Gettin' the lead out....

Dannmann801 · Apr 22, 2013

Took my first shot at melting some lead and casting some ingots this weekend.
(Don't have molds yet, and haven't picked out a melting pot yet, but really wanted to get started)
I went to some tire places near where I work, but nobody had any scrap wheelweights. So I just went to a recycling center near where I work and bought some lead. Had an old cast iron skillet in the garage I been meaning to clean up but never did....

Starting the melt -

After the first pour -

Popped out of the mini muffin pan ( i thought it would be cool to have a bunch of small ingots, thinking maybe they'll heat faster or afford me more flexibility on the amount to heat up)

Made some big ones too - ended up with 84 (7 dozen) small jobbies and a bunch of big ones in different thicknesses -

I really liked this one.....smooth both sides

69# of scrap yielded 63# of clean ingots

This was really fun.
Welding gloves and safety glasses the whole time.
Watched a lot of youtube videos before doing it, pretty easy.
Did I mention it was fun?

Archertl · Apr 22, 2013

I've done this in the past. I have plenty of ingots to last me along time now. Happy casting.

hickslawns · Apr 23, 2013

Dan you are an inspiration. You have started this reloading hobby at mid throttle. Might just prompt some more of us to take it up. Thanks for sharing. The pictures were key. Kept my attention and curiosity while helping to show what you were talking about. Perfect!

MK111 · Apr 27, 2013

Good job. Just don't use those items for food again.
Hopefully you are doing that melting of lead outside. Please don't do it in the house because of the lead fumes.
I would but a piece of metal around the burner under the pot to help hold the heat to flow straight up.
Do all your rough casting into ingots like you have done and don't rough cast dirty lead in your casting pot. Always put clean lead into your pot for casting bullets.
Use a lube to clean the dirt out of the lead. Wax candles is a cheap fluzing lube. Smokes like hell but free.
Looks like you are on your way.

Dannmann801 · Apr 30, 2013

I have lost my mind.

Got another batch of lead from the recycler and did another batch last weekend bringing me up to 103 pounds of ingots.
Beenie tells me "Get on CastBoolits.com forum, check it out..."
OMFG I've spent an inordinate amount of time reading there and posting and having some questions answered.

Lead = instant addiction. Geez. One more thing....

Wanna buy molds? Fuggetaboutit....everywhere on the web is out of stock.
I did manage to buy one Lee mold for 30-30, but it's a light bullet (113 gr)...but after seeing so many "out of stock - no backorder" I pulled the trigger.
Ugh.

Bless/curse you Beenie for turning me on to that site.

"J" · May 1, 2013

Dan can you rework the mold too bring up the weight of the bullets?

Dannmann801 · May 1, 2013

"J" said:
Dan can you rework the mold too bring up the weight of the bullets?

Potentially? Maybe a skilled engineer and machinist could.
Would I attempt something like that? Never. Wouldn't be worth the time and effort to me.
I'll just wait for factory molds to become available new or used.

Beentown · May 1, 2013

I gots me some needed stuff from there. Not my type of forum for the most part but a lot of casting knowledge.

Johnch · May 1, 2013

If you find Wheel weights
Sort them before smelting them

As a bunch of the newer wheel weights are Zink
Others are steel or a plastic covered Tungstun powder ( the tungstun sinks in the lead and can ruin a bullet mold )

Zink is Nasty when melted into the lead
As it causes pour mold fill out and in high enough %
It causes the mix to get nasty and flake off

John

Dannmann801 · May 6, 2013

Still on the hunt for my .40s&w mold, but I fired up the pot and used the two molds I do have just to practice.

.495 balls ended up measuring at .490 consistent
I wasn't using pure lead, and dropped them in water to cool/harden.
Don't know if it was the lead or the cooling that caused the shrink.
Or I'm wondering if maybe I got a mislabeled .490 mold

also .308 bullets - about 1/2 were stinkers and will got back in the pot, but it was pretty fun

Good on the left, stinkers on the right

Went a little heavy on the Liquid Alox I think...had to wipe a bunch off...will use less next time

MK111 · May 7, 2013

Dannmann801 said:
Still on the hunt for my .40s&w mold, but I fired up the pot and used the two molds I do have just to practice.

.495 balls ended up measuring at .490 consistent
I wasn't using pure lead, and dropped them in water to cool/harden.
Don't know if it was the lead or the cooling that caused the shrink.
Or I'm wondering if maybe I got a mislabeled .490 mold

also .308 bullets - about 1/2 were stinkers and will got back in the pot, but it was pretty fun

View attachment 13735

View attachment 13736

Good on the left, stinkers on the right
View attachment 13737

Went a little heavy on the Liquid Alox I think...had to wipe a bunch off...will use less next time
View attachment 13738

.495 lead balls are tough to load in a 50 caliber and always need a mallet to load then. .490 and a patch are hand loaded. Your wheel weight is too hard for ML but you already know that.
Harding the hot bullet in water won't shrink the bullet that much. And using a hard alloy will make the bullet shrink less than pure lead when it cools. So I would think you have a mis-marked mold which probably is best for you.
Liquid alox is messy but works great. I use a butter dish and put in a hand full with couple squirts and roll them around and let dry on a piece of foil. The extra lube on the bullet nose won't hurt a thing but just don't put them in your pocket or anywhere the bullet can pickup dirt. A dirty bullet is like shooting sandpaper at high speed through your bore.
Hang in there as the gunshow was a slow as ever this last weekend. I think with Obama getting shot down on all his gun control issues some of the panic buying is slowing down. Some not all.
I never casted 40 caliber as I always used a commercial cast for my 40. I don't loan bullets molds. I found out loaning bullet molds would be like loaning out your wife.

Make sure you get 100% of the oil out of your molds. It must be cleaned out and can not be burned out with hot lead.
I use either breaker cleaner. Or I boil the mold in boiling water with dish soap for couple minutes.
Hold on now! The heat of boiling water can not hurt the metal not even steel molds. Learned from the best and been doing it for 40 yrs. I even do my 150.00 custom molds that way and you must know I'm cheap so no way will I take a chance of ruining a good mold.

Dannmann801 · May 7, 2013

Yeah man these balls are .490 on the button, so I might have lucked out on that one!

I was out of brake cleaner so I used carburetor cleaner to clean the new mold, then Permatex Antiseize lube. Then smoked the cavities with a lighter. I think I got it right.

A friend offered to loan me a .40 mold to use, but I wouldn't feel right about using another man's mold....that just don't seem right

Dannmann801 · May 8, 2013

UGH!! Talk about disappointment - yesterday Beenie sends me a text - FSReloading is showing 6 cavity .40 molds in stock....I go to website and yep, shows in stock...type in my order, use PayPal, order is accepted...waiting for update, waiting....check this morning and they show sold out, and the order I placed was on backorder. DAMMIT! They did respond to my question this morning quickly, I guess 12 guys were probably ordering the same mold and I didn't come out on top. Haven't decided whether to cancel or not.....

So, I goes back and measure the first batch of balls cast from my RB-495 mold and yep, they were still .490...had a couple of spots where they measured .491, but for the most part .490 - here's the mold marking

So I get another mold I ordered in the mail yesterday - this is a two cavity mold, one side is a .490 Round Ball and the other side is a 320grain REAL bullet.
(It's the mold on the right in the picture)
So I did a few of those last nite just for giggles...the round balls were measuring .485-.487
I wondering if it's me, or the mold, or if that's how they're supposed to be? dunno
I did doublecheck with another set of calipers to make sure my calipers were measuring correctly....
Here's a sexy little picture....these are all rejects but the pic is cool anyway

Did I mention this is fun?

CJD3 · May 8, 2013

This is a cool thread Dan

Beentown · May 8, 2013

Nice balls!

Dannmann801 · May 13, 2013

So tonite I had my first luck at scoring some wheelweights!
(The fact that I'd just ordered 4 tires for my truck might have influenced the guy)
Got about 3/4 of a bucket from the fella....I noticed that the ones on the top of the bucket were marked Zn -
I knew I needed to sort them out, and wanted to read up a little about it before hand.
Found a great instructional thread over on castboolits and thought I'd share it.
http://castboolits.gunloads.com/sho...rting-Wheel-Weights&highlight=separating+lead

Dannmann801 · Jul 4, 2013

Wheelweights - back on May 19th I melted the WW and came up with this -

27 pounds of WW

This is all the clips and dross -

This is all the unusable WW in that batch - from left to right: composites - Iron (Fe) - Zinc (Zn)
Mostly clearly marked Fe or Zn and easy to sort, and they feel completely different from lead

Today I melted a lead shower liner that had been torn out of an old house being remodeled by a friend of mine
Yield: 76# of ingots and 13# of dross
This should be pretty pure lead, I'm anxious to get a hardness meter and test it - if it's soft this will be my stash for making bullets for the muzzy
but my hopes aren't up too high, because when melted it had a gold and blue/purple sheen on the surface. I need to find out what that's about.
the skin on most of the ingots has this sheen.
From start to finish (setup to the melt to finishing cleanup) was 3 hours. Nice way to spend a rainy afternoon.

Dannmann801 · Jul 4, 2013

And another thing - the 6 cavity mold I ordered back on May 7th on FS Reloading was still on backorder yesterday.
I got an email notice from Amazon that they had them in stock, so I ordered one from there. When they confirmed the order, I cancelled with FS and asked for a refund to my PayPal account. They processed the refund within the hour. Even with the backorder fiasco, I got no beef with them and would shop there again, their customer service was very responsive.

So I get an email today that my Amazon order has shipped and should arrive Monday.

ickle:

hickslawns · Jul 4, 2013

Good deal Dan. Glad you enjoyed yourself. So do you listen to Led Zeppelin while melting or is it more of a quiet time activity? Just curious.

Dannmann801 · Jul 5, 2013

Quiet time. Very quiet time. Listening to the rhythm of the falling rain, the hum of the fan blowing, and the clink of the skimmer hittin' the dross pot.

Comfortable, relaxing.

Gettin' the lead out....

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