Newbie mistake I'm sure, just not sure what it was.
Having a hard time finding .530 round balls, and wanting to cast my own anyway I bought a Lee .530 mould, small lee electric pot and ladle and some Hornady .58 round balls figuring that since they're supposed to be pure lead they should melt easily.
I cleaned the mold as per the instructions, put the .58 balls in the electric pot and plugged it in. Set the dial for roughly 6.5 and waited for the lead to melt. It did in a matter of a few minutes but then started to continuously form a rough looking layer on top that I kept skimming off. The layer was sort of crunchy and yellow. I wound up scraping off enough of this layer to fill a small cat food can.
Did manage to cast a few balls but this yellow layer kept coating the ladle as well. No matter how much I scraped it off, more would form.
Any ideas what I was doing wrong?
Thanks,
Charlie
Having a hard time finding .530 round balls, and wanting to cast my own anyway I bought a Lee .530 mould, small lee electric pot and ladle and some Hornady .58 round balls figuring that since they're supposed to be pure lead they should melt easily.
I cleaned the mold as per the instructions, put the .58 balls in the electric pot and plugged it in. Set the dial for roughly 6.5 and waited for the lead to melt. It did in a matter of a few minutes but then started to continuously form a rough looking layer on top that I kept skimming off. The layer was sort of crunchy and yellow. I wound up scraping off enough of this layer to fill a small cat food can.
Did manage to cast a few balls but this yellow layer kept coating the ladle as well. No matter how much I scraped it off, more would form.
Any ideas what I was doing wrong?
Thanks,
Charlie