Are there many bullet casters here?

John from MD · Apr 10, 2020

Most of the time, if you aren't pressure feeding the mold, it won't matter. If you have too high of a flow or you put the mold too close to the spout, you could get flanges on the base of your bullet. Since aluminum expands differently than steel, the gap may close when it heats up. Lee is pretty up front with their warranty. Try casting with it, if it doesn't work, ask for a new one.

Oswaldo87 · Apr 11, 2020

Probably known but after spending $23 for lee molds I’ll share my experience. The aluminum under the sprue plate started to deform. This left a ragged edge to the bullet. Tried to unscrew and straighten the problem out. Found out it’s a left hand thread after stripping the aluminum mold. Fixed it by making it more like a Lyman mold with the small set screw holding the sprue screw.
Anyone looking to buy, go ahead and invest in a steel mold.

John from MD · Apr 11, 2020

Aluminum molds work just as well if you know how to treat them. If you would put Bull Plate on your alignment pins, sprue plate, top of mold and pivot screw, they won't gall and will make thousands of bullets. If treated properly, I get the same quality bullets from my Lee molds as I do from my custom SAECO molds and they cost much less.

Oswaldo87 · Apr 11, 2020

John from MD said:
Aluminum molds work just as well if you know how to treat them. If you would put Bull Plate on your alignment pins, sprue plate, top of mold and pivot screw, they won't gall and will make thousands of bullets. If treated properly, I get the same quality bullets from my Lee molds as I do from my custom SAECO molds and they cost much less.

It was a newbie mistake. I quickly bought a set of lymans of the same type. Much more impressed by their workmanship.

John from MD · Apr 11, 2020

Oswaldo87 said:
It was a newbie mistake. I quickly bought a set of lymans of the same type. Much more impressed by their workmanship.

We all learn from our experiences. Lyman molds are good and probably the least expensive steel molds you can buy. Don't shy away from used molds, I have bought many on ebay that were barely used.

You can tell from the pictures what shape the mold is in. Honest sellers (like me) will put several good pics so the buyer can see what he is getting. If it only has one pic or dark, grainy pics, stay away.

Melnic · Apr 12, 2020

John from MD said:
Water quenching will give you a harder bullet as long as the alloy has antimony in it.

so I made up a batch of the 3 molds I got for 300blk.
I dropped a bullet at the beginning and then water quenched the rest.
Water quench bullet came out after cooling to 10.4BHN and the straight dropped came to 8.4 BHN The mix of lead I was using was showing anywhere between 9-12 BNH. I'll measure the softer bullet again in 2 and 3 weeks. This lead is donated dive weights I got years ago.

PowPow · Apr 12, 2020

Melnic said:
so I made up a batch of the 3 molds I got for 300blk.
I dropped a bullet at the beginning and then water quenched the rest.
Water quench bullet came out after cooling to 10.4BHN and the straight dropped came to 8.4 BHN The mix of lead I was using was showing anywhere between 9-12 BNH. I'll measure the softer bullet again in 2 and 3 weeks. This lead is donated dive weights I got years ago.

It would be interesting if you could measure both of them again after 3 weeks. I think both will harden more. Question is, by how much.

My reason for bringing it up was that you could water quench them to a viable hardness and pretty much shoot the next day rather than waiting for 2-3 weeks.

Melnic · Apr 12, 2020

PowPow said:
It would be interesting if you could measure both of them again after 3 weeks. I think both will harden more. Question is, by how much.

My reason for bringing it up was that you could water quench them to a viable hardness and pretty much shoot the next day rather than waiting for 2-3 weeks.

I'm sure they could both shoot the next day. The one thing will be how is the harness next day, 2 weeks, 4 weeks, 6 months.
I"d want to shoot when the hardness variation flattens out. Ultimately, measuring the "significance" of harness change to POI and group size would be interesting.
I could probably do that by molding up the softest lead I have and shoot next day vs. aged harder lead that has been powder coated. Maybe someone has already done that to find out.

I'm already reading that I need to take care of harness in the heavy subsonic bullet in my 1:8 barrels. scuttlebutt is that harder is better.

John from MD · Apr 12, 2020

Melnic said:
I'm sure they could both shoot the next day. The one thing will be how is the harness next day, 2 weeks, 4 weeks, 6 months.
I"d want to shoot when the hardness variation flattens out. Ultimately, measuring the "significance" of harness change to POI and group size would be interesting.
I could probably do that by molding up the softest lead I have and shoot next day vs. aged harder lead that has been powder coated. Maybe someone has already done that to find out.

I'm already reading that I need to take care of harness in the heavy subsonic bullet in my 1:8 barrels. scuttlebutt is that harder is better.

