Let's see where you do your casting ? ?

[Brad]

And it you choke up on the handles and you fingers rest on a metal ferrule it quickly gets burned.

I now wear no glove on hand holding handles, OveGlove on hand that holds ladle and opens sprue plate.

In the end my take is that if it works for you then keep doing it,

 

[Ian]

And it you choke up on the handles and you fingers rest on a metal ferrule it quickly gets burned.

I now wear no glove on hand holding handles, OveGlove on hand that holds ladle and opens sprue plate.

In the end my take is that if it works for you then keep doing it,

Yes, no choking up on the ferrules, for sure! Yes, what works works, but I'm still trying to find a thin glove for the sprue hand because the OG is too thick for me. Maybe Nomex race driver gloves? There's no military surplus store here anymore, I really miss the one we had when I was a kid.

 

[Rally]

Winelover,
If you run out of a lead supply, you could probably tear some off that old Chevy!

I just wear tight fitting leather gloves on both hands. The same gloves I wear shooting early fall.

 

[Rick]

Maybe I'm doing something different, dunno but I've never had an issue with the gloved hand getting hot holding the handles. Truth is that many times I don't even wear a glove on my left hand, just the right to open the sprue.

 

[Rick]

Then there is the infamous thread on the other site about the fellow that cast for a couple years without handles, said he didn't know about them and just held the mold in his gloved hand the whole time. Tough fellow that is let me tell ya.

 

[waco]

I remember that thread!!!!

 

[Ian]

Ah yes, Crash Corrigan.

@Rally, where in the world did you get those pintles and levers for your Lee furnaces? Did you make those or what? I may have to do something like that because the bottom shoulder screw has stripped out of the aluminum for about the third time and I'm not sure it's worth fixing again.

 

[Rick]

I remember that thread!!!!

Tough thread to forget, I haven't been able to get the picture of that out of my head since I read it years ago.

Yeah, that's the name, Crash Corrigan. Is he still around over there?

 

[Rally]

Ian,
I made them, and pretty happy with them too. Those and a 5/64" drill bit, to the right of pots, has eliminated the constant drip. I can twist the head of the meter rod and adjust lift height, for volume, with the screw on the top. I like casting with two pots, and returning sprue to pot. I start with two full pots and if temp drops from adding too many sprue I just go to the other pot for a couple pours, but stay primarily with one pot.
The table is an old cast iron machine stand my FIL came up with somewhere in Il. He literally, on his death bed, told my MIL to make sure I got it when he died. He used it as a rolling work bench in his garage for many years, and I always tried to talk him out of it, thinking I'd use it as a welding stand. I made my own welding table several years before his death, so thought it would work well for a casting stand, and it does. I just open the garage door and cast away. Took a couple hours of grinding and wire brushing to get the paint and machine oil off the top, but painted up real well. The weight on the bottom shelf makes it quite stable. Soft lead on right, WW in center, and pewter, solder on left. Pots sit on a wood platform to get it the correct height when I'm sitting on my swiveling shop stool. I have overhead fans to my back or right when I need them. Preheat moulds on hotplate on my welding bench. My dog kennels are at a left angle to the door so they can see me and I them. All woods to the south with rising hillside, so I can also watch the local squirrels and laugh at Cash's reaction to them. A perfect day if I shut my phone off! LOL

 

[462]

Yep, I remember that post, too, though I thought it was Bruce B.

 

[Rally]

Need is the mother of invention! I know a young soldier stationed in Germany who glued a couple strips of thick leather in the jaws of a pair of channel locks so he could cast with a RCBS 148 WC mould, while he waited 16 days for a pair of handles to come through a Army Rod and Gun Club supply system. Remember the days with no putters and phone calls from Germany were $2.87 a minute? I do. I still have the mould too.

 

[Ian]

Yep. I made a pretty decent set of Lyman 2C handles out of a large pair of Harbor Freight slipjoint pliers because I couldn't afford $30 for the real ones and was in a hurry to cast with the brand-new .45 Devastator HP.

My first casting setup was a cast-iron 2-quart cooking pot and a serving spoon that I dollied a pour spout in the side. Cast many buckets of .38 SWCs with that on the propane range in my 1970 Shasta Stratoflyte travel trailer while in college. Used to shoot at the sand pit down the road from the trailer park, endless supply of gourds and beer cans for targets.

 

[Rally]

Any chance you have a picture of that trailer Ian?

 

[Ian]

Sadly no, not one I can think of. Couple of the inside maybe in some of my old photos. I did salvage the bathroom sink and still use it today in a custom pecan corner vanity in our downstairs bathroom, and two of the crank-out windows are in my wife's storage shed. The rest of it went to a friend who leveled it to make a flatbed trailer. Wish I'd saved the oven/range too.

 

[fiver]

no glove on the left.
cotton glove on the right.

I tried leather etc. but I kept wearing a hole in the leather gloves.
then I'd wrap a piece of tape around the hole.
yep big mess on the mold, and I'd burn myself when the tape melted.

 

[Winelover]

In addition to opening the sprue with the off hand, I also peel off excess lead (off the sides and front of the mould).................while waiting for the sprue to set up. That is done over the pot so it falls back into the melt. Try doing that with a thin glove.

 

[L Ross]

I usually cast without gloves and I black smithed without gloves. I get tiny burns with drips and only rarely. The sole exception was when an old .25 auto with a "W" stamped in the primer got into the pot via a coffee can of scrap lead bullets I got out of the shop of a deceased caster. I dumped that can of bullets into the partially filled pot and as I turned there was a loud "pop" and some lead was expelled. Some landed on my left hand and left a mark. I always wear eye protection though and I won't cast in shorts.

 

[Ian]

By far the worst burns I've gotten from casting are due to failed gloves, not from accidents. I also remelted a live round (or a primed dummy cartridge) when I dumped in a bunch of .45 ACP dummy rounds and it surprisingly didn't make too much of a mess but did dent the Lee pot liner and add another frequency to my tinnitus. Do this long enough and stuff happens.

 

[fiver]

yeah it does even being super careful.
I had something time delay in the pot once, [moisture trapped in a jacket or something]
it plooped a small blob of alloy i guess about 8-9' up in the air and as I turned around to see what the noise was it come down on top of my head.
that resulted in me doing a few unplanned dance moves with some pretty funky arm waving to offset the foot work.
luckily I had a glass of ice water right there and could cool it off pretty quickly once I realized what it was.

the wife in one of her actually funny moments said afterwards that I had absolutely no rhythm I wasn't even close to the song that was playing at the time with any of my moves.

 

[4060MAY]

after looking at pic's of casting areas, I should feel bad that I have lead all over the floor and wall...