Screwbolts

There should be no need to use oil, "cooking Spray" on your molds. Any oil will cause wrinkled booltzs till it burns out. If you have a sticking mold carefully look at it under a magnifying light, carefully check the cavities with a cotton ended Q-tip, any burrs will catch the cotton and show you were the problems are. then Carefully!! with a sharp knife remove the burs to smooth the edges of the cavity. CAREFULLY! then take a lead pencil and coat the cavity and top of the mold , even the sprue plate with graphite from the pencil, yup scribble all over it, the graphite will lube the mold and work as a release agent, any time you get lead alloy sticking to the mold or the top plate, use the pencil to remove the alloy. the best pencil for this is the large contractors pencil. you wont be able to hurt the mold with the pencil but you can remove the stuck alloy and recoat the mold even hot.

On the LEE pot, set the temp. at what ever is needed to just keep the alloy liguid, the reastste isn't lab grade calibrated so they will vary greatly between pots. different alloys will reguire different settings. different molds even have preferences for running hot or cooler.

Always flux the metal after filling the pot, it will get some more dirt out of it and will alsso help blend the metals if the inguts are of different batches. Your alloy can't be to clean!

SHarp Shooter: your WWs un-heat treated (Br 9 to 11) will be a hardness some were between pure lead (Br 5 to 7) and # 2 alloy (br 15 to 16). that will work for RBs, conicles may be finicky compared to pure lead.

I have over 30 different molds and shoot a lot of cast boolits. I shoot cast in all my rifles/handguns, not just Smoke/Smokeless poles.

Powerfisher

Great tip on the pencil trick. I have been using the spray but didnt like the idea too much, ya know, just in case a little spec falls in the moltent lead. Since my first casting session, I don all the PPE, cap, glasses, mask, gloves andold coveralls and boots. I got lucky once with a divine intervention, I wont tempt fate again.

Screwbolts

Hi All, I just copied and pasted the following from another group that I participate in. The weight and size and hardness are facts.

I am not saying WWs won't work, but pure is always my choice for RBs:

""WW is worthless for muzzleloder bullets. Several problems take place.
One, they don't shrink as much as lead so the ball will be just a tad bit
larger than a pure lead ball. WW is not pure lead so the presents of lighter
alloys will make that slightly larger ball weigh less than a pure lead
round ball. Last but not least, WW being harder and larger, will be a pain to
start down the bore. It won't want to take or bite the cloth patch with
the same ease that the softer pure lead ball will.

Save yourself a headache and don't use WW for round balls."

Ken

HEAD0001

The forums are full ofopinios. That is what the forums are all about. To learn more about your passion. But to call WW a "headache". Well that is a stretch of the imagination. And to say that WW drops at a certain diameter that is different than pure lead, well that may be true. But then I have seen 2 molds from the same company that were suppose to be the exact same mold----and had them drop balls and bullets of a different diameter. So that argument does not hold any water.

The best way to get an accurate round ball is to play around with the patch thickness to find the patch that your rifle prefers. So how would drop diameter be a "Headache".

I have witnessed a lot of "Purist" shooters who want to advance their agenda and say that only certain alloys or bullet types should be used. But that is a biased opinion to start with.

WW is extremely easy for most shooters to attain, at a reasonable cost. And pure lead is consistently harder to find. And I doubt if most of it is "Pure".

I can not imagine there would be a difference in the killing effectiveness between pure lead and WW in a 62 caliber ball. My gosh that is 2/3 of an inch before any expansion. Now that is a HOLE.

I do believe the word "Worthless" is overkill. Tom.