Casting the EPP UG 45 150

Adirondack Jack · November 30, 2006, 10:53:58 PM

First and foremost, the mold is excellent. Runs really well.

However, one idiosyncrasy of casting this bullet is that care must be taken not to ding up the relatively fragile forward driving band when dropping "tender" bullets.

I noted in my first batch, which was dropped onto a folded towel per my normal practice, that I had a fair percentage of bullets that suffered damage to the forward driving band,, and any small nick became evident when sized and lubed, as the luber would squirt lube up alongside. Between visual rejects and those rejected in the size/lube step, I was running about 10% - 12% reject rate, which is too high by my lights.

This afternoon I ran another bunch and had much better luck. I've never been one who liked to water quench bullets, as splashing water anywhere near the lead pot and mold bothers me. But I thought it would be a better method to protect the tender bullets.

So, to control the potential for splashes, especially as I use a low to the ground set up for my lead pot (propped on two upended concrete blocks on the floor as I work seated, with the spue box to the immediate right of the pot, and the drop box to the right of that).

The answer was to drape a doubled towel over a plastic pail containing about 3 inches of water, securing the towel with a bungee around the rim of the pail, such that the towel formed a gently sloped "chute" inside the top of the pail, and obscured the water below except for about 20% of the surface. I dropped the bullets onto the towel, and they rolled off the far edge, dropping into the water below. Periodically I made sure the tender bullets were not piling up in the drop area, simply by sloshing the pail a bit.

I cast 11 lbs of 150 grainers (500+) before running out of time. Tonite I inspected them, and rejected about 5%, and of them perhaps 10 were bad fills, and the rest dings of one sort or another.

I'm running mostly straight WW, with a minor percentage of recovered commercial bullets tossed into the pot as well.

The bullets look much "prettier" than my normal product, and will undoubtedly suffer fewer rejects in the lube process (I think I got all the bad ones.)

Driftwood Johnson · December 01, 2006, 11:38:32 AM

Howdy AJ

You're a lot pickier than me. It takes a really ugly bullet before I reject any of my home cast bullets for CAS. Mostly I just run them through the lubrasizer and load them up. Lube groove not quite filled with lube? Fine, most of them have more than enough anyway. Base a teensy bit rounded instead of perfectly flat? Load it on up, no one will ever see it. A little frosting? A teensy bit of wrinkle? Looks good to me, I ain'r shooting bullseye here, and if I miss it's because of where the front sight was, not the bullet.

Oh, well, different strokes.

Noz · December 01, 2006, 11:46:45 AM

What Driftwood said!

Adirondack Jack · December 01, 2006, 11:49:30 AM

Ho Driftwood. I don't wanna give the wrong impression. I have actually dug a mitt full of bullets out of the reject can and loaded em up and shot em in a match and I know they worked just fine.

However, as a novice caster, and one who casts for a long range rifle, I'm still working to perfect my methods, and like well made bullets. I see no reason NOT TO make well made bullets for CAS if it is possible to do in a timely basis. It was kinda neat having only 5% "junkers" even with my high standards.

Hey, if I wanna load crap, I can order bullets from NBC

doc wheelock · December 01, 2006, 12:48:21 PM

sounds like a winner to me......

just what the misses needed as my christmass list gets longer and longer...

oh well they say the one with the most toys wins right???

HO! HO! HO!

MERRY CHRISTMASS TO ALL

sundance44`s · December 01, 2006, 01:17:42 PM

Us pickey casters are a lot aren`t we ...everytime i cast i hear that little voice in my head saying if its worth doing its worth doing right ...thats when i start pitchin the not so perfect ones back in the melt ..
I never could get the perfect numbers i wanted out of casting with an electric pot ...i went back to my gas set up ...that made me much happier , i can heat my mold beside the fire while i`m waiting on the melt to get just right ...that way my first cast looks as good as the very last one .
The wife won an over all shoot against the men and women last month at our blackpowder club ...and all i could say was ...I cast her bullets ..

and she tells every one mine look better than store bought ..makes me feel like the king of casting ..lol

Adirondack Jack · December 01, 2006, 01:28:43 PM

Sundance, I spent a little bit of time fixing yachts once after a hurricane had messed em up.

After several "conversations", I had to tell one nice lady "look, I'm slow, but I don't charge a ton and I do nice work. Yer free to take your boat now and pay for the 75% that's done". As long as I was paying my bills and eating ok, it meant more to me that the boat sail out looking "right" than when it sailed out

Same goes for bullets

Dick Dastardly · December 01, 2006, 06:14:43 PM

The next Big Lube™ newsletter has an article that addresses this question. However, here's an advanced look.

I use the box that the mold ships in to drop my bullets in. I fold up a big soft towel and lay it across the open box. Then, I dump the hot bullets in the top of the covered box and do another pour. While that's cooling, I "close" the box top, dumping the last pour into the box bottom. Then, I dump the current batch etc. etc. etc.

Since I use several layers of soft towel, I get very little damage. Also, after reading AJs report, I'm going to try his method.

Yes, the new EPP-UG bullet is more fragile, but it sure shoots GOOD! It's well worth the little extra effort to get 'em right, especially if you are as picky as I am.

Driftwood has a point though. At SASS distances, a well aimed shot is going to hit steel, even if the bullet isn't perfect. I'm just fussy, that's all. . .

DD-DLoS

Driftwood Johnson · December 04, 2006, 02:11:06 PM

Howdy Again

Yeah, I've heard that little voice, the one talking about it being worth doing it right if you're going to bother doing it at all. I also have another voice in my head that says if even the crummy bullets hit the steel just fine, why are you wasting valuable time throwing them back into the pot? Truth is, I can buy bullets that are more perfect than mine, but they cost a lot of money. Mine work just fine, even though they are not all perfect. Don't get me wrong, they do vaguely resemble the contours of the mold. The really, really bad ones get tossed back in. But most of them work just fine.

Long range is an entirely different matter. As a matter of fact, I don't even cast bullets for long range, I buy them. Just too time consuming trying to get every single bullet perfect, then weighing each one and rejecting those that vary by more than 1 grain, when I can barely see a target beyond 200 yards anyway. But for me, lazy as I am, my wrinkled, somewhat imperfect bullets work fine for CAS.

Mason Stillwell · December 04, 2006, 05:04:42 PM

I shoot the CULLS and SELL the rest.

Mason

Dick Dastardly · December 04, 2006, 05:41:15 PM

Ho Mason, Pard.

I've shot some of yer cast boolits. I don't think you have enuf culls to keep you at the line. Nope, yer far too modest. I also know that any of the customers I've sent your way have been mighty pleased with yer work.

Keep up the good work.

DD-DLoS