My father, brother, and I fixed Dad's bottom pour pot by first removing the steel plug. We found that it had tool marks on the tapered end that plugs the hole, so the first thing we did was polish that taper very smooth. The, on inspecting the hole in the bottom, we found burrs, and casting dross in the hole. Dad found the right size drill bit, and cut that out. Then, he took his next numbered sized bit and enlarged the hole, to make it concentrically ROUND. When we tested the steel plug, it fit very close, and the drips came pretty much to a stop, unless some dross clogged the hole and kept the plug from sealing it properly.
There was always a thin plate of steel under the pot, to protect the wood workbench on which it sat. The drips would land on that steel plate, and cool almost instantly( considering the size of that plate.) Dad liked to knock his sprues off onto the plate, and periodically collect all the lead to put back into the pot.
I preferred to knock the sprues off above the pot so they fell into the pot from the mold. It takes less time for the sprues to become molten lead my way, than if you put a lot of lead into the pot, where you then have to wait several minutes for the lead to come back up to casting temperature. Also, when you let the sprues and scraps and drips from the sides of the mold gather on the bench or plate, you risk contaminating the lead with paint, or wood chips, or sawdust, or even filing bits. All that then has to be skimmed off the top, and you also then have to flux the lead again to bring all the small stuff up to the surface. IMHO, all that extra work is a royal PITA!
I didn't try to change how my father cast balls and bullets, because he had been casting lead soldiers as a boy, and had always had some kind of casting equipment on hand. But, I handled the casting my own way.
The Benefit I found of using a bottom pour mold, is that I could get the lead INTO THE MOLD faster, using the bottom pour mold, rather than using a ladle to dip the molten lead out of the pot. With the hole and steel plug, or "Plunger" fixed, and polished, we almost never had any problems with the hole not closing. I dripped more lead off the side of the cut-off plate, and mold than ever came out of that hole in the pot as a "drip". Any drip was usually caught on the top of the cut-off plate, along with the spreading puddle of lead I put there to deal with bubbles and voids.
Getting the lead into the mold faster was important in pouring Large Caliber balls and bullets, where the lead would be cooling as soon as it left the pot. I also opened the hole in the cut-off plate, using a countersink, to let more lead pour into these large molds, faster. That helped eliminate wrinkled balls and bullets, and kept air voids or "bubbles" out of the lead balls and bullets.
We even enlarged the hole in our Lyman dipper to let more lead flow out of it faster, to help us cure some problems we had with lead not fully filling in the base of bullets under the cut-off plate. We resorted to using a pot and that dipper when the bottom pour mold was shipped back to the manufacturer to have it thermostat re-calibrated.
That is a caution I want to share with members new to casting. Those thermocouples corrode, and the calibration of the scales goes bad after a few years. Most all the factories offer a repair or re-calibration "overhaul" service, and its generally a lot cheaper than buying another electric casting pot. :thumbsup: :hatsoff: :hatsoff:
Was thinking about replacing it with a newer model. Now I wonder if it I was lucky. :idunno: Will think a bit longer before retiring the old one. Larry
Duh! This isn't exactly new to me but I haven't done it in a very long time. Not since the mid 80's. I used to cast Lymans heavy skirt 540 gr? mini for my .58 back then. I just remembered I bought a big Lyman 20 lb pot back then. :shake: I just have no idea where it is now. I think it maybe buried out in one the bays in the barn where a lot of stuff got put and forgotten about during a move. Oh man, I'm going to havta get someone to go look through the stuff and hopefully find it. I have no idea where it would have ended up otherwise but I haven't used it since about 87' lol.
