Greetings to all and a Merry Christmas!

  When talking with others about casting bullets I've been told that some like to use the bottom pour lead furnace and that they hold the sprue plate right up against the spout of the lead furnace. Would like to hear from those who use this method the pros & cons of it. Also after they fill the mold cavity do they drop a puddle on the sprue plate to have something to top off the cast? Are bullets cast with this method uniform in weight, and so on. Seems there is always a drip present on the end of the spout after a pour with my bottom pour furnace. 

I did say furnace so let's not get funny about this with us old guys. We are talking about casting and a lead furnace, and nothing else.

                      Sendaro

I use a bottom pour Lee pot plus three open / ladle types on an electric ring. The bottom pour pot works best if a puddle of lead is formed on the sprue plate. 
I have never been able to get some of my moulds to work with bottom pour, especially my RCBS 310 Cadet .
Everything works with a ladle.
Fred

I've always used a bottom pour Lee, other than a few times I played with a dipper and trying to see the difference in bullet quality. I've always had good bullets, and weighing some random bullets hasn't shown any issue with weight differences.
I keep the molds about 1" away also, and try to build up the sprue enough to fill it well, and occasionally run over. Occasionally I've had to slow down my casting, or adjust temperature if I got some indications of being too hot. But mostly it always goes well with my Lee pot.

I'm a long time bottom pour user. I have always pressure poured and I like that method because the base band is always fully filled out with sharpe conners, opposed to the slightly rounded ones with ladles. 

I suppose that if a person is just starting casting that a ladle might be easier but, I started with bottom pour and had no one to lead me any other direction.

The first thing that you have to know about bottom pour, is the stream has to be regualated, if it pours to fast, they will wrinkle. I hold the sprue plate against the nozzle and make a 3 or 4 count. A puddle doesn't make a difference as long as the lead is solidified in the mold. If you keep the nozzle open, it has the whole pot to fill the shirkage, when that's done, lead on top of the plate can't help.

Back to the stream, the Lee 20# pot has a adjustment for the flow but, the old 10# pot (what I started with) doesn't and can be problematic. What I learned to do was take the near side screw out of the handle, that way it doesn't lift Immediately and the lift is slowed down. With the 20# pot, you can set the flow at anything you like.

On larger, heavier bullets, the veriation will be a little more. For one reason, the the "head" (amount of lead above the nozzle) pressure changes as the pot goes down but, overall +/- 1 gr, won't take you out of the 25 ring on a 180+ gr bullet if it's filled out.

For the last year, I have been playing with ladle pouring and I find three things that I don't like about it:

1. I have to stand, the way that my table is set up and that hurts my back.

2. There is MUCH more lead on the table (sprues) to throw back into the pot and therefore the the pot depletes faster. With pressure pour, you only loose about 10 - 15 gr of lead from the sprue.

3. With deeply vented molds like RCBS, the lead will flow into the vents about the time the bullets start looking real good so, you have to watch your casting temp, real close or ladle or both.

I ran out of space, cont.

Frank, Thanks for the reply. I've still a ways to go on my learning curve when it come to casting. However the learning is fun and challenging. 

                               Sendaro

I recently re-read the Journal which had some comments on casting  by Charlie Dell.   One was that keeping the sprue plate hot was a key