When casting how do you determine rejects

Look for for shuts, wrinkles, frosting. Check the mold fill, in the grease groves and the base of the bullet should be sharp not rounded. I only weigh them if for hunting or need better accuracy. I size powder coat then size again.

After a while your eye gets used to good vs bad bullets, I'm picky. It don't cost much to just throw bad ones back in the pot.

AJC1 said:

That was exactly my position rejects are just recycled opportunity to learn and do better...

Click to expand...

You don't have to add them back in tight away, I don't like cooking my pot down. I put them to the side for the next pot fill or have a bad bin for the next casting day.

If the bullet does not look right when I drop it from the mold, it gets recycled.

I tend to run the pot until it is low as opposed to recycling the waste back into the pot as it is generated. I then refill the pot with the scrap as well adding new lead to fill the pot.

I generally run two different molds, when the first gets too hot, I switch to the other mold for a while.

I suppose I could slow down my process to allow for one mold to cool enough before dropping bullets but that is not in my DNA.

Everything Troy said except for with pistol plinking bullets I don't care if they are a little frosty. As long as they have good fill out, no wrinkles, sharp edges, and a flat base. Coat them and shoot. I haven't cast rifle bullets for hunting yet but I will be more picky when I do.

I cast hard lead for centerfire, and soft lead for blackpowder. When I have cast enough bullets for my needs, I melt the spruces and reject bullets and pour ingots with the remaining lead u til the pot is nearly empty.
When the ingots cool, I mark them with "hard" or "soft" with a sharpie. Then I am ready to begin the next session with either type of lead.

I am starting out and I reject anything that is not perfect.

Click to expand...

That’s what I do, start out and once the mold is up to temp and dropping good bullets I dump the start up bullets and sprues back into the pot and continue.

There's nothing wrong with frosty bullets.

I return them to the pot if they have wrinkles (really only in the beginning) or if they have soft looking edges and not sharp angles. I like my bullets frosty personally. When they are frosty I know they are filled out and will drop from the mold without issue. I've killed plenty of paper and 3 deer with frosty bullets.

For target shooting frosted bullets are fine, as long as there size is were you can use them. For hunting it's a no go, the frosted are really brittle from what I've seen. My be a way to make a cast varmint bullet tho.

I don't care about frost. I check for sharp edges, particularly at the lube grooves.

Generally, if those edges are sharp, everything else is kosher.

Too cool, the edges are rounded, and there are likely wrinkles.
Even if frosty, if the edges and bases are sharp, I'm good with it.

I shoot them. If they don't go into the group then I assume they were defective. Or at least that's what I tell myself.

Okay, seriously, I have three different standards. The first is for rapid fire from a handgun at close range. Defensive practice, in other words. I have pretty low requirements for those. They need to go bang. They need to hit a human silhouette at seven yards. So big obvious visual defects get culled and the rest get loaded.

The next standard is for all-around handgunning. So the accuracy requirements go up, but I'm not expecting minute of angle. These bullets get a little closer visual inspection. All the bands need to be sharp, and I don't put up with any little swirls or wrinkles, but I don't weigh them either.

The last standard is for accuracy bullets for long-range muzzleloading. I go nuts for these ones, using a ladle filled the same way each time, holding the same pour rate and time, and dropping each bullet (single cavity mold only, here) after an identical cure time. Each bullet gets weighed, and anything over +/- four tenths of a grain (with 535 grain bullets) goes into the "bore fouling and wind doping" pile. During sizing (which is just lubing and slight touch-up of bullets which drop at bore size) any bullet that doesn't "feel right" or which shows more sizing on one side than another also gets culled.

The great majority of my bullets are in that middle category. I don't mind frosting, and I don't tend to drop stuff back into the pot until the end of the session. And I almost always run two molds. The only exception is the rifle accuracy bullets, where I focus all my attention on one single-pot mold.

I'm a lot less picky than I used to be. I don't see much of a difference between shooting perfect bullets and blems.

Handgun bullets I just want to see no or minimal wrinkles and reasonable fill out. Rifle bullets I want to see looking perfect. Muzzleloader fodder needs good fill out and no wrinkles. I suppose I could go wild and weigh stuff, but my cast shooting is all within 100 yards so it doesn't matter to me.

I reject bullets with wrinkles or without sharp edges/full fill out. I usually don't add the bad ones back till I finish my run, then I add them back in while the pot cools. As for my sprues, after they build up and while the mold cools I add them back to the pot.

Texas10mm said:

There's nothing wrong with frosty bullets.

Click to expand...

Seems the guys at castboolits.com prefer the frost and some reject the shiny ones. Say the powdercoat sticks better to frosted.

AJC1 said:

I'm curious how people determine a bullet goes back in the pot or makes the cut. I am starting out and I reject anything that is not perfect. I know that most likely is not how most roll, but I do this for fun and after they cool, I powdercoat and weigh them. If they are way off i reject those also. How do you choose.

Click to expand...

First rejection is right after I cut the sprues. Porosity? I toss everything in the mold in the spru pan to go back in the pot. Most times any voids in the pour are going to be near the top so they show when you cut the spru.

Next rejection comes when I strain them out of the water. Any porosity and they go back in the lead bin, NOT IN THE POT UNLESS IT IS EMPTY. The porosity will have sucked in water after I cooled them in the water. Any half pours, round corners, or "whats that" gets rejected back to the lead bin.

Same all over when applying Alox and spreading them out on tin shelves to dry. Any time they are rolling around, the odd balls will stick out and get rejected.

Even at the point of topping off a cartridge I'll get a few rejects for the same reasons plus if they just don't seem right sitting on the prepared case I'll toss it. Might have missed the sizing die or got stepped on. What ever. When in doubt, throw it out, is my motto.

I'm fairly new at casting as well, haven't really done any modern bullets yet so standards may vary. I bought the equipment to cast minie balls and round balls for bp. With the minies you have to run the pot temp high, so frosting is common and I dont worry with it.

Sprues get thrown back when I fill up my small Lee ladle with them, that little ladle is fairly useless for anything else imo.

Qualifications for rejection are skirts with bad fill and wrinkles on all of the above. Later when I weight the minies they may get thrown in a reject pile to re-melt next time if they are out of range. There can be quite a weight variance when you're throwing bullets in the 450-550 grain range. Acceptable weight range is usually 1% below or above known as-cast weight depending on mould and use, one that I know should weight 460 grains for example the acceptable weight range would be about 455 to 465.

troy fairweather said:

Look for for shuts, wrinkles, frosting

Click to expand...

Don't know what shuts are.
But if it's severely wrinkled, I'll throw it back.
But lotsa times even the first bullets are good.

In the magazine "Handloader", Mike Venturino had an article about this.
He had a pic of some slightly wrinkled & he said those bullets would still out shoot him.

Nobody would laugh or smirk if you only kept perfect bullets.
But just know even those with a little wrinkle are good and will shoot straight.

Hondo 60 said:

Don't know what shuts are.
But if it's severely wrinkled, I'll throw it back.
But lotsa times even the first bullets are good.

In the magazine "Handloader", Mike Venturino had an article about this.
He had a pic of some slightly wrinkled & he said those bullets would still out shoot him.

Nobody would laugh or smirk if you only kept perfect bullets.
But just know even those with a little wrinkle are good and will shoot straight.

Click to expand...

Cold shuts.

I’m a bit pickier with rifle billets. For handgun it has to be pretty bad before I reject it.