A day at the pot!

[dromia]

Joe came round on Tuesday for a casting session, he was needing some Cadet boolits and some 120 grainers for his 303s for indoor shooting.

The silver stream - filling the mould.





Cutting the sprue.





Dropping the boolits.





A nice pile.





A study in concentration.





Putting back the sprues.





The fruits of our labour.





Boolit Casting!

You know it makes sense.

[jjvc]

And next week we do it all again. tongueout

[Blackstuff]

Do you/how do you heat your mold Adam? And do you just let it run with the temperature its gets to naturally with the molding or do you cool it at all?

[bnz41]

Good job.

But where are your safety glasses and gloves

[dromia]

Aluminium gets dipped in the melt, iron gets a blow torch and brass sits on a hot plate.

Joe is like me when working a pot he doesn't like using gloves as you can't feel for the pour with gloves on, ordinary glasses work fine to protect the eyes from any wee splashes that may occur.

When smelting however the risk of the tinsel fairy is far greater so the full kit is worn then.

[dromia]

BTW Joe we were both wrong on the elf and softy thing.

We thought it would have been the first post to the thread but was third.

Slow of the mark y'all.

[John MH]

Like the 'Zulu' mug.

[dromia]

Like the 'Zulu' mug.

Thanks, my wife does them.

[Demonic69]

Do you use a gas check with them Adam? Also, what mix do you use for your lead (range lead or bought?), how expensive does it work out per boolit?

[dromia]

Regarding gas checks it depends on the design and the application, mostly I can get get plain based or non gaschecked, gaschecked designs to shoot OK up to around 1600 fps. However some gas checked designs in some rifles need a gas check to perform at any velocity.

For 1000 yrds plus loads I use range scrap with no more than 20% linotype, depends on the range scrap plus (and this is the important ingredient) no more than 1% copper. You don't want a hard alloy, you want a tough and malleable alloy, my long range alloys usually have a brinnel hardness of around 18.

Cost, I couldn't say but it has to be a lot cheaper than condoms as nearly all my materials are obtained for free. Obviously there is a cost in moulds and a furnace if you go that way but good boolits can be cast from a mould, iron pot, dipper and a camping stove. Your capital expenditure will soon disappear the more you cast, I don't think my stuff owes me anything any more, just the electricity and gas is the only real cost, I don't count my time as it is part of the hobby I enjoy. I'm shooting at least 1000 cast boolits a month in various calibres. Wouldn't like to have to pull out cash money every month for bought boolits at that rate of shooting, like all things handloading you don't actually save money but you do shoot more.