My first casts! 9mm. I have question too

john777

john777

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I think I casted 250 bullets (last pic contains the failures). Only ~50 came out good. My last two jobs were perfect and I stopped after that. I think I got the hang of it now.

I used melted down WW. Waiting for Xlox shipment to arrive. Well, looks like I have no zinc in my lead since I'm casting fine. Using Lee TL356-124-TC 9mm Luger #90402. Width measures pretty much at a constant 357. About 128-130grains. Will be using it for my P226.

I think they're slightly froasted. But Lee says it'll be good with Alox (I will be using Xlox). So my question is, the 1st bullet is my good cast, the other two has rounded bottoms, are they okay to shoot?

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Not a bad first attempt......

Bases of the bullet must be flat for accuracy, toss those ones back into the pot, Your probably not filling the mold enough, what you want is a sprue large enough to fill the funnel on the sprue plate.

Leave the bullets in the mold longer and you will get cleaner bases, you are cutting them off too soon. Smoother the base the better results you will have shooting.

Light frosting is OK but keep it down to a minimum, what it indicates you are running too high a temp on the mold.
 
Clean lee molds(boiling water, detergent and toothbrush). Bottom of bullets photo have a color, either an illusion or something on underside of sprueplate. Rounded bottoms are usually too cold, I preheat mold on top of electric pot while lead is melting, then dunk a corner of mold in melt for 30 sec. WW has only 0.5% tin, so adding 1% tin may help the fillout. Good luck
 
Thx for the tips guys!

Yeah, the colour is an illusion. :)

I filled the mold all the way up and flooded the sprue and massively at times. LOL! I may not have waited long enough to break open the sprue. My last two attempts were perfect and I stopped. I'll see how it goes this weekend. This is my first batch ever.
 
I don't think your lead is hot enough. The lack of tin usually shows up in the grooves and such. Your pic showed alot of bullets with incomplete mold fill.
It is caused from too cold of lead or not pouring enough in the mold. You stated you pour enough in.
I have a similar lee 6 cavity mold and when it is hot enough it belches out 650 projectiles an hour, using a Lee 20 pound lead melting pot set at 8.
Happy casting.
 
tigrr said:
I don't think your lead is hot enough. The lack of tin usually shows up in the grooves and such. Your pic showed alot of bullets with incomplete mold fill.
It is caused from too cold of lead or not pouring enough in the mold. You stated you pour enough in.
I have a similar lee 6 cavity mold and when it is hot enough it belches out 650 projectiles an hour, using a Lee 20 pound lead melting pot set at 8.
Happy casting.
Click to expand...

That's right on the money. You're not letting the mould get hot enough. Don't worry about the frosting. It has zero effect on accuracy. Yea, it's nice to have shinny bullets, but much more important to have properly shaped, filled out bullets with sharp edges. Congrats on coming over to the dark side and saving yourself some money......or, like the rest of us....you spend the same money but shoot a TON more :D
 
Good looking bullets. For the ones that didn't come out good, just remelt them. The Lee 6 cavity doesn't like to work well when brand new. Get it good and hot and then they should come out better.
 
never cast bullets, but smooth surfaces tend to cut air less efficiently than rougher dimpled ones. think golf ball. the principal scales and is pretty much always a benefit to the aerodynamics. now i am not sure a rough frosty cast is the same thing as dimples. but the principal is the dimples cause little vortices of turbulent air that follow the surface. it creates an air/air boundary which has less friction than the air/surface boundary you would otherwise have. would be interesting to measure velocity on 2 otherwise identical bullets. frosted and smooth. Anyway i have cast other things, some of lead, some of aluminum. What the others said about temperature being too low ( and the mould too cold) seems to be true for your castings. In my experience
 
I'll try and bring up lead to 800F. I don't remember what themperature people normally cast at. I was casting in the 700F range. I'll report back on my next session, likely tomorrow. :)
 
With the alumninum mould blocks you will likely hve to run the melt a bit hotter. I do my casting with smaller Lyman moulds at 650 to 675 degrees F. For my big bullets (over 300 grains) I run it up to 725 to 750 F. The alumninum blocks dissipate heat faster, so you next try may work better.

