First time casting

[YoungGunner]

Today was the first time I cast some RB's with a bag mold that I bought and some lead from different caliber balls. I cast 37 FULL balls out of around 50 or 60 attempts I tried my hardest to keep the casting end of the mold hot and I tried to keep the lead at a stable temperature off of a coleman stove. All but 4 of the RB's have little "wrinkles" at the bottom of them and I figured that for practice these would be OK right? or are they all totally trashed? (I Hope not seeing as how it took me an hour and a half to get these poured) Any help would be appreciated!

 

[buford87]

Welcome to the world of muzzleloaders. the round balls you cast of course can be shot if you got the itch to burn powder. But with the wrinkles they won't be match accurate. The choice is yours............watch yer top knot............

 

[YoungGunner]

If hitting a 6" plate at 75 yards is match accurate IM SCREWED! :surrender: :surrender: Thank you for the info

 

[R.M.]

Well, as you know, if you don't like the ball cast, throw it back in the pot, no big deal.
As far as the wrinkles go, something wasn't clean, or not hot enough. The mold must be free of oil, and the lead and mold need to be hot. With a bag mold, it can be difficult to handle when it's hot enough.
Try cleaning the mold, and get things hotter. I'd bet that it will cure your wrinkles.

 

[Little Wattsy]

Well, as you know, if you don't like the ball cast, throw it back in the pot, no big deal.
As far as the wrinkles go, something wasn't clean, or not hot enough. The mold must be free of oil, and the lead and mold need to be hot. With a bag mold, it can be difficult to handle when it's hot enough.
Try cleaning the mold, and get things hotter. I'd bet that it will cure your wrinkles.

Sounds like the lead and or mold was NOT hot enough to me...... :hmm:

 

[Bill Hall]

Gunner, expect to always get a handful of wrinkled balls until the mold heats up. However, if this problem continues throughout your session, your lead is probably not hot enough. A quick and simple test I use is to check the puddle over the sprue after the pour is completed. If the puddle stays "wet" for at least two or three seconds, your lead is suffiently hot. If it hardens as soon as you stop pouring, you're probably going to get wrinkles.

If you are using the propane powered coleman stove, there are a few tricks you can do to keep the temp up.

First, just keep enough lead melted in your pan, or pot, so that you can get a full pour amount in your ladle(or whatever you use for a ladle). When you find you can't scoop up enough to complete a pour, add just enough lead so that you again get a sufficient ladle-full. I usually try to keep my pan at about 1/2" full. Less lead in the pan gets hotter.

Second, turn the setting all the way up and pay attention to the sound of your flame. I usually find that after about 45 minutes of burning on "high", the sounds starts to slowly diminish, which means the flame is cooling and the lead is also cooling. If this is happening to you, I suggest you change the bottle out with a new one, (carefully of course, everything is HOT) and save the half empty bottle for camping. I don't think any lead hazzard exists with re-using the bottle for cooking.

Also, find a protected place to melt your lead, mostly out of the wind. It's a good safety practice to have a slight breeze going when you pour, but any wind stronger than that can keep your lead from heating up to it's full potential. Hope this helps, good luck. Bill

 

[paulvallandigham]

Get a powder scale and actually weight the balls that you have with wrinkles in them. That will tell you how much they vary in weight from one another. Some of these wrinkled balls are fine to use for general Plinking.


If the wrinkles are on the bottoms of the balls, it means the mold blocks are NOT HOT ENOUGH before you begin pouring the lead into the mold.

Put the mold into the molten lead- it won't sink--- and let it heat up sufficiently that lead drips off the outsides of the blocks as you remove it from the pot. Pour the molten lead into the heated mold within 30 seconds of removing it from the molten lead. That will get rid of the wringles on the bottom of the ball.

If you get wrinkles on the top of the ball, in the mold, that indicates that the lead is cooling too fast- you are not getting hot lead into the mold fast enough. Increase the temperature of your pot to solve this, or increase the speed and shorten the time between removing the mold from the molten lead, and when you pour the lead into the mold.

When I was using a plumber's pot, and a dipper to pour bullets, I put the blocks on the top edge of the pot, after removing them from the molten lead, and then used the dipper right THERE to pour lead into the mold. Sometimes excess lead on top of the sprue cut-off plate would drip right back down into the pot. I managed to make a lot of good bullets using that technique. Its NOT the only way to do it, but it does work.

