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paulsnapp · June 3, 2013, 04:14 AM

Yesterday was my first attempt at bullet casting. I have watched many videos and read a great deal on this forum as well as others. I am glad to say most everything went well. All of my equipment (pot, ingot molds, bullet mold) is RCBS. The alloy I am using is RotoMetals #2 Lyman. I am also using an Auber PID controller to control my pot temperature. The only real problem I have is getting ingots to drop out of the RCBS ingot molds. The first ingots were from a pot temp of 675F and the second ingots were from a pot temp of 725F. Both began with cleaned ingots that had been sitting on a 900watt hot plate with the setting on high. I did not know how long to wait after pouring into the ingots before I tried to drop them. The very first ones did not drop at 10 minutes so I tried every 10 minutes to see if cooling would help. It didn't. I finally had to pry them out with a screwdriver. After that I would let them cool for about 5 minutes and then turned the molds upside down and banged them really hard on the damp towel I had on the table. It took a lot of hard banging to get them to drop out. Maybe this is normal, but if not, I would appreciate some advice.

I also tried to mold a few bullets from my RCBS .44-40 cowboy mold. This went pretty well. I began at 675F but had wrinkled bullets. I walked this temperature up 10F at a time until the wrinkles went away at 725F and bullets are shiny. Just wondering if this is a normal temperature for the RotoMetals Lyman #2 alloy?

June 3, 2013, 04:14 AM	#1
paulsnapp Junior Member Join Date: April 23, 2013 Posts: 13	Advice needed with ingot mold Yesterday was my first attempt at bullet casting. I have watched many videos and read a great deal on this forum as well as others. I am glad to say most everything went well. All of my equipment (pot, ingot molds, bullet mold) is RCBS. The alloy I am using is RotoMetals #2 Lyman. I am also using an Auber PID controller to control my pot temperature. The only real problem I have is getting ingots to drop out of the RCBS ingot molds. The first ingots were from a pot temp of 675F and the second ingots were from a pot temp of 725F. Both began with cleaned ingots that had been sitting on a 900watt hot plate with the setting on high. I did not know how long to wait after pouring into the ingots before I tried to drop them. The very first ones did not drop at 10 minutes so I tried every 10 minutes to see if cooling would help. It didn't. I finally had to pry them out with a screwdriver. After that I would let them cool for about 5 minutes and then turned the molds upside down and banged them really hard on the damp towel I had on the table. It took a lot of hard banging to get them to drop out. Maybe this is normal, but if not, I would appreciate some advice. I also tried to mold a few bullets from my RCBS .44-40 cowboy mold. This went pretty well. I began at 675F but had wrinkled bullets. I walked this temperature up 10F at a time until the wrinkles went away at 725F and bullets are shiny. Just wondering if this is a normal temperature for the RotoMetals Lyman #2 alloy?