When it comes to pistol bullets that are to be used for plinking, (under 25 yards) I have a much more lax quality control.
-A bit of frost is OK, but that gets corrected during casting
-Little voids, or incomplete fill out around the sides is even OK.
-any incomplete fill out of the base is not acceptable.

My longer range pistol bullets (for when I used to shoot Handgun Silhouette) and my rifle bullets (for BPCR) hve the following critera.

-Nothing less than perfect fill out is acceptable. Bullets are often weighed.

To try and get more complete fill, try tilting the mould to one side when commening the pour. I find that works well when it comes to getting bases to fill. The theory is it creates a swirl effect, and air is properly displaced. Also check the tension on the sprue plate. It may be too tight.
 
Great advice CGNers!

Now I'm looking up OAL. It appears this bullet needs to be seated DEEP! I need to seat it to around the top ring for my Sig P226 to like. Me thinks I need to start my loads at 3gn with W231. That's what both my manuals say for similar bullet (356402 to load between 2.9-4.4gn - I have to double check) but it's no where close to their OAL recommendation.
 
Try getting your metal and mould hotter as suggested. If you are still having problems getting the base to fill out you may have to improve the air venting at the top. Use a stone or fine file and very lightly create a small bevel along the top edges of the blocks. You don't have to remove much metal, probably only a couple of thousandths of an inch on each side. Check for any burrs this procedure may create on the top corners of the cavities and burnish them away carefully. A Q-tip will usually snag on a burr and pull a bit of the fibre loose as a test for burrs.
 
Alright, I just did a batch of 800 bullets (600 water quenched). I think about 10% rejection rate this time vs 80% first time around. I'm getting the hang of it. I have Lee ladle - way too small. I'm just using big soup spoon. I figured out a good technique that is good for me. I tilt the mold a bit down and pour lead into 1st hole and let it spill over to the 2nd, 3rd and so forth. When they're all filled, I continue pouring a tad longer. I'm essentially creating a tiny stream of lead. End result were perfect casts and very little waste lead from sprue plate. I tried other techniques, but this method seems to work best for me. Next batch should yield near perfect casts each and every time.

If this works, this is about $80 worth of plated bullets. I just need to cast about a thousand more to get my casting equipment and lube $$ back. :)

BTW, I'm not lining bullets up like that anymore. Just a waste of time. LOL!

I think I lubed mold 3x while doing this. Whenever it felt a little hard to close/open... A dab of b-day candle wax fixed it.

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You could consider getting a lee bottom pore furnace. With a six cavity mold I can produce about 500 bullets an hour or so. So about 20 minutes of casting to recoup your investment. I put my sprues back into the melt each time.

With a bottom pore you can cast faster keeping your mold hot is key to proper bullet fillout. You can also add a little tin (50 50 solder) to the mix to make really pretty bullets.
 
It's lining them all up in those nice rows that is slowing you down (in jest) After they've cooled, dump into a plastic container. Move to a similar container when they're lubed.
 
when i first started casting, i was using a lee ladle. i was experiencing the same problems that you are having. incomplete fill out on the bases of the bullets. i was getting a 50-60% rejection rate. i was told to get rid of that piece of crap, and buy a proper ladle. i bought a lyman ladle and i have had no problems since. the lee stamped P.O.S. does not keep the lead hot enough, the lyman ladle is made out of cast iron. it keeps the lead to the right temperatre.
 
Thanks! Before winter comes, I took advantage of today's nice weather and casted 43lbs of bullets you see here in this tub. I got pretty damn good at it. Less than 1% rejected. :)

That's about 2300 9mm bullets at around 130gns

Cost: ~5.5lbs of liquid propane (5.50*.60 = $4.50) and 4 hrs of work.

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The metal left for the sprue should not be miserly. That extra metal improves fillout within the mould and helps pressure force vent the top of the mould.
 
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