Tips for keeping my Lee 4-20 from rusting?

[Dr Prepper]

I piled all my gear together and scrap lead getting ready to plug her in for the first time to cast some slugs and buckshot etc. I have Brownells Marvelux flux but read in a review or two (doubtful credibility W/lots of positive reviews) that it rusted their melter.

I figured I still have quite a few other small projects to wrap up before I actually get around to it. So figured I'd ask:

Any tips for keeping the pot clean and rust free? Ditch the fancy flux and just use good ol' beeswax? Am I fine and making a big deal out if nothing?

TIA!

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[Certaindeaf]

I piled all my gear together and scrap lead getting ready to plug her in for the first time to cast some slugs and buckshot etc. I have Brownells Marvelux flux but read in a review or two (doubtful credibility W/lots of positive reviews) that it rusted their melter.

I figured I still have quite a few other small projects to wrap up before I actually get around to it. So figured I'd ask:

Any tips for keeping the pot clean and rust free? Ditch the fancy flux and just use good ol' beeswax? Am I fine and making a big deal out if nothing?

TIA!

Wax doesn't stay on the rig either.. both will be burned off by the melter and not provide any rust protection.
If you wanted to you could hit the whole thing with wd40 after it cools. It will be burned off at next fireup.
I wouldn't really worry about it but good onya for becoming a caster.

 

[Dr Prepper]

Wax doesn't stay on the rig either.. both will be burned off by the melter and not provide any rust protection.
If you wanted to you could hit the whole thing with wd40 after it cools. It will be burned off at next fireup.
I wouldn't really worry about it but good onya for becoming a caster.

Nice. Good to hear, I like it. And yeah mainly its to make stuff cheaper and make cool stuff you can't even find on the shelves. I'm super excited yo get rolling with it, I have my roll crimpers and cards of various thickness and everything. Had this 600jr for like 10-15yrs now.
Going to start modifying off the shelf cheap bulk shells, but hopefully some blue dot will come in stock again sometime soon.

 

[Certaindeaf]

Nice. Good to hear, I like it. And yeah mainly its to make stuff cheaper and make cool stuff you can't even find on the shelves. I'm super excited yo get rolling with it, I have my roll crimpers and cards of various thickness and everything. Had this 600jr for like 10-15yrs now.
Going to start modifying off the shelf cheap bulk shells, but hopefully some blue dot will come in stock again sometime soon.

Cool. I pretty much just got into shotshell reloading too..

Great Balls of 12 Gauge

Never got into reloading shotshells. Always wanted to, especially slugs and buckshot. That is, until recently. Got a 12 gauge Lee Loader here in the classifieds and then ordered a 1 1/8 oz .690 Lee round ball mold from Titan Reloading for $20.35 ($10 shipping) very recently and was ready to go...

www.northwestfirearms.com

 

[Dr Prepper]

I'd love to get one of those svorag molds or guilandi molds (spelling) from eBay. Ones Russian ones Italian but those are supposed to be pretty darn good.
I have a full set of 3 barrels for my Mossberg so I can do legit rifled slugs.

Have you found out yet, if you can indeed fit .350 round balls in for "00" buck? I know the recipe wouldn't quite be the same. But I've heard they fit..
I wish PrecisionReloading still did lab tests on homemade shotgun ammo.

 

[dangerranger60]

First I never melt scrap in my casting pot. That's what old cast iron skillets are for. It keeps the trash and dross out of my cast bullets.
From the skillet I make nice clean ingots in 3 lb sizes to best fit my pot.
When I'm done with the skillet I give it a spray of WD 40 to preserve it.
In my casting pot I flux with the small pieces of ski wax. it doesn't take much and I have had no rusting issues. DR

 

[Certaindeaf]

I'd love to get one of those svorag molds or guilandi molds (spelling) from eBay. Ones Russian ones Italian but those are supposed to be pretty darn good.
I have a full set of 3 barrels for my Mossberg so I can do legit rifled slugs.

Have you found out yet, if you can indeed fit .350 round balls in for "00" buck? I know the recipe wouldn't quite be the same. But I've heard they fit..
I wish PrecisionReloading still did lab tests on homemade shotgun ammo.

Not sure but Fortunecookie45lc has quite a few videos on various odd imported molds and specialty load books.

