First time casting wheel weights

Brickie

Brickie

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I just finished my first ever casting session with 100% wheel weights and am curious about my results. I fluxed with some very nice smelling candle wax and made ingots in a cup cake pan. I was careful to not let the lead get too hot in case I let a zinc bastard into the pot. The ingots looked almost like they had a crystal like structure to them.
I took 2 ingots to my Lee melting pot and fired off these boolits this afternoon. They have the same odd appearance as the ingots.
Anyone know if this is good or bad?
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Your problem is that wax is not a flux. Its a reductant. Use pine shavings and stir a lot. Do it two or three times.

Wax puts the tin back in carbon (shavings) takes the trash out.
 
To lower the casting temperature is a valid point but IMHO adding about 2% tin to your w-w would improve: castability, toughness and apperance of your bullets as well.
 
Well...back in the pot with them. My first shooters have to look nice at the range so the people who DO see them might think I know what I am doing. LOL
 
Brickie said:
Well...back in the pot with them. My first shooters have to look nice at the range so the people who DO see them might think I know what I am doing. LOL
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Love that!! According to some, I don't know what I am doing, but I will share some of my trusty secrets with you. :p Using wheel weights for casting bullets can be as simple or as complicated as you choose to make it.

I have cast with WW for years. That's what I am doing most afternoons this winter. Heaven forbid, I use a Lee 10 lb. bottom pour pot, Lee molds, Marvelux (sp?) for flux. Occasionally, I will clean a mold really good with a toothbrush, then give it a soaking with brake cleaner, let it dry, then put a tiny, tiny amount of lube on the sprue pivot area. I smoke the insides of the mold with a wooden match and go to it!

Sometimes I will have a couple of molds on the go, to alternate when they get too hot. I am seeing more zinc WW's, but they are usually easy to spot. They seem to have squared ends and are painted. I use an older 10 lb. for making ingots, and I use a muffin tin for smaller muffins for ingots. I use a couple or three dabs of flux for each batch of WW. A "dab" is what I can put on the flat part of a normal, farmer screwdriver. Stir it in and scoop out the clips with an old spoon.

I have a .312 155 gr. Lee mold that will often give a good useable bullet on the first pour! I have been casting with it the last couple of days. I am gas checking and sizing to .309 with a Lee push through setup, for use in my .308's and 30-06's. I am not trying for 5000 fps with these bullets, obviously. :)

I always wear gloves and safety glasses!

Edit: It was upon reading a rather funny article on casting Tumble Lube bullets by Dean Grennell that I got started casting. I dearly wish I could find a copy of that article again!
 
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I like frosty boolits - shoot just as good as shiny ones and are easier to cast! If you don't want to recast them and are concerned with the frosty appearance you can polish the frost off with paper towel or rag and they get shiny. If you're just gonna tumble lube 'em anyway, they will look the same whether they are frosty or not as the mule snot will make them kinda ugly anyway.
 
they will look the same whether they are frosty or not as the mule snot will make them kinda ugly anyway.

Bingo!
 
If you want to increase your bullet hardness, water drop them into cold water. I have a 5 gallon bucket on the floor (3/4 full) and drop the bullets directly out of the mold. I have read that it can more than double the hardness of straight wheel weight sourced lead.
Just make sure the water is well away from your lead pot as even a tiny drop of water in the lead pot can cause a massive eruption of lead spatter from your lead pot.

By the way, nothing wrong with your frosted bullets as far as using them, maybe not pretty to look at, but will shoot fine.
 
Some of cast boolets have said that frosty bullets are preferable as all the frosting hold lube leading to less leading in the bore... Other's say the exact opposite... YMMV... I think both have a good point, but also think that leading has more to do with how rough your bore is... Which leaves me preferring button rifled and hammer forged barrels... Insert anti savage rant here...
 
ZREXER said:
Just make sure the water is well away from your lead pot as even a tiny drop of water in the lead pot can cause a massive eruption of lead spatter from your lead pot.
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good advice, but it will only explode if the water gets under the surface of the lead.
 
Those bullets are frosty, but the fill looks good and any "problem" is purely cosmetic. They look even worse after firing!

The mold was a bit hot, but unless the sprue is smearing or they are sagging when dropped, the bullets will be fine. You can cool the mold by slowing down the process, holding it in front of a fan, or touching it to a wet rag between fills.
 
sawzall said:
I like frosty boolits - shoot just as good as shiny ones and are easier to cast! If you don't want to recast them and are concerned with the frosty appearance you can polish the frost off with paper towel or rag and they get shiny. If you're just gonna tumble lube 'em anyway, they will look the same whether they are frosty or not as the mule snot will make them kinda ugly anyway.
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These are for my Black powder loads. I made a pan lube for them on Sunday, after casting 140 lead beauties, and now have them ready for loading. I got them from about 1/5 of a 5 gal bucket of wheel weights. Total of about 10 pounds of lead.

I don't think water dropping boolits is good for BP? I was lead to believe that you want the lead to be a bit soft for obturation in BP?
 
Brickie said:
These are for my Black powder loads. I made a pan lube for them on Sunday, after casting 140 lead beauties, and now have them ready for loading. I got them from about 1/5 of a 5 gal bucket of wheel weights. Total of about 10 pounds of lead.

I don't think water dropping boolits is good for BP? I was lead to believe that you want the lead to be a bit soft for obturation in BP?
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I would not water drop them - the only time I do that is when I want to run cast bullets at the high end of pressure and MV. Is that the Lee 459-500-3R? 45-70? If so, it's a good bullet, but it's plain base and I doubt you'll be pushing it much past 1500 fps. The recoil, even at that MV, would be "stout".
 
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