pretty quiet in here!

do we need to do a roll-call?

tasunkawitko in lewistown, montana. hope to actually start casting boolits this year after hunting season, now that i have all the "stuff."

Went out and shot some cast bullets today. Just enough to see that my rifle was on.

Yep, I'm here, and was playing with 277 gr. bullets in the .358 Win today.

I fear that most patrons of the BSB boards are still at the age that speed is the Holy Grail, and haven't time or desire to learn the fine art of true premium bullets, and thier proper usage.

I'm here.  Just getting back into casting after a long layoff.

Well, now, lemme think here...

148 gr. .357 DEWC, 158 gr. .357 SWC, 125 gr. .356 TC, 230 gr. .452 RN, 255 gr. .452 SWC, 150 gr. .308 RN.

I think that's it for the moment.  I use wheel weights from the local recycler for base material.

BCBoy,.... I'd reccomend the:... "Lyman cast bullet handbook", Third edition.

Waksupi, those iron plated deer are really getting on my nerves. Pretty soon they will come up with self-defense weapon systems!

NH_Hunter

Factory bullet cores are generally pretty much dead soft. The Ww's we use are harder, and can be taken up to 35 Brinnell or thereabouts, by oven tempering. But they are still softer than the jackets on the commercial bullets.
The hardness is no big deal, however. If you understand pressure, lube, fit, and bore condition, you can shoot most calibers at the same velocities as jacketed bullets.

blkpwdernut what is your alloy? How hot is your melt? What are you fluxing with?

Blkpwdernut - First off, you are doing something that is damn dangerous. You should never get lead anywhere NEAR boiling point. At that point, you are definitely putting off some serious toxic fumes, and this is one of the few ways you and anyone downwind can get serious lead poisoning while casting.

The gold color skin is tin oxidizing in the alloy, as it is the quickest of the elements to react with oxegen on the top of the melt.

I'm not sure what the scum is you mention, but suspect the culprit is, the flux is not reaching the bottom of the melt. Get yourself a DRY wood dowel or old ramrod, any old piece of wood. Use this to scrape the sides and bottom of the pot as you flux.

This will bring the trash to the top. An added benefit of the stick, is, being carbon based, it is actually flux itself, and is taking flux completely through the mix, and to the bottom. Putting a flux on top of the pot is worthless to me, as lead has a much more dense specific gravity than anything you may try and stir into it.

When you stir a mix with flux on top, you are hoping that all the metal in the pot will contact the surface where the flux is. In practice, it generally doesn't, except in a very small pot. When I melt wheel weights, I usually have about 100- 125 lbs. in my pot at a time. There is no way you could stir this and thouroghly clean it with top fluxing.

Make sure you wear glasses when using the stick. If it has any moisture in it, it could cause a pot explosion.   Even with my old dry broken ramrods, I will get some interesting spitting and sizzling from the pot at times.