 

[Dr Prepper]

First I never melt scrap in my casting pot. That's what old cast iron skillets are for. It keeps the trash and dross out of my cast bullets.
From the skillet I make nice clean ingots in 3 lb sizes to best fit my pot.
When I'm done with the skillet I give it a spray of WD 40 to preserve it.
In my casting pot I flux with the small pieces of ski wax. it doesn't take much and I have had no rusting issues. DR

Ha, that's pretty much exactly what I did naturally. I already have a small stack of those little round ingots. I dont WD-40 any equipment though. That's the only change. I guess I didn't this before I had my melter, so it was just by chance, but worked out very well in my favor
Thanks for the tips.

 

[P7M13]

First I never melt scrap in my casting pot. That's what old cast iron skillets are for. It keeps the trash and dross out of my cast bullets.
From the skillet I make nice clean ingots in 3 lb sizes to best fit my pot.
When I'm done with the skillet I give it a spray of WD 40 to preserve it.
In my casting pot I flux with the small pieces of ski wax. it doesn't take much and I have had no rusting issues. DR

I use an old stainless 2 handled soup pot for my lead melting to cast into ingots, it pours way better than a sauce pan and I never worry about rust. I tried all kinds of flux for this (oil, sawdust, paraffin, beeswax, etc) and found kitty litter (pure clay) works best. Now have a few bins full of ingots.
In the melt pot, I tried crayons that weren't edible - what a fookin' smokey mess. Although its been three years since Iast cast any - though I have three new molds to test.
There are many members here who are also active over on castboolits - a fantastic, informational cornucopia.
I've never worried about my pots having a dusting of oxidation. I bought two of them used, and they already had rust, and it didn't seem to affect their operation.

 

[CLT65]

I keep mine in my dry garage, never had any rust issues since I threw out the Marvelux.

I've always been confused by the positive reviews of Marvelux. I have heard that you have to be very careful to follow the instructions. My experience with it was absolutely terrible. It covered everything with a crust that attracted moisture. It's possible I used too much and didn't know what I was doing though, that was back in my early days of casting back in the '90s. To be honest, I never gave it a second chance. I'm perfectly happy using bees wax and sawdust.

 

[Dr Prepper]

Two Interesting posts. So bentonite clay? How in the heck does that work? I wouldn't even think it would burn off, but that is EXACTLY its purpose to soak up and draw in impurities much like activated charcoal.

Hmm. That's a little disconcerting @CLT65 well I appreciate the accurate honestly, there's definitely something to the claims then. I may have to go buy some alternate flux before i try the marvelux first. I'd hate to much it up at the onset I like to take good care of my stuff and make it last.
I've been over to castboolits a few times, it can seem a little intimidating the amount of info.

 

[CLT65]

Well, there do seem to be plenty of people who like Marvelux, so it must be useful for something. I remember a thread on Castboolits about it some years back, and as I recall there were plenty of others who had the same bad experience and disdain for it as I did, but I also remember something about needing to use it in a very specific way. I suspect that it has its purpose and is useful when used correctly. I just remember being very frustrated at all the crusty buildup that attracted moisture and sputtered and spattered the next time you used it.

 

[P7M13]

So bentonite clay? How in the heck does that work? I wouldn't even think it would burn off, but that is EXACTLY its purpose to soak up and draw in impurities much like activated charcoal.

Let me apologize for initiating a thread drift, when your OP was about keeping your pot from rusting. My Lyman ingot molds also have a skim of rust on them (from when I bought them well used), and I have never worried about it introducing impurities. If i wanted to get them nice, black and shiny again, I'd need to use a hot kiln that got to 2000°F and introduce propane, natural gas or motor oil. (the motor oil is a super nasty mess).
Bentonite - If that's what cheap, clay kitty litter is made of, yes.
The purpose is not to draw off impurities, but to prevent the continual surface oxidation.
My opinion here :

• In a bulk melting pot, the lead may get as hot as 900°F. The point of the original melting is to remove the impurities from the scrap lead I'm melting. Filth, oxidation, whatever other crap is in it. It forms a dross on the top, and if you've noticed, as soon as you skim the dross off, a white film will form again. If you read up on it, it's likely lead carbonate. The kitty litter forms an insulating layer. Do I know whether or not it works? Not really, but I like to think it does. At least I'm not looking at a hot vat of lead turning white. I would find things like wheel weight clips floating in there. It's funny to see steel floating in a pot.
• You don't get lead hot enough in a reducing atmosphere to remove oxides from it. You'd need to be pretty hot for that, though I do not know what the temperature of that reduction reaction would be. It's an old potter's trick to get iridescence in the glaze on pots.
• When I go to pour, the last thing I'll do is remove impurities. I'll skim off the kitty litter, and then I'll mix in some copper sulfate crystals and it will remove zinc from the melt in exchange for the copper. Makes a white crystalline substance on the top - epsom salts. Skim that off too.
• Then I'll set the pot on a stable pivot and pour ingot molds, moving them in and out from underneath. Welding gloves, safety goggles, etc.

