BAD/GOOD DAY CASTING

[RANGER RICK]

Went out to the garage today to turn on the caster pot .
I set my 5 molds under the master caster to get them up to temp , usually takes 45 min and were ready to start casting .
It was a whopping 12 degrees in the garage so I went inside the house to get a different coat on and get some reject bullets to put them in the pot .
Well I got side tracked and did not check on the pot for the full 45 min .
I usually check on things every ten minutes or so .
When I went into the garage I had a huge mess and I was missing a mold !!!!

Thats right the needle seat was not seated right and half the 90 pounds was all over my casting bench and covered a mold completely up !!!

Took me awhile to chip all the lead off the bench and the mold .
The mold handles took the brunt of the lead and they got a little crispy !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Got everything back into good working order and I was off casting beauties for two hours until my back was and icicle .
Closed things up and went and got the snow blower going and spent the next two hours blowing the driveway .

When will spring get here ?

RR

[jhalcott]

  GEE WHIZZ Rick, I've heard of pouring a "generous" sprue puddle BUT that's way to generous!! Inever had that much dripping with my Lee pot. Casting in 12 degrees?  I'm almost surprised the lead even melted! Happy new year

[Lloyd Smale]

been threre done that. (More then once)

[RANGER RICK]

Yes it was a mess for sure .
It took about 15 minutes with a propane hand torch just to get it from under the pot .
There was two other sprue plates in the mess but was easy to get out .
I have the pot sitting on a 11/4 thick marble slab that I got from a friend and has held up for the last three years until this .
If you notice in the first picture the slab is in three chunks . The concentrated heat of the lead split it three ways and migrated under the slab to the wood bench which also got crispy and onto the concrete floor .

I was able to dip the lead encrusted mold into the pot for about 5 minutes and all the lead was removed .
I also did another idiot thing to boot !!!!
After I pulled the mold from the pot I picked up a paper towel to clean out vent line's ETC but it was not a paper towel but a paper towel look a like that came from a packet to clean out my respirator and it was some sort of nylon material or such and melted to the inside of the mold !!!!!!
Again I brought the torch out to get the mold clean but in the process of getting the torch I bumped the Thermometer and knocked it into the pot and whammy glass exploded ....... at this time I just started to laugh out load , what else was I going to do ??

What a day .............................

RR