Canadian Airgun Forum

Part 6: Nothing is simple

Unfortunately when I continued to cut more of the same pellet shape into the blocks it didn’t work as planned. Maybe the heat treatment was not right because the tool didn’t survive long past the first complete cavity and broke before I could finish the first half of the second one. That was a bummer because I wanted four identical cavities for the mold.

I went back and machined another cutter on the lathe. To my wonder it fitted in the shape of the first cavity I made and I thought that I was back in business.

I cut cavity number three in both blocks but the cutter broke nearly after starting the first side of number four.

In the picture, the block on the left has both successful cavities but the one on the left has the corresponding cavities plus both accidents mentioned earlier.



That was not going very well. By then I knew that my goal of four identical pellets for my mold was down the drain. To salvage my work, I looked at what kind of shape could cover my second cavity mistake and came up with the design of a bullet instead of a pellet.

After making a new cutter the cavity was made deep enough to obliterate the previous boo-boo but broke before completing the second side. I needed to machine another one to match the broken tool and luckily I was able to do it to complete the second side.

I was not confident enough to continue with the same bullet tool for the last cavity and decided to play safe. The first cutter I made was from High Speed Steel and I figured that it shouldn’t break. It worked very well and the last cavity was finally done.

This is the result.



As it could be expected, nothing is that simple. Visually, it seemed that one side of the last cavity was slightly down compared to the other one and it was proved when I casted a plastic pellet. There was a step on the nose so I went back to the mill and was able to get both sides identical.



The work is progressing.

R-Gun Pete

Part 7: A second chance… (maybe)

Luckily, since I was still at the beginning of the process, my blanks could be made reversible. This gave me a second chance at getting four identical cavities.

As mentioned earlier, nothing is simple. Because the bar of HSS was 4 1/4” long and I didn’t cut it shorter, it was engaged very deep in my collet. Since the same thing happened again, I got the answer about why I had different levels on my previous cavity. The tool was slowly pulling out of the collet as it was cutting so by the time the second side was cut the difference was several thousands of an inch.

Again I repositioned the cutter at the min and max levels to make both sides of the cavity identical.

Since I had three other cavities to machine, I placed a reference on the shaft of the cutter to be able to reset the starting depth position and it also confirmed that the tool was effectively creeping out when cutting.

I had to readjust the tool height several times (releasing and retightening the collet) and I guess there was some variations in the clamping because it was not pulling out consistently.

Again my hope of getting four identical cavities was out the window, instead I ended up with four variations of a similar shape.

The picture below shows the HSS cutter and a couple of views of the blocks.



Anyway at that point, I was glad enough to have something that was starting to look like a pellets mold. The job was not complete yet because it needed a pair of handles and a sprue plate.

I had a brand new “two cavities .380 round ball” Lee mold that I was keeping as a spare and I thought the handles would work well for my project. It seemed that they were attached with socket head cap screws but when I tried to loosen them with an Allan key I was unsuccessful. A quick Internet search confirmed that they can’t be removed. Luckily, I had a Noe .22 pellet mold with a set of handles that could be swapped.

For the sprue plate, I had to plan for a reversible arrangement to take advantage of the two sets of cavities.

Below there are several views of the finished mold.



Since I am not sure when I will be able to cast some lead with my finished mold, I used the hot glue gun to make several samples from each cavity.

A quick check showed me that both boo-boo cavities that were salvaged produced oversized projectiles. Because the material is plastic, the pellets could be pushed (or more precisely forced) into the barrel of the Gamo Compact and another break barrel pistol but in both they couldn’t be shot and jammed the airguns.

Lead will certainly be worse than plastic and will require a good look at existing resizing options. This might mean opening a Pandora’s box or a can of worms and even going down a rabbit hole.

I started with research on the Internet but I didn’t find what I needed. I made a tube from an aluminum rod by using sequentially larger drills to obtain some sort of taper that I smoothed off with sandpaper on a wooden shaft. The pusher was machined from steel with a tight tolerance with the exit hole. This time again it was a process of trials and errors.

Both of my first mistakes with the resizing tool were time consuming. I started by trying to resize a plastic bullet. It didn’t go well as it smeared the inside of the tube and the shaft of the pusher rod. I had to use alcohol to clean both parts. Then I thought I would try with lead because I have a full pot of spent pellets. I found a candidate and pounded it with a hammer to roughly make it cylindrical.

After placing the blob in the tube, the pusher rod was tapped with a hammer to progressively drive the lead down. I should have rotated and removed the rod periodically but instead I slowly tapped it from top to bottom until the “pellet” exited at the other end. For sure the blob got resized but it left a thin layer of lead shaving inside the tube effectively jamming the pusher rod. Let say it took a lot of time to back off the rod out and scrape the layer of lead flakes from inside the tube.

This picture shows my first attempt at making a resizer after it was cleaned up.