I dinked around trying to get a higher percentage of copper in my melt for increased hardness, but I couldn't get the melt hot enough without it becoming a fast oxidizing, smokey mess. I gave up on that and settled for just casting something between Lyman #2 and linotype. I have an induction melter now, but I've not tried that yet. If it works, I also have ~100 lbs of manganese to try.

 

[CLT65]

Speaking of alloys, I used to try to get scientific about it and mix the right alloy for the application. Then I realized that nearly all the shooting I did was informal, and all I really needed was enough hardness to avoid leading.

Then I started powder coating, and just forgot about a lot of it. All my hundreds of pounds of linotype and all my tin solder ingots just sit there. I toss a pound or so of linotype in a pot full of range scrap, and with powder coating its good enough for full power 44 mag loads, with no leading.

 

[Dr Prepper]

Let me apologize for initiating a thread drift,

Wow, great info! Thanks for drifting, by all means drift absolutely no worries. I'm not a control freak about topics. I appreciate the related details. I see there's quite a bit more I need to look into. For now my focus is mainly on shotgun stuff BUT I do plan on getting into pistol and rifle and already have a few molds for those.
I do have the lyman cast bullets book. its next in line.

 

[CLT65]

Here are some Lyman slugs I've had sitting on my bench for a while, several years actually. I've had the mold for literally decades but haven't used it much. I powder coated a few a while back just for kicks, but doubt there's really any advantage in powder coating slugs.

I bought a roll-crimper, but found that this type of sabot slug is better suited to a regular fold crimp. It's hard to get a good roll crimp with them.

 

[Dr Prepper]

Yeah I think, the trick will be to tinker slightly with the follower/powder cards within reason and lower the height of combined load to get them proper. How do they shoot? I can't remember but I want to say those are made to sabot with a regular follower and IIRC they can engage rifling and stabilize the round.
Hopefully one of these days I'll figure it out.

I keep forgetting to look it up but is there any cheap way to test for lead hardness? Maybe I'll do that now. Figured I'd ask since I'm already here.

 

[CLT65]

They are made to work with regular wads. To be honest I haven't tinkered with them, shot many or worked on loads, for probably 20 years. I'm just not much of a shotgun guy, but as I recall they shot pretty well.

As far as hardness testing, they make tools for that but I don't have one. Someone on castboolits came up with the idea to get a set of artist pencils, the type with varying graphite hardness. Sharpen the point and scrape the lead with the tip. They even made a chart of what pencil number corresponds with what lead hardness. It seems a bit rinky-dink, but it's cheap and seems to work.

 

[ageingstudent]

Speaking of alloys, I used to try to get scientific about it and mix the right alloy for the application. Then I realized that nearly all the shooting I did was informal, and all I really needed was enough hardness to avoid leading.

Then I started powder coating, and just forgot about a lot of it. All my hundreds of pounds of linotype and all my tin solder ingots just sit there. I toss a pound or so of linotype in a pot full of range scrap, and with powder coating its good enough for full power 44 mag loads, with no leading.

Yeah that powder coating really made alloying way less important. Thank God haha. Thank God linotype doesn't rust haha mine's just sitting there too.

 

[Dr Prepper]

They are made to work with regular wads. To be honest I haven't tinkered with them, shot many or worked on loads, for probably 20 years. I'm just not much of a shotgun guy, but as I recall they shot pretty well.

As far as hardness testing, they make tools for that but I don't have one. Someone on castboolits came up with the idea to get a set of artist pencils, the type with varying graphite hardness. Sharpen the point and scrape the lead with the tip. They even made a chart of what pencil number corresponds with what lead hardness. It seems a bit rinky-dink, but it's cheap and seems to work.

Yeah, I'd rather be working on actual cartridge reloads, which I am congruently but things seem to be getting "questionable/sketchy" better be prepared before hand than too late, pellets don't fly that far.. Even #4 or #5.

Speaking if which I tinkered with the flex seal slug mods a tad. I need to update that other thread I started.
Seems they will work but its a pita my first one leaked liquid seal all the way into the powder so of course it won't be straight forward. It also "glued" itself pretty well the the plastic hull. I was hoping it wouldn't adhere much if at all. Not my luck though. Curious about mylar next. Also takes longer than 10 days to dry.

That's really another topic though but I'll copy and paste it in the other thread with pics. I just wanted to mention it and not trying to get off topic.

Thanks a bunch guys.