This casting stuff is fun, if you keep your face out of the smoke.
I was casting a lot of different bullets last nite, pretty much all with the same batch of lead, gotta use what I have for now. I was casting 350gr .460, and 420gr .460, also 265gr .380, and some .495 round ball. Little bit of everything.
Each time I do this it seems I learn a lot more.
For instance, I found that if I knock the sprue plate off as soon as the lead cools enough not to run, and THEN right away open the mold the bullets seem to drop right out. For me, the longer I waited, the harder they came out, especially the round ball. All moldes are aluminum Lee molds, except the ball, it is an old Lyman steel mold I picked up used.
I also figured out that filling the mold ASAP works best for making nice smooth bullets. Seems I'd read somewhere to fill them carefully to avoid gaps in the bullet, but when I do that I just about always get nose wrinkles in the .460 bullets. Filling fast cured that.
Now I don't have a digital scale, just a balance beam (too slow that way), so I haven't been weighing them to see about the voids yet.
I do know this, it's getting fun. man you can sure crank out some bullets when you do it that way too.
Oh, yes, question.
I melted down some old lead bullets (mix unknown) that were lubed already, meant for a 45 cal pistol. Now the round balls from this lead were very nice, but the 420gr bullets were starting to come out very frosted, and eventually got brittle to the point of parts breaking off, so I put them back in the pot. I THOUGT I maight have been going too fast for them, but what causes brittle bullets?
The lead bullets I melted weren't brittle, and I tried to get all the lube skimmed off the top of the lead. Did the old lube do it?
Was melting the bullets a bad idea?