.36 mold won't fill!

[Roger B]

Decided to make some .350 round balls today & have nothing but frustication.  Using a new Lyman lead pot with a dipper, clean sheet lead, & a new Lyman .350 mold. Cleaned & smoke the mold & started trying to mold balls. Mold won't fill, always towards the back of the mold. Poured fast & slow;  mold won't fill. Ran the lead hotter; still no go. Noticed that the pour hole in the sprue plate was somewhat off center and had to file the contact point between the sprue plate & the pin on the mold blocks. Got her centered up, & again, mold won't fill.
I'm out of good ideas or even bad ones. What am I doing wrong?
Roger B.

[smylee grouch]

I have that problem sometimes if I dont hold the mold level when pouring.

[Daniel Coats]

Check the hole in the dipper

[RichG]

How hot is the lead , do you have a thermometer? I'll run the pot up to 750deg. to start and back off a little when I get good fill. Hot lead pours better than not so hot lead. Reclean the mold and re-smoke mold. Are you sure the lead is pure? Zink from wheel weights will ruin lead for bullet casting.
I have had molds that seemed to have a break in period. Had to try casting two or three times before they started casting. Never have figured that one out.

[snapper]

I leave the full ladle on the hole for a 5 second count before I remove it.    I like to think that the head pressure gives me a better fill of the mold that way.

fleener

[bnewberry]

If all else fails add a bit of tin to your lead.

[Tim Ault]

Instead of just pouring and leaving a small puddle on top of the sprue plate and stopping , just keep pouring for about a extra second and let the excess simply run off. It’s sorta kinda like pressure pouring in a way. And has worked well for me on a couple difficult moulds

[taterbug]

I haven't used a mold for small roundball, but I do have a .32 SMR in process, so Im very interested in how you get on with this issue. 

Dont know if you're doing this, but before I started I always had to hold the corner of the mold in the hot lead for a minute or two to get it hot enough to flow.  even then the first dozen or so tries might be considered 'recyclable material'. 

Steel molds will take a little longer to get hot enough than aluminum molds. 

On my .45 and .50 roundball, and .45 cap and ball bullets, the lead 'raisins' did not cause any trouble in shooting, but I never used any of those for target work.  And I never tried to use any of those that were not nearly completely formed. 

[hanshi]

Steel molds can be a bit persnickety when new.  Also check the hole in the sprue plate and in the dipper spout.  Other than that I'm at a loss.

[Roger B]

Thanks guys! I'm over being frusticated, so I'll get after it again today.
Roger B.

[alacran]

Roger, Lyman molds take a while to heat up and you will have to recycle the first dozen balls till it heats up. Try holding the mold at a slight angle when you pour the lead into them. You are going to get lead everywhere using the ladle anyhow. Those little molds will not let the lead get into them if you hold them level.

[P.W.Berkuta]

Poor mold fill is caused most likely by either cold mold or lead not hot enough - or both

[rich pierce]

Thing is to try another mold at the same time. And smoke the inside of the mold with candle soot.

[AZshot]

set the mold on the edge of the pot, or somewhere else for a few minutes before you start, to heat it up.

[Dphariss]

Whose mould? Do the vent lines actually run all the way to the cavity? If not clean them with a graver or a 3 square needle file with the teeth ground from one side to form a sharp edge on the other two. Lyman moulds have the mould lines cut before the cavity and often the vents are burred over at the cavity. Or near the outside edges. Becareful if you make them too large the bullets/balls will fin. Not a big deal and better than poorly filled projectiles.

[Dphariss]

Thing is to try another mold at the same time. And smoke the inside of the mold with candle soot.

This is needed on a lot of moulds. Pure lead is actually more difficult than alloys with a little tin in the mix. Tin lowers the melt temp so the mould fills better. But harder lead is bad on soft steel targets and will cut links in 3/8 or 1/2” chain if a little WW alloy is in the mix.
 
Even a wooden kitchen match will work to soot the cavity. Light coat should be enough.

[Roger B]

Went back at it today & got better results. The trick seems to be pouring a little bit of lead really fast. To that end, I reshaped the ladel's spout a bit (wider). Still getting some "wavey" balls, but overall, much better today. Thanks for all of the help!
Roger B.

