I keep saying that I will do some sort of test with weight-sorted bullets. OK, so this afternoon I cast a few bullets with a single cavity mold -- I deliberately selected a single cavity mold for this test because previous attempts at weighing bullets from multi-cavity molds resulted in sorting bullets by cavity, because there is often a few tenths of a grain difference between cavities.
As the bullets dropped out, I sometimes visually inspected them and rejected incompletely filled bullets. But I didn't have time to visually inspect every single bullet, nor is my poorly lit casting area conducive to visual inspection, anyway. Net result: I estimate that I missed about half the visual defects.
Mold was aluminum and alloy was Rotometals reclaimed shot. PID controlled pot set at 380C (716F). Aimed ladle held 1/4” away from the sprue, continuing pouring the entire ladle even after the cavity is full and allowing the excess to dribble back into the pot -- what I call the “overpour” technique.
Here's the weight distribution for the 292 bullets that survived my haphazard visual inspection:. 2 of these bullets had minor visible defects on a single band, that could have been caught by visual inspection. The other 2 were visually OK.</p>
<p>126.9 (42 bullets)</p>
<p>127.0 - 127.4 (246 bullets)</p>
<p>Do you think any of these bullets are bad enough to reject?</p>
<p>Do you think the 126.9 grain bullets are bad enough to reject?</p>
<p>Any other thoughts or suggestions? These bullets will be used in a 30BR that averaged 1.2” 10-shot groups on its last outing. </p>
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