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533 Posts
I cast some bullets out of WW and I thought some of them came out looking pretty good. That is until I looked at them under magnification and found out that the points of the grooves were complete radii instead of having any flats on the OD at all.
I thought maybe I had too much soot built up in the grooves of the mold or maybe I needed a bit mor tin in my melt. So, I cleaned my mold, re-smoked my mold lightly, addeds some Oatey plumbing solder to the mix and tried again. My bullets looked atrocious. Some of them were not even bullets but completely misshapen chunks. I was water dropping and when I pulled some of the bullets out, some were entirely broken in half.
What do you think happened? Was the melt not hot enough? Was the solder a bad idea?
Also, I added some sawdust for flux - maybe 1/4 tablespoon. That left an ash residue floating on top which I just had to skim off. I don't see what good that did at all. I thought flux was supposed to make a molten metal flow and run better. Why don't we use the kind of flux you use when soldering a pipe joint?
Sheesh this is discouraging. My first try casting some pure lead muzzleloader bullets went so easily. After that it has all been downhill and my results are getting worse not better. Very frustrating.
I thought maybe I had too much soot built up in the grooves of the mold or maybe I needed a bit mor tin in my melt. So, I cleaned my mold, re-smoked my mold lightly, addeds some Oatey plumbing solder to the mix and tried again. My bullets looked atrocious. Some of them were not even bullets but completely misshapen chunks. I was water dropping and when I pulled some of the bullets out, some were entirely broken in half.
What do you think happened? Was the melt not hot enough? Was the solder a bad idea?
Also, I added some sawdust for flux - maybe 1/4 tablespoon. That left an ash residue floating on top which I just had to skim off. I don't see what good that did at all. I thought flux was supposed to make a molten metal flow and run better. Why don't we use the kind of flux you use when soldering a pipe joint?
Sheesh this is discouraging. My first try casting some pure lead muzzleloader bullets went so easily. After that it has all been downhill and my results are getting worse not better. Very frustrating.