[Hungry Horse]

Sometimes when casting small diameter bullets in an iron mold it takes longer than you would think to get the mold up to optimum heat. This causes the hot lead freeze up before the bullet is fully formed. This happened to me one time when I was casting some .40 caliber bullets for a friend. I had a Lyman mold, and an old Dixie hair straightener mold, and for the life of me I couldn’t get Lyman to make a complete ball. I finally tried running a few with the Dixie mold and after a couple  of bad ones, started getting good pours. I originally blamed it on the sprew cutter, because the Dixie didn’t have one. But it was the size of the molds steel bocks, and the heavy handles. It just takes a lot to get them hot enough.

Hungry Horse

[wolf]

i have been a boolit caster since 1982, it can be a pain at times. some tin added to the lead will work. also, if you have a lead pot with a valve you can force pour, put the sprue plate up against the spout and open it, this will shoot the lead in and it will fill out. you can't do this with a dipper,,,,,,,,,,,,,

[JBJ]

Casting .32 and .40 balls using pure lead requires that I run my Lee bottom pour pot on the hot side of things. Typically around the number eight or even 8.5 setting on the dial. If the lead level in the pot starts to drop the temp may creep up enough to start seeing a bit of frosty appearance on the balls. I either add lead or back off the temp to stay under the appearance of frost. As others have pointed out getting the mold and lead hot enough to cast well is critical. And you have to maintain that heat! When things get up to temp and casting is starting to go well, don't play around. Get into a rhythm and crank them out! You may get the mold hot enough doing this to notice that it is taking a bit more time for the lead to solidify. In that case slow down a wee bit or, as I usually do, open the empty mold and wave it around in the air for a few seconds to cool the mold a trifle. It really does not take much to cool a mold, particularly those made of aluminum.

If you are using an open ladle ladle like your friendly plumber used to use. I think you will have better luck setting it aside and picking up one of the little cast iron ladles with a pouring spout that is made to more or less fit the conical opening in the mold sprue plate. Both Lyman and RCBS offer them. I seem to have better bullet fill by holding the spout in the sprue opening and rotating both mold and ladle vertical to make the pour. Using the open pot system and one of the Lyman ladles means periodically clearing the dross from the surface of the pot or it inadvertently winds up getting in the ladle and messing up the pour.

Just a few thoughts that I hope might help a tiny bit.

J.B.

[Dphariss]

And what JBJ said is all spot on.

[Daryl]

Interesting what JBJ said about frosting. I have been casting round balls in all sorts of alloys since 1972 - many thousands of them & hundreds of pounds of lead turned into round balls as well as bullets.
The only time I have ever got frosting of the ball or bullet is if there is antimony in the alloy.
Pure, as in dead soft lead has NEVER caused frosting of balls or bullets I've cast from it.
If the dead soft lead is too hot, the lead turns blue and the balls also come out blue and take a long time to harden in the mould as the mould also becomes too hot. I've never seen the
frosting with pure lead.
I wonder if some guys problems with loading what seem to be weak (thin patch) combinations to many of us, is due to using non-pure lead (and/or rough bores).
Most salvage outfits have no idea what pure lead is. Some call any lead pure, even battery lead, WW, etc. If it hasn't got chunks of steel, brass or copper in it - it's gotta be pure lead, doesn't it?

As to Roger B's problems, wrinkled balls or bullets are caused by one or two things - temperature (lead or mould) and contamination - example oils.
A larger sprue hole might help, but it is easy with small calibres to go to far with that.  I had no trouble with the 2 Lee DC moulds I had, as purchased .311" and .319". I simply de-greased them and went to casting. Perfect balls right off the bat as I preheat the mould before I start casting. I see no reason not to. I like to get perfect balls from the get-go. I dislike
casting balls.

[LynnC]

I will add this. Air must escape the mold for it to fill with lead. I have had to clean up burrs on the mold cavities that stopped air from escaping as the mold fills. Just my 2 cents worth of advise. Good luck.

[Eric Krewson]

I highly recommend using one of these; I always had problems at times with open pour ladles, this one holds enough lead to easily cast a 1oz, .72 ball.

I cast on a Coleman stove so this works perfectly for me.






https://www.amazon.com/RCBS-80015-Lead-Dipper/dp/B000MLAWHS/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3SSIO1LQDQ7XP&keywords=rcbs+lead+dipper&qid=1664803432&qu=eyJxc2MiOiIwLjY2IiwicXNhIjoiMC41NyIsInFzcCI6IjAuMzIifQ%3D%3D&sprefix=rcbs+lead%2Caps%2C100&sr=8-1

[Daryl]

I have one of those RCBS dippers and ground off the flanges. The ridge on the back was bothersome for me, as was the handle boss on the opposite side of the handle.
That said, I still only use my old rounded Lyman dipper from the 70's.