Casting Tip: Mold Temperature for PURE Lead

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Well, Lew, looks like you may need to start uploading your content to a different platform, like Full30, GunStreamer, Rumble, or even Vimeo.
 
Wonder if they would give you an explanation if you wrote or called them?
I bet not, Ed. I've got other friends who are "GunTubers," and they regularly get demonetized and have videos pulled with no explanation. Their appeals never get heard either. There's other content on there, like lewd videos with a lot of cussing and bathroom humor that stay up, but you do anything that has firearm content, forget it.
 
If you look up "FairTube", you'll see there's a group trying to organize and get YouTube to be more transparent and consistent with their own policies. It seems that YouTube's own rules are inconsistently applied and unclear. THere's also no appeals process where one actually gets to speak to a human - it's all bots.
 
Well fellas YouTube decided to Remove my Casting Video? I got home this evening from Cutting firewood and This was in my Email, There are several different Bullet Casting Videos on YouTube, I can’t imagine anything in my Video that would have Violated their Firearms Policy? Oh well
Wg8vdpt.jpg
Just last week I went searching for this very video and couldn't find it - now I know why. A friend had lent me his brand new Lyman GP mold, and I needed a refresher on how to use it. I hope Lew can get it posted on another platform.
 
From what I understand casting is best done around 800. What would be the max temp for a aluminum mold? Or a never exceed temp?
 
Aluminum melting point is 1221 Fahrenheit so don’t go above that :D .
 
Just the way i Flux :lewis: It Helps Clean the Lead, Since i started doing this (Fairly recently) I quit Seeing Odd Spots in My Bullets (Like Little Blisters). I push the Paper Towel Down and Stir it Good around the Bottom of the Pot, and Along the Sides. I do this QUICKLY, When i lift the Spoon and The Folded Paper Towel (Costco Brand :)) Pops up on Top, It is hasn’t Charred, it’s Brown, But NOT Charred (Leaving Gunk behind) Like a Wooden Stick will Char. It’s odd how the Folded Paper Towel Works, But it Does For me :lewis:
I can't wait to try using a folded paper towel as a means of fluxing lead. Back when I cast balls for my flintlocks, I used either beeswax, or paraffin wax to flux with. Just dropped about a teaspoons worth into the molten lead, stir the now vigorously smoking wax throughly through the lead, and skim off the dross that floats to the top. The paper towel method seems much easier, and if the paper is not burning, just turning brown, then it won't stink up the place like the wax does.
 
Lewis, what if you eliminate the word Bullet and refer to them as conicals and round balls? They pick up on key words.
 
I cast both muzzleloading round balls and smokeless powder rifle and pistol bullets. I use two different casting pots, a dipper pot (Lee) for the pure lead for roundballs and an RCBS bottom pour furnace for my smokeless powder bullets.
I have had good luck trading alloy with others on another forum. I traded my range scrap/wheel weight lead for smokeless for pure lead for the RB's.
I use both aluminum (Lee) for both RB and smokeless, and Lyman and RCBS molds for smokeless only.
I find Lee molds have a tendency to drop oversized, and that requires them to be run through sizing dies. The Lyman and RCBS tend to drop true to size w/o the need for sizing.
For my smokeless ingots (made mostly from range scrap) I flux the melt with tea candles I buy by the bag from Wally World. This helps to bring the dirt and other crud to the surface where I skim it off. I do this usually 3 times, then pour the liquid lead into muffin tins for cooling and hardening. This usually means I have little dross to skim off the mix when heated in my RCBS furnace. I have considered putting all of my pure lead into my "cooking" LP fryer and doing the same thing since I don't know the makeup of the pure lead ingots. I do know the ingots I have gotten from others are soft, they can easily be dented by a fingernail.
My pure lead mix requires skimming off the top probably every dozen or so pours.
Casting is enjoyable and saves me a ton of money on bullets. Lead bullets are easier on smokeless barrels then jacketed bullets tend to be. I also powder coat with the shake and bake method, it seems to produce little if any leading in my barrels.
 
Well fellas YouTube decided to Remove my Casting Video? I got home this evening from Cutting firewood and This was in my Email, There are several different Bullet Casting Videos on YouTube, I can’t imagine anything in my Video that would have Violated their Firearms Policy? Oh well
Wg8vdpt.jpg
Do you have this posted anywhere else, or as a downloadable file? I've watched it a couple times but still have a lot to learn from it!
 
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