Love casting!

MountainDevil54 · 11-06-2011, 03:17 PM

Spent about 45 minutes in the shop today casting up some 320gr reals. Man i love that mold! They come out so pretty and drop right out. Easier on my lead pile as well! I have a 250gr REAL mold coming in as well so hopefully they will shoot just as good as the 320's do. That'd be the perfect cheap to shoot deer bullet for me.

Got a question though. I've recently had to break into my 50lb lead pipe stash and today i used some of it and one section gave the lead a blue/red/pink tint. No matter how much wax i used to clean it, the color was always there. I had some blue colored bullets and i figure it might just be something that was in the lead causing a weird reaction. Any clue? Bullets came out soft as usual and cast beautifully.

Muley Hunter · 11-06-2011, 03:29 PM

Run for your life! You just made explosive bullets.

MountainDevil54 · 11-06-2011, 03:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Muley Hunter

Run for your life! You just made explosive bullets.

Wouldnt that be fun

HEAD0001 · 11-06-2011, 03:40 PM

Pay no attention to the color. I have seen used Plumber's lead as well as roof flashing be different colors over the years. Most of that is attributable to over the time staining of weather and content.

All you need to be concerned about is alloy content.

Drop an ingot on the floor(concrete) and if it goes "thud" instead of any tinging then it is pure lead and use it. If you hear any tinging when you drop it then you have some Tn or other impurities in your ingot. Tom.

idahoron · 11-06-2011, 05:52 PM

The colors your seeing is lead oxide. Gold, pink, blue, green. From my experience that is the softest lead you can find. You can skim and flux it until it is gone or. What you can do is in a 10 pound pot of this "colored" lead drop in an ounce or two of tin or lead shot. The lead will not gain any hardness to speak of but your junk on top will reduce. The tin helps to homogenize the lead.
I don't like the bullets that soft for the 500 S&W bullets. I don't think the blue bullets are as accurate.
Ron

corey012778 · 11-06-2011, 07:08 PM

I love casting too.

just did the math on how much I have saved. I can go to the range 4x more then if I was buying bullets.

as for the colors, last batch of sheet lead I got has them, not worried on bit about it