Smelted me up some lead ingots today

[nitesite]

Autumn is the time to take advantage of cool temps and stand over a hot cauldron of molten lead.

So I smelted up a bunch of 2.5-lb ingots of fluxed and ready to mould lead.

Some ingots were smelted from plain wheel weights. That's going to be for my pistol ammo. And making buckshot. Oli has me wanting to 'sperriment with the 00 buck if I ever get a Lee mould.

Others ingots were poured from almost pure soft lead, which I'm holding back for future Black Powder bullets or Slug making.

Anybody else like to see the gleaming silver pond of galena just waiting to go into bullet making?

 

[SHOOTER13]

Hey nitesite...

Stop using big words like cauldron, fluxed, 'sperriment, and especially... galena !!

Not all of us have dictionarys available !!

Post Script...

( I own a small vacation home in Kent County, Maryland ...20 miles outside of Elkton...Georgetown on the Sassafras River to be exact. Down the road a piece is another small town...called Galena. )

Now I know what it means...

 

[Rossignol]

Nah man, not yet for me... I stare at a molten weld bead all day already. Though I do believe there are a couple other reloaders on here somewhere...

 

[oli700]

I have a crapload fluxed up already . Taught my son to cast slugs the other day and sat there and made 100 slugs in about 30 minutes. So then he learned to reload shells. We made up 40 rounds with different charges and two different powder to figure out what I like…..just getting him nailed down for a couple hours was cool.

Anyway what are you fluxing with ? I use saw dust like the old timers, works awesome

The 00 mold is one of the hardest to cast with out of all molds. I got it down but neglected to lube the mold since I am a rookie. So make sure to lube the sprue plate and hinge points. Mine still works fine but I took some life off of it before I discovered lubing with bees wax.
Another tip is to have your lead about 800 degrees and the mold good and hot. I also messed up here. I couldn’t get the mold to fill out completely. So the instructions say to put the corner of the mold in the lead to heat it up. Will I left it in there way to long and discolored the sprue plate. It made the mold act weird after that…..I just needed enough patients to keep filling and emptying till it came to temp. The mold is tricky but when it starts to get to temp it makes them fast. I end up with a good/bad ratio of about 95%/5%.

 

[oli700]

999......and this make 1000 posts. I have never done this on any forum .

 

[nitesite]

and this make 1000 posts. I have never done this on any forum .

That's large, man. Congrats!

I use sawdust over the molten lead in the casting pot. I think its burned ash keeps air off the lead and prevents it from oxidizing. But for fluxing during a smelt I use candle wax to burn off the impurities.