 

[YoungGunner]

Alright the sprue lead cooled off very quickly so im going to try to heat it up a bit more. And I ended up in my garage with the stove, with a fan behind me to blow the fumes outside. Thank you for your help, this should make my next session a LOT better in terms of the quality of my balls.

 

[Bill Hall]

Gunner, be sure to read Paul's message right above your last one. Lots of good advice there.

 

[YoungGunner]

I Totally missed Pauls post! GREAT tips paul thank you very much. I am going to have to try the dipping the mold in the molten lead to heat it up. I was just using the burner on the stove to heat it up today but I have a feeling that the molten lead will work better because I wont have to move the mold as far so it doesnt cool off. I also poured into my mold above the pot so that the excess dripped back in. Thanks for the great post and I'm sorry I missed it the first time!

 

[necchi]

FWIW I use a small cast iron pot on a coleman fuel coleman stove,,
,,the burner is on full blast for the first 20 minuets, then backed off just a bit to keep the lead at around 700-750,,I'm using pure and I like it when I see the irredesant floating on top, keeping the mold hot enough and getting the rythm/timming is the key for me.
When the over pour takes more than 2 seconds to solidify, I slow down a bit as the mold is getting a bit hot.

You'll get it,,the learning curve is pretty short :thumbsup:

 

[HOGGHEAD]

IMO the trick to good casting is consistency. And the easiest way to develop good consistent projectiles is to develop a cadence in your casting.

Allow you mold to heat up to temp. Then start counting. Start a 1 and count slowly, but consistently. Make sure you do each step at the same count every time. That way you are keeping your pour consistent, and even more important you are keeping your pour temperatures consistent.

Once you develop your cadence it will come real quick. And you will be pouring top notch projectiles the second or third time you do it. Just make sure you stick to your cadence, and do it exactly the same every time. Even down to how much alloy you put into your ladle every time. you will be surprised how well you do.

I use an electronic reloading scale to check the weights. But once you start pouring consistently you will know it. The roundballs will come real easy. I mostly use the scale when I cast large heavy conicals. Tom.

 

[Zonie]

Now that the heat of summer is here I'll just give a little warning to the folks who are new to casting lead.

Make absolutely sure that there is NO way that one little tiny drop of sweat drops into the melted lead.

Even the smallest drop of water or sweat will cause a minor explosion that will blow molten 700+ degree F lead all over the place including you. By the time the lead has cooled it will have burned thru all of the layers of your skin so, BE CAREFUL FOLKS.

 

[R.M.]

Now that the heat of summer is here I'll just give a little warning to the folks who are new to casting lead.

Make absolutely sure that there is NO way that one little tiny drop of sweat drops into the melted lead.

Even the smallest drop of water or sweat will cause a minor explosion that will blow molten 700+ degree F lead all over the place including you. By the time the lead has cooled it will have burned thru all of the layers of your skin so, BE CAREFUL FOLKS.

Yup, the Tinsel Fairy is nasty, but it only happens when moisture gets "Under" the surface. If it is only on the top, it'll just sizzle and evaporate. It's the steam produced under the surface that causes the explosion.

 

[mazo kid]

Alright the sprue lead cooled off very quickly so im going to try to heat it up a bit more. And I ended up in my garage with the stove, with a fan behind me to blow the fumes outside. Thank you for your help, this should make my next session a LOT better in terms of the quality of my balls.

You may want to wrap the mould handles with some layers of leather wrapping to keep the handles from burning you. Bag mould handles get pretty hot when everything is up to temp.

 

[Idaho Ron]

Yup, the Tinsel Fairy is nasty, but it only happens when moisture gets "Under" the surface. If it is only on the top, it'll just sizzle and evaporate. It's the steam produced under the surface that causes the explosion.

I am with you on this one. Ron

 

[paulvallandigham]

With bag molds, take an old broom stick, or a branch from a tree, and drill or gouge out a hole in the stick to allow you to jam the stick onto the bag mold handles.

( In primitive camp settings, we use the handles themselves, heated in the fire, to Burn holes into the sticks that became the handles for the mold. A GREEN tree limb resists burning, and provides a snug handle during the casting. When done casting, the sticks are added to the night fire so that they burn slower and let you get more sleep before waking to add more wood to the fire. The steam from burning green wood also helps distribute heat in a lodge faster. ) :thumbsup: