Home Forums Reloading Bullet Casting Newbie on casting - issues....Help!

Friends:

Today marked a watershed day in my casting of lead. My issues relate to casting lead for fishing, but I figure this is the best forum to raise my ...failures...and seek advice.

Until today, my experience casting has been to melt wheel weights which I then poured into pyramid sinker moulds impressed into wet sand held i place by tin cans. The eyelet was coathanger wire dangled over the top. Crude, but effective. Still use them.

Today, I fired up a lee pot for the first time, and loaded some good clean wheelweight lead ito it. Hi tech, right? I heated up the mold by running a couple rounds of lead through it (without the hooks installed). All learned on you tube. All good.

My mold was a Do-It Hot Lips "jig" mould, for which I planned to develop some killer snook lures.

The mold requires that a person set in jig hooks in before closing the mold and pouring in the lead. That actually took a little time in each case as the durn hooks would not lay straight. But I figured that out.

My two big problems are as follows:

1) Initially, the lead poured out of the electric Lee pot just fine, but after a few rounds it clammed up, would not pour the lead out the bottom spigot thing. Finally, I wound up having to pick up and pour out the unused molten lead (about 5 lbs worth) so I could store the Lee pot
away.

2) Had a failure rate of mebbe 80% on the jigs themselves. Lots of incompete fills, and all sorts of swirls in the lead where one would prefer a nice clean pour. Seems simple in concept, but....

Kinda dissapointing, really. I look at you gents with the wonderful hyper clean casts with your bullets and wonder what I'm screwing up.

My appplication is for fishing jigs ( have a couple sinker molds I want to try as well), not shooting, but seems to me the lessons learned would be similar.

Any tips gratefully appreciated.

I've never cast jigs but your experience with freezing spout, incomplete fills, and wrinkles in the lead suggest a couple things. Low temperature for one, zinc contamination for another.

Thanks Ole. I did a google search for the issue, and sure enough I had the "oatmeal" they talk about. Is the zinc contamination with the pot and spout an easy fix?

Once you get the zinc issue cleared up get yourself a ladle. I’ve done it both ways and I get a lot less rejects using a ladle than a bottom pour spout. I use the pressure cast method, dip the ladle full, rotate mold sideways and put ladle spout into spruce hole, rotate ladle and mold together to pour.

Also if your mold is new it may have grease or oil in it causing incomplete fill out. Old toothbrush and some gasoline or other solvent will help with that.

I use to pour a lot of halibut jigs. Lead at 800 degrees and used a small hot plate to put the hooks on prior to casting them. The hook shanks have to be heated up to pour correctly. Used needle nose pliers to put hook into mold. Over 95% came out great.

My guess is more heat is needed. Casting bullets, a fairly rapid rhythm is developed which keeps the mold quite hot. Opening your mold, dumping the jig, placing the hook...all contribute to the mold cooling too much between pours. Aluminum molds conduct heat very fast, compared to iron. I would skip the bottom pour, keep your mold on the hottest part of the pot...the top...keep your ladle submerged in the pot to maintain heat...pour rapidly, not neatly, spillover helps keep your mold hot, leave a large puddle over the sprue hole...your puddle is your indicator of alloy and mold heat. Watch the molten puddle closely, as the alloy begins to solidify, a small concave dimple will appear directly over the sprue hole. With an aluminum mold, that will take about 1 second if the mold and the alloy are up to proper operating temperature. There are as many techniques as casters. In 50 years of bullet casting, I have yet to experience zinc contamination...it's always been temp control and oil contamination. I use wheelweights almost exclusively because I own most of the wheelweights west of the Rockies. Good luck.

Whoa! That's alot of wheel weights. I've also used wheel weights for years and never had a zinc contamination issue. I prefer to first make ingots out of wheel weight stock. This will purify the metal at least once before attempting to produce a finished product. Also during the ingot making process i try to get my antimony/tin proportions in a workable order, and I don't make sinkers..

Another thing is a good flux. I smoke my molds with beewax smoke and flux the melt to improve flow characteristics. I also like a shot of ballistol spray lube on the mold to keep any spatter from sticking to the mold.

Get a good lead thermometer and you'll be all set. I also prefer 750-800degrees F for good casting

Thanks Gents. Great input. I'll work on all this.