon at the 1000 yard gong, the bullet was 150 feet above the ground where no wind flag could detect the swirling wind which made it all a crap shoot anyway.
The other was being hooked up at the time with a OCD, sexually repressed woman who like my 45.2.6 loading proceedure adamently demanded to be indexed the same position each and every time, it was simply too much organization for my disorganised mind to bear and I moved on. 😛
To cast a bullet and simply size it and then chamber it in a airgun is wonderful.
RC
yes sir, i have all three of my pots with differant alloy in them, i also have all my alloys melted into 1lb ingots so i can adjust the alloy in a pot to what ever i want as i am casting if i need to.
the little 5lb pound dipper pot is not enough for much,i think i have pure lead in it, i bought it when i was playing with hollow point pistol bullets with hard cast base with a pure lead nose. but the 10 bottom pour will work for most of my stuff. i have used the 10 with a ladle but its a pain, i bought the 20 when i was really shooting and casting with multiply 4 cavities or more moulds.
some of my moulds prefer ladle casting, some work just fine from the bottom pour. i think it winds down to how much pressure the lead is putting into the mould . like some i put the mould directly to the bottom pour spout and pressure the lead into the mould, and then it works differently as to how much lead is into the pot.
some have wanted to have a gap between the sprout and the mould, and the ladle pouring was usually rifle bullets in 30 and 7mm, i would hold the mold side ways with the ladle and turn them together and hold the ladle to the mould for a split second before separating.
any way have you had this with your casting , or am i just anal about my finished product. 🙂
PB,
Sounds like you have about the same set up I had before I moved and sold everything.
I had three Lee pots, one with the base reversed and screwed to the bench above a Corbin Core mold to pour directly into it. But I cast from the cast iron double burner ropane stove and a 20 lb pot.
I have a bid on ebay on a 20 lb pot and will get two more, that way I can have a different alloy in each one.
Those 50 lb alloy mixing pots do put off the heat.
RC
only have one thing to say
http://www.midwayusa.com/product/645810/lee-pro-4-20-lb-furnace-110-volt
been using mine for years, i have the 10 pound bottom pour and the 5 lb dipper pot also .
the 20 lb pot with two 1lb, ingots on top of it at all times pre heating will stay in front of any thing you want to do. adding the preheated ingets slowly as casting then adding another to the top of the pot for pre heating
i run two 4 cavities and maybe a single at a time wilth this set up ,works great.
I have the big propane burner and 50lb pot for bulk melting my lead to what ever alloy , usually pure lead, wheel weights, and # 2 or slighlty harder.
50 lb at a time makes for pretty good consistency.
I would not want to sit in front of 50 lb of molten lead for casting.
Good Read RC! Maybe one I’ll get to try it! 🙂
Mike
Yes! Archive this! RC knows his casting and has described it well.
Many years ago, the guy who taught me to shoot also taught me to make lead bullets. I went through two boxes of .30 M-1 Carbine ammo so fast, he said, “I need to teah you to reload.” That included casting Lyman 115gr bullets. He taught me to size them and add a gas check in the process, (a gas check is a small brassor copper disc that fits/is pressed onto the base of the lead bullet to prevent leading when shot at velocities over 1000fps.) I used linotype lead, or type metal itself. The Lyman Cast Bullet Handbook has a recipe for creating linotype lead; it’s very hard. I liked the smell of the beeswax smoke. It doesn’t take much to flux, or gather the impurities.
My mother came to love my hobby as she knew where I was…in the garage casting and reloading. 😉
Whether you did, or didn’t do somthing wrong, they treated you, a paying customer, like crap. That’s going to cost them. I for one will not buy anything from them. Someday, they may wonder why sales are sluggish? We’ll know why. 😉 I’m sure you are not the only guy who has had problems with them.
That last post needs to archived as a sticky. Thats a lot of great info in one spot.
Steve,
Right now I am using three alloys mainly:
Pure lead
20-1
30-1
Filling molds out properly is mainly all about how hot the mold and the alloy are, which means a thermometer is a absolute must.
Pure lead is the hardest to cast with then 30-1 and then 20-1. The alloys simply have a little tin added to make them flow better which in turn fill out the molds easier the more tin the better the fill.
Best way to get pure lead or any alloy to fill out the mold, is to first make sure that mold is clean, and I mean really free from any preservative oils.
Then use a lighted match to gently smoke the caviites. Then get the mold hot and your alloy hot. I try to cast around 750 to 800 degrees and preheat my mold by setting it on the top of the furnace while it is heating up. A cast iron pot with a shelf on it is an ideal place to preheat the molds. When I cooked with wood, I would set the molds on top of the stove to preheat them.
Too hot of an alloy will also result in your lead oxidizing quicker and increasing the frequency of gray scum that forms on the to of the pot which inturn increases the frequency of the need to flux your alloy. I usually flux every 5 to 7 minutes, but then I cast with a ladle,which means I am getting my lead to cast primaily from the top of the lead pot, if your running a bottom pour pot, you can flux less often.
Midway sells an execellent flux, but I have used bees wax and plain bullet lube to flux with, it will smoke but the smoke can be lit with a match to cut down on the smoke. Dry sawdust can also be put on the top of a botom pour lead pots lead to keep the lead from oxidizing.
