for reloaders who cast their own

[Amy]

If I may share this with those of you who cast your own, or are just starting to:

My continuing learning experience as a commercial caster has recently taught me that casting with an alloy that is more than 5% antimony is a tricky business. I'm using a 6% antimony and 2% tin alloy currently, and while this works great in a Magma Bulletmaster, when hand casting one really does need to control the temperature of one's mould rather tightly.

If you don't what you are going to see is spot frosting on your bullets, and that means shrinking in those spots. You won't see the effects of it until you lube and size them, but when you do you will have lube all over the bullets leaking out under pressure in the die, which the bullet cannot seal well. The shrinkage also means the bullet is not concentric, and therefore not accurate either, and we most certainly don't want that.

For this reason I have an air hose hanging next to the two ProMelts I use for hand casting. This is for cooling the mould between pours to avoid that spot frosting, and it works pretty good. One can also use the air hose for cooling the sprues faster, which makes hand casting more efficient, and when you are doing it in commercial volume that's important.

Amy

[cloudcroft]

Just slow down the casting process rhythm.

Or better yet, use TWO moulds (same caliber or different) and alternate them...that will be about ideal re: keeping proper mould temperature.

For my needs -- "combat accuracy" -- I have never noticed any problem using "frosted" bullets.

-- John D.