I really wanted to be able to post some pretty pictures of the new projectiles I casted with this mold, however, that will have to wait.
I did a fairly lengthy casting session last weekend, needing to cast up a bunch of projectiles for my 1864 Burnside and my 1866 Chassepot. When I had finished with those, I decided it was a good time to try out some cannon projectiles.
I learned some valuable lessons.
1. Casting in the garage with the door open in 14 degree weather is not a good recipe for trying to cast large projectiles. The lead constantly was hardening in the ladle before I could even get much of it in the mold
2. My ladle is too small. I got what was supposed to be a 2 lb capacity ladle which should be big enough, but I could get enough into it and into the mold before it hardened.
3. My Lyman Mag 25 is probably too small a smelter for this job anyway. If I could get the mold under the faucet, then it would probably work okay. However, that space under it is just too small. For it to work, I would need to cut metal off the bottom plate on the smelter and then put the whole thing up on a stand, to get additional height. I might try that. Or maybe I just need to get a bigger rig for making these large projectiles.
I'm still pretty much a newbie at casting, so maybe trying to jump into large cannon projectiles was a bit ambitious. Hopefully, I'll get the logistics of this figured out and then I'll do a post on the mold and the projectiles.
I will say that the stumpy half projectiles I was able to cast fit into the powder cases beautifully. So I know this concept will work. I just need to put some more thought into the mechanics of it.
