Those darn wrinkles...

[Smoketown]

The sprues on some look sort of torn/smeared. Was I too quick to cut the sprue?

Possibly.

Make sure that the tension on the sprue plate is snug and wait for the sprue to get "frosty" before you cut it.

Cheers,
Smoketown

[Daryl]

Daryl, how wide and deep do you cut that grove in the spru plate? It sounds like a good idea if the lead is hot enough.

The groove depth is about 1/2 the thickness of the plate. the lead must be hotter than if you are pressure filling or the mould will not fill properly. This is quite easy to do with an adjustable heat measure.

Dipping gives ME much better bullets than bottom pouring and there is no problem with dripping - that is aggravating!

[Daryl]

I'll put in another note here, after reading some posts. I leave my sprue plate loose.  When I push it aside with my gloved hand, I push down and cut the sprue- for perfect sprues. No lumps, humps or other problems. I also get NO lead on the surface of the mould or underside of the sprue plate.
With pure lead, there is no frost - which usually denotes antimony content.  Of course when casting conicals or hard balls, the 'frosting' appearance applies.

[crankshaft]

  Ya'll ever use the hand held laser thermometers ?

[JBJ]

Daryl brings up an interesting point re the tension on the sprue plate. I have found out the hard way that too snug a tension on my aluminum molds quickly resulted in a bit of galling of the mold surface under the sprue plate. It seems that the aluminum molds and the steel sprue plates tighten as they heat. Lubing the pivot helps but does not eliminate the tendencyy to gall the mold surface. My iron molds do not display this tendency. Just a thought and word of caution.
J.B.

[Bob Roller]

Daryl brings up an interesting point re the tension on the sprue plate. I have found out the hard way that too snug a tension on my aluminum molds quickly resulted in a bit of galling of the mold surface under the sprue plate. It seems that the aluminum molds and the steel sprue plates tighten as they heat. Lubing the pivot helps but does not eliminate the tendencyy to gall the mold surface. My iron molds do not display this tendency. Just a thought and word of caution.
J.B.

Wrinkles usually indicate a cold mould.I have never had the problem with a HOT mould.
I marketed a sprue cutter for Lyman moulds several years ago made from 1/4" 1018
or 0-1 and reports indicated these thicker plates added heat to the already hot mould and increased
the weight of the bullet by several grains. How it would work with a ball I have no idea. I am not
making these cutters any more but anyone with a few tools can make them.

Bob Roller

[Daryl]

Daryl brings up an interesting point re the tension on the sprue plate. I have found out the hard way that too snug a tension on my aluminum molds quickly resulted in a bit of galling of the mold surface under the sprue plate. It seems that the aluminum molds and the steel sprue plates tighten as they heat. Lubing the pivot helps but does not eliminate the tendencyy to gall the mold surface. My iron molds do not display this tendency. Just a thought and word of caution.
J.B.

The different expansion ratios of the aluminum bodies as opposed to the steel sprue plate is the jist of the galling problem with Lee moulds.

[JBJ]

Yep, that's her!
J.B.

[tddeangelo]

Just by way of update....

Ran a short casting session last night. Used both cavities, and results were 16 rejects for 54 keepers.

Of the rejects, a few were my own fault for not having enough lead in the dipper and leaving voids.

Some I just didn't like. Can't explain it, but I didn't want to keep them. I am being very picky now and still keeping a good percentage compared to my start. So that's progress.

I'm indeed using a Lee mold, and the sprue plate wants to come loose as I cast. I tighten it again simply because I'm left handed, and i feel better pouring lead with my left hand. I tip the mold inward with my right hand to mate the dipper spout to the countersink on the sprue plate. Then I tip them together back to vertical. This stops lead from dripping everywhere and seems to work pretty well, but with the mold being tipped to it's left, if the plate doesn't have some tension, it'll swing open from gravity. I have to keep at least some tension on that screw so it doesn't do that.

I gave it a tad longer (5 count) before cutting and the sprues look better.

So things are going well.

The balls are shiny and mirror-like when done. When they are a few days old and oxidized, whatever flaws I saw when freshly cast are invisible. They look as good, or better, than the ones I'd bought prior to getting tooled up to cast.

The proof is in the shooting, so we'll see how that goes here shortly. I have a couple hundred now, so I'm gonna start flinging 'em and see what we get.

[EC121]

I keep the balls with the light wrinkles.  After pulling a few balls at the muzzle and seeing what the patching and rifling do to a ball, light wrinkles aren't much of a problem as long as the ball base is reasonably smooth.  Any light wrinkles are squished out by the patching.  The weave pattern of the material covers the wrinkles.

[Daryl]

Each to his own.

I no longer tip the moulds for filling as described above. I pour the lead into the sprue hole as noted and get perfect balls or bullets with perfect sprue cuts and mould fillouts.  Wrinkles are from mould being too cold and/or lead too cold.  SOMETHING is too cold - or if there are oil or oil-like molecules in the pores of the blocks, pivots, alignment bars or pegs, the mould will cast wrinkled projectiles until the contaminant is either removed or burnt off so it's vapors cannot spoil the casting. Bringing the mould and lead up to the proper temperature is also vital.

A great to remove this oil or other contaminant is to hold the mould blocks under running hot water to heat them, then remove from the water and scrub with an old toothbrush and comet cleanser  then rinse off the comet.  This will remove the oil.
I spray my moulds with WD40 after using - then do the comet routine before casting again. Works for me & has been for 40 years.  It's nice to have perfect balls & bullets.