First thing make sure you "smoke" the mold. I find a candle works well.
Second you have to get the mold heated whilst the lead melts so its nice and hot for when you pour. My first half dozen usually dont fill the mold but as it comes up to temp it starts to go good.
Dont try heating too much lead at a time, about half a cupfull is enough. Turn the gas down when it melts, you want to try to keep the silvery colour on the top and not going blue grey.
Heat the ladle, leave it standing in the hot lead, scrape the dross off with it and move it around. I use a stainless spoon modified.
Rest the ladle next to the pour hole and tip it in and leave a little puddle on top. This feeds it as it cools. Work a bit faster it only tales a couple of seconds to chill enough to open the mold. You gotta keep things hot. But not too hot.
I open the mold over a leather gardening glove and tap the big nut to make the slug drop out. Quickly close the mold and pour again. Its a matter of seconds between each pour. Pour, move the gate, open, tap, close, pour. Do about 20 and top up the lead. While its melting rest the mold on a bit of brick so it dont lose too much heat, tip the slugs off the glove ready for the next batch.
I do over 100 an hour. Over 600 per gaz cart.
Last edited by Smokeless Coal; 04-06-2007 at 09:28 PM.
“If a cricketer, for instance, suddenly decided to go into a school and batter a lot of people to death with a cricket bat, which he could do very easily, I mean, are you going to ban cricket bats?” :- Prince Philip said after Dunblane
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