Another search, a bit too late, made me realize that lubrication was a must.

Anyway my journey in resizing is another story so it will be the subject of a different post.

In conclusion, D type single flute cutters are good options to shape pellet cavities in aluminum blocks but I would stick to High Speed Steel if I have to do it again. The drill rod stock might be useful for larger diameters but at the size I was working for that project it was too easy to break.

R-Gun Pete

good job so far
I have many used pellets, digged out from papers and putty. If you need I can give you for free--some may need little cleaning but mostly are OK, and I think it should be all fine if you melt them

_________________
A Bunch of
495fps Springers/CO2/PCP
PAL Rated plinkers and target rifles
Finally get my PAL after 1 year waiting

Hi Atlas.

Thanks for the comment and the offer of lead but I have enough reserve to get me going for a long time.

My problem is to find a place to safely do the casting. Before I retired I was able to use the welding booths at work as they were properly ventilated.

I should probably get in touch with my former colleagues to see if I could go there for a day of casting.

R-Gun Pete

I completed my post on my resizing journey.

Since my mold has not been tried yet, the exercise has been to convert a Crosman HP .22 pellet into a .177 slug of the same weight by resizing it.

This is the link if you are interested to know more.

topic93772.html

R-Gun Pete

Due to laziness I won't reload PB ammo to save 10-25% each shot and you are casting pellets. Sir, you have my respect.

_________________
I have some airguns.

Hi jckstrhmghty.

Don't be mistaken, I use commercial pellets like eveybody else.

I started casting when I became the owner of a Crosman Trapmaster 1100 and of Bob Sterne's 9mm carbine and for that I bought a .380 and a .350 round balls molds.

From there, I got interested in .22 and made 2 molds and bought a commercial one. I use those pellets occasionally. They are more of a backup option than anything else.

It will be the same with the .177, if they work reasonably well I will keep them as backup too.

For the time being supply of commercial pellets is not an issue but we are living in some crazy times and there are no guaranty that it will always be the case.

I am planning a casting session sometime next week so I will be able to give more information on the kind of results I will get.

R-Gun Pete

Part 8 : Conclusion of the journey – the day when some pellets were cast.

Today was the day!

Why?

Because I was able to access the welding ventilation hood at my former place of work.

Since the last time I cast some pellets was before my retirement in 2019, I needed to be reacquainted with the whole process as well as finding all the bits and pieces required.

Because my mold was not the ideal perfect mold with all identical cavities, I had 8 different projectiles. This slowed down the production as, instead of letting all the pellets fall out, I wanted to remove them one by one from the mold to place them in their respective containers. So, for a day of work, it is not a huge number but that should be enough to be able to run some tests and evaluate how they perform.

The picture below shows the mold and the pellets cast from it.



They look very good when seen in the containers but when enlarged in a close-up picture they might look a bit rough. Anyway we will see how they perform once they go through an airgun barrel.

This is a sample of cavities 1-2-3-4.



I made the mold reversible in order to have a chance at four other cavities on the other side but I should have put screws in the holes for the second set because they were full of lead when I wanted to switch side. It took me a while to clear them but I was finally able to cast the other pellets.

The picture below is now for cavities 5-6-7-8.

I03

I am glad to have been able to do it because when I looked on the internet I couldn’t find anybody to guide me. Why? Because it seems that nobody did it.

Will they perform well? I have no clue. I guess it is part of the discovery.

I will spend some time to test each variation and I will post the results later in a new thread.

For this one, this the conclusion and it is the last post.

R-Gun Pete

Looking forward to hearing and preferably seeing the results.
Good luck!!

_________________
Best Wishes
Daryl

Pete, I have to give you full marks for persistence!.... .... The only problem I can see the the rearward Center of Gravity you will be getting because the pellets do not have a hollow skirt.... Pellets are "flare stabliized", and rely on having the CG ahead of the Center of Pressure (CP) to fly straight.... They do not require a lot of spin to achieve stability.... Your pellets may behave more like slugs, that are spin stabilized.... Whether or not they work in any particular airgun barrel will be very much a matter of trying them and seeing what happens.... Good Luck !!!!

Bob

_________________
Dominion Marksman Silver Shield - 5890 x 6000 in 1976, and downhill ever since!
Airsonal; Too many! Springers, Pumpers, CO2, but I love my PCPs and developing them!
Proud Member of the 2000+fps Club!

Hi Daryl and Bob.

Thanks for the comments.

I am starting to compile some informations about the .177 projectiles obtained from casting with my mold. I will also shoot them through the same three rifles I have used previously (Crosman Quest 500, CZ 200T and Daisy 853C.

As I mentioned before this will be in a different thread.

R-Gun Pete

I just completed the testing and evaluation of the cast pellets I made with the mold I machined.

This is the link.

post597661.html#p597661

R-Gun Pete