First casts

[458winshooter]

I got to go home for a couple of days and broke out my new pro pot and molds.All the wheel weights that I have stock piled added up to 46 muffin pan ingots and a few dozen bullets.Now I know that WW will weigh more than #2 alloy and that is what is used as a basis to designate a molds boolit weight but .....DANG!!!The Lee 358158 Rf is throwing 182gr!Iwas not really surpprised at the 429200 Rf at a weight of 213gr.Some have said that the Lee molds drop a little heavy but if this is the norm I may have to rethink designing my own mold.Does anybody cast the 358 flat nose Lee mold and if so what kind of weights do you get?

 

[hornady]

I am going to take a guess at why your dropping such a heavy bullet, Are you melting the stick on WW with the clip on ones. The stick on are just about pure lead, and if you are adding a lot of them, this may be your problem, The more lead the heavier the bullet will drop , I pick the stick on ones out for the muzzle loader, But I add Linotype to my clip on WW, If you play around with this mix you can get a mix real close to Lyman #2.

 

[458winshooter]

Bn hardness

Just got a new Lee hardness tester and these bullets are testing at a Bn of 15.4 by it.They were water quinched and the mix did have both clip on and stick on weights.

 

[Edward429451]

Well there you have it. water quenched WW's will have a hardness of 24> so you have mixed too much lead in with your WW's. You can thin them out with more WW's.

Next time save the stick ons for the cas guys, they will sell thier wives for pure lead sic.

 

[Rangefinder]

Next time save the stick ons for the cas guys, they will sell thier wives for pure lead sic.

Better believe it! I'll trade mine straight across pound for pound! Gimme a week to cook some big dinners and rich desserts, and I'll get her UPS'd right away!

On second thought, I'd like to keep friendly on my favorite forum--you'd hate me forever.

Aside from culling out the stick-ons, you're being careful about the zinc, right? Before you learn the hard way, don't ever let one of those melt into your brew.

 

[barthmonster]

what about the zinc. I smelted (in my Lee pot I'm not sure which model... I know, I know...) a whole mess of WW and I didn't know a think about zinc. This was about 15 years ago...

I've had trouble casting .357 Lee with this mix, but the .45 ACP (.452 ?) I have does okay...

I was planning on hardening these up with some 50/50 bar-solder I ordered...

 

[TXGunNut]

Barthmonster-
The WW's I've sorted thru had markings in addition to the weight. "Zn" was marked on some, "Fe" on some others. I'm pretty sure that meant zinc and iron. The "Fe" marked ones were noticeably less dense than the others so that makes sense. Don't worry about the AL, P and MC markings. They denote application, not composition. I'm told that as long as you keep the pot temp below the melting point of zinc that they'll simply float to the top with the clips for easy removal. I kinda doubt they were using much zinc 15 yrs ago.

 

[TXGunNut]

Welcome to the affliction, 458winshooter! I had casting equipment for a couple of years before finally falling off the deep end several months ago. I like it so much I've even cast boolits in the 100 degree heat we had several weeks back. REALLY looking forward to some cooler weather.
I'm thinking some tin and antimony will harden up your alloy and make it useable, lead-free solder seems to have the correct proportions. My Lyman moulds were designed to drop a boolit of nominal weight using Lyman's #2 allloy, suspect Lee's were as well. There are some charts around here and elsewhere showing alloys and corresponding hardness #'s so it's just a matter of a little math and you'll be able to adjust your alloy to something more useful.
My next Midway order will likely have a .535" round ball mould. I have a .54 Hawken around here somewhere that's developing an appetite for recycled stick-on WW's.

 

[GP100man]

Welcome to the Brotherhood of the Silver stream !!!!!!

Lee molds are configured with Lyman#2 alloy .

Your alloy as stated contains less alloy than #2 & I`m suprised ya got 15+ bhn from it WDing , but it`s not written in stone what alloy mix WW are either !!!!

My Lee 158rnfp drops at 162 with WW & 170 with 50/50 WW & stikons.

I mainly use isotope containers now , nice steady supply & most containers run 10.5 bhn , some harder.

I seperate Stik ons from Clip ons as I look for the Zn & Fe , They make good tradin fodder to the Muzzle loading & Cap& ball revolver shooters.

Zinc makes lead hold itself tite & won`t fillout a mold correctly no matter how hot ya get the melt & mold !!!

Here`s a pic of the Zn weights I`ve run into but no means a complete compilation !!!

 

[barthmonster]

Thanks TXGunNut... Yeah I read a few places last night and that's what it said. I remember smelting in my Lee 110 V pot (a no-no I'm told) and probably had the heat in the mid-range. I'm sure I didn't have it turned up all the way or anything like that... All that came to the top were the clips...

I get decent fillout on a .45 ACP mold (Lee) but have trouble with a .357 (Lee), with a lot of grease bands. Possibly it needs some tin for the 'surface-adhesion' factor...