Tonight's therapy session

[WonkyEye]

I cooked up 250-300 round ball (best guess) of lead from Justin.44 who I hear is MIA and hopefully ok. Its a budget setup, but works for the volume I shoot. It looks messy, but that's because I put a heap of hardwood sawdust on top to prevent oxidation, and use a bottom pour ladle.

This is just a small cheap cast iron pot, a cheap propane/butane burner, fluxed with sawdust and occasionally beeswax. I have it wrapped with aluminum foil coozie to help hold the heat, and have a 10 layer foil lid for when I stop pouring or add ingots to help hold heat. As noted above the ladle is the small bottom pour from Lyman.

The molds are .490 lee double, which has been flawless for about 1500 balls so far. The other is a Larry Callahan .490 bag mold which I used for the first time tonight. The balls came out clean and shiny. They are laying on the rag, and need the sprues cut off. I want to keep these separate and try them on paper to see if I hit the same point of impact.

Edit: I also wanted to note that I don't bother weighing RB anymore, as long as the ball is filled out and looks shiny the lee mold and my process has been very consistent average 178gr, +/- 3gr

My Lee REAL mold is trickier, I weigh every one because 1/10 will have lighter weight, usually corners not quite filled in, but very hard to notice. Probably due to inconsistent heat with my setup, I could probably benefit from a tiny amount of tin to help, and a legit pot with consistent temp, but I shoot them infrequently enough that I'm fine weighing and recycling.

 

[WonkyEye]

Deleted, wrong thread

 

[The Crisco Kid]

I've cast a bunch of balls and bullets over a setup like yours. I bought an electric pot and never went back to propane. Much easier to keep the temperature even.

 

[oldwood]

Accuracy in a muzzleloader ..............Proper loading with consistency of ingredients. .........Also , ball casting. An electric pot maintains proper heat........Use a Lyman lead dipper with nozzle and keep the dross from forming on the top of the lead in the pot , by skimming w/ a simple metal table spoon.......... Also Adding tin and antimony to small amounts of lead in a small pot cause inconsistencies inherantly because alloys , if the pot temp is set for pure lead , the alloys rise to the top of the pot , and are skimmed off as dross. At normal soft lead melting temps , alloys won't mix unless high heat is applied , again , more inconsistencies. Hardened lead balls even though the balls are the correct size defeat the purpose of allowing the patch and ball to perfectly engage the tops of the barrel lands w/o ruining the patch causing another reason for inaccurate shot. ......Just some thoughts from an old guy that's made all the mistakes and learned the trial and error way.