Harder is not necessarily better when you are shooting at 1050 FPS. The bullet may not bump up to fit the bore if too hard. I shoot range scrap at 1600 FPS with Xlox and get no leading.

Melnic · Apr 12, 2020

John from MD said:
Harder is not necessarily better when you are shooting at 1050 FPS. The bullet may not bump up to fit the bore if too hard. I shoot range scrap at 1600 FPS with Xlox and get no leading.

so do you use your soft lead for 9mm?
I have more soft lead than hard lead. Was thinking I may need to use my harder lead for the rifle molds.

Postell · Apr 12, 2020

Melnic said:
so do you use your soft lead for 9mm?
I have more soft lead than hard lead. Was thinking I may need to use my harder lead for the rifle molds.

Remember this, back in the 1880's 350 grain 45 bullets were shot with black powder at 1500 fps with a 20-1 or a 30-1 ratio pure lead to tin, no antimony at all. plus they were shooting with 26 to 34" barreled rifles with an animal/insect based lube.

Lead bullet sizing and a lube that doesn't melt and coats the complete bore and runs down the crown after a shot or two is MUCH more important than bullet hardness.

I regularly shoot 500+ grain cast bullets that are 20-1 over 1400 and 350 grainers over 2,000 fps in my Browning BPCR Creedmore 45-90.

Shooting putty is a lifelong learning experience for sure.
I would suggest reading about Pope, Paul Mathews, Mike Venturino, Steve Darby and others.... And certainly the guys on CastBoolits with loads of endless information available there.

John from MD · Apr 12, 2020

Melnic said:
so do you use your soft lead for 9mm?
I have more soft lead than hard lead. Was thinking I may need to use my harder lead for the rifle molds.

No, I am using range scrap. It is probably in the neighborhood of 12 to 15 depending on what kind of scrap I have at the time. I use this in both pistols and rifles up to 2000 FPS.

The rifles I shoot at 1600 FPS, can be PC'd if I happen to be coating at the time or just xlox works fine. The rifles I shoot at 2000 FPS are GC and PC. My 300 Blackout I shoot at about 1650 and my 7.62x40WT I shoot at 2000. The Blackout will shoot fine with Xlox but the 7.62x40 won't.

I never mix my good pure lead with any alloy. I use it strictly for shooting my BP guns.

John from MD · Apr 12, 2020

Read the articles from these folks and look up the Cast Bullet Association writings of Ed Harris. Between the two of them, they have cast bullet shooting down pat.

http://www.lasc.us/ArticlesFryxell.htm

Pinecone · Apr 13, 2020

Postell said:
insect based lube.

What lubes and what insects?

Never heard of this one. Sounds like it would be messy to make.

Art3 · Apr 13, 2020

Pinecone said:
What lubes and what insects?

Never heard of this one. Sounds like it would be messy to make.

Beeswax would be my guess. I use a 50/50 mix of beeswax and olive oil (melted in the microwave) as bullet lube for black powder cartridges.

John from MD · Apr 13, 2020

Probably right. I use beeswax, tallow and olive oil in my BP lube.

Melnic · Apr 13, 2020

Boy I’m going to have lots of load Dev work when the range opens back up. For the 2 on the ends (Lee being 160gr and Lyman being 169gr) I think I’ll look towards 1600fps then pick a range to span that for an OCW run
The bullets are coming out 167 and 174 once coated and gas check added (gas checks account for about 4gr and they are dropping a few grains heavier than 160/169)

I did not powder coat the Lyman on the right as I liked how it came out with the HiTek. The other two Lee molds I also powder coated
Driving bands of the Lyman are big and sizing pretty consistent.
The lee bands are pretty thin

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

John from MD · Apr 13, 2020

Another tip. Once you get an idea what powder color you want to use, pick another color for your 2nds. I have found that bullets that I don't want to shoot at 100 yards, shoot just fine at 50 yards. With pistol bullets, as long as the base is fine, the rest of it can look like shit and it still shoots fine at 10 yards. Now that I no longer shoot at 600 yards, I find myself using bullets that I would have normally put back in the pot. If you are shooting steel, just about anything will shoot out to 20 yards.

Pinecone · Apr 14, 2020

Art3 said:
Beeswax would be my guess. I use a 50/50 mix of beeswax and olive oil (melted in the microwave) as bullet lube for black powder cartridges.

I did not think of beeswax as being insect.

I was thinking some form of crushed or pressed insects.

Quarantine mental illness. :lol2:

Maher1510 · Apr 14, 2020

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk[/QUOTE]

Those looks nice! Keep us posted how they shoot once you get to the range.

Are there many bullet casters here?

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