,,,,ok gave the mold a lube with beeswax,gave the cavity some soot,heated up the mold a bit,and poured some melted #8 remington gun club shot.
i noticed the wrinkles on the finished slug,any ideas why???
my next problem is when i put the slug in the shot cup it actually expands too much to put in the hull.
can i cut the shot cup off the one piece wadding?
sorry for the poor pics.
thanks in advance for the help.
O.K firstly the wrinkly slugs are because the mould is not hot enough, it isn't up to temperature. The way to rectify this is to quickly mould a few slugs and put them to one side. This will warm the mould up to temperature and the wrinkles will disappear. Turn the heat up on your lead smelter pot too.
The opposite of this is when the mould and molten lead are too hot. Then the finished slug appears "frosty" and matte grey in colour instead of shiny and smooth. In any event either wrinkly or frosty is not really that important with shotgun slugs, we are not talking about precision match grade handgun bullets here.
Looking at your caliper photo your slugs are wider in diameter than mine. The ones I have cast with the Lee 1oz mould mike out at .670". Yours appear nearer in diameter to the Foster slug mould which comes out at just over .720".
Certain brands of birdshot cartridges and their plaswad cups are compatible with my Lee slugs others are NOT. The plaswad shot cup petals are too thick to accept the Lee slug. Try a different brand with a different wad i.e with thinner petals.
You could try removing the plaswad and removing the shot cup petals and see if you can insert the slug into the hull and crimp to finish?
Some people do this with the Foster slugs.