The advantage of using a ladle is that you can control the pressure of the molten lead entering your mold by how much lead you put in the ladle. This can be done with a RCBS or Lyman ladle, but not with the Lee ladle, which to me looks like a waste of money. You can also control the air pressure in the mold by putting the ladle to the mold by turning the mold sideways to accept the ladle spout and then setting it upright as it fills to avoid air bubbles in the cavities.
You can also preheat molds by dipping them in lead for 10 seconds at a time, or better yet by running them thru around 10 to 20 casting cycles to get them hot.
An alloy and mold combination that is just hot enough to drop bullets that are”frosty” in appearance will usually fill the mold out well.
Anytime you have a bullet that is wrinkled or slightly wavy indicates your not running alloy and molds hot enough and bullets will probably be slightly undersized, impatience or unskilled casters are usually the cause of this problem and we all do this from time to time.
Alloy and temperture can also be used to make a bullet slightly larger or smaller. I will use pure lead around 725 F to get a slightly smaller bullet and run a 20-1 alloy around 800 F with a hot mold to get that same bullet slightly larger.
Gang molds, meaning molds with four or more cavities are also hard to cast with, once hot they can really pump out the bullets, but you need a 20lb or better furnace or pot to have enough lead to run them.
On the gang molds, I find that by casting one cavity at a time, until the cavity produces clean, crisp, unwrinkled bullets and then moving on to the next cavity and cast two cavities until you get perfect bullets and on to the third and then fourth is the best way to run them.
On gang molds, to keep them from getting too hot, I like to run two molds at once. This is because you usually have less metal in the mold construction and they will over heat, so running two or more molds allows a cooling sequence while casting.
Never cool molds by setting them on a damp towel, this is a sure recipe to warp them. You can cool them by setting them on a large flat piece of steel to act as a heat sink.
On the smaller diameter molds the sprue plates like to deform the bullet bases as you knock them open and cut the sprue, especially with pure lead. This will result in a oblong or oval bullet base. If you can set that sprue plate so that it is partially open it will help some in avoiding the oval bases but it is difficult to do consistantly.
You can also insure more consistancy by simply casting only one cavity in your two cavity mold, each cavity will yield a slightly different bullet, either because of the lead flow pressure or the spure plate interaction or the process in cutting the cavity.
You can also index a mold by making the inside of the cavity lightly with a scribe so that you can use it to imprint a mark on the side of the bullet as you cast, then do the same on your sizing die so it enters the die in the same position each time and then chamber the bullet in your air gun with the mark straight up.
This will insure that any irregularity in the cavity is placed in the same spot for each process of of sizing and shooting and dimishies the impact that irregularity has on bullet flight.
Altho it is a royale pain in the ass to do this, the results at times are astounding.
Hope this helps,
Roachcreek
I was told by Veral at LBT to put 6 ” of silver bearing solder in the pot. Makes the bullets fill out real nice. He says it doesn’t change the hardness of the bullet.
Thats what you get for letting a girl make your molds 😛
I have only used pure lead in all my molds and the only mold I have had problems with was the NEI molds. Not one but 2 of them. I have 4 molds and have used some of Cedric’s and never had a problem. I have a 4 hole .308 mold and it pours perfect.
I was told by Veral at LBT to put 6 ” of silver bearing solder in the pot. Makes the bullets fill out real nice. He says it doesn’t change the hardness of the bullet.
Greetings RC, I am curious about your alloy. Would you share it with us? I ask because I have heard Tofaz speak of using pure lead. So I am curious what you use. Dyotat seemed to have a problem with some moulds recently and some suggested that he hadn’t properly preheated them. That’s certainly possible. It is to my understanding that the addition of tin promotes better flow of the molten lead into the cavity. I wondered at the time what alloy he was using and if this could have contributed to his problems? (That companies response was certainly contrary to the founders principles which supposedly that company still abides by…at least that’s what their website says.)
If anyone is interested, I have found the The “Lyman Cast Bullet Handbook” a great resource. It contains essays regarding lead metallurgy, hardness testing, heat treating of lead alloys, and recipes for lead alloys, (as well as lead bullet cartridge reloading data). This is a book for powderburner bullets so they are geared for harder alloys.
Awesome find Charlie. Nothing like saving time and money! Post up some picks of the “operation” when it’s up and running.
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RC,
I began casting some 40 or so yrs ago using a Lyman furnace using a ladle and reading a Lyman book on casting. It worked well, and after about a decade I purchased a RCBS 20# furnace and started bottom pouring. What a pita this was, but I didn’t let it beat me. For the last 30 yrs or so I’ve been bottom pouring and haven’t looked back except for a few molds that just have to be ladle poured.
I agree with PB as to different molds appearing to need different fill pressure. I’ve found to bottom pour, I need to keep the furnace full or with a constant volume of alloy, so I add as I take breaks. Also a different combination of alloy temp, mold temp, rate of flow and height of valve opening above the mold is required for different molds. Ive been using the same RCBS furnace for over 30yrs now and it has served me well. I don’t know about the new stuff today.
After all this, I still think its easier to start casting with a ladle and also think for the larger 500+ bullets you can fill the cavity faster.
My 2 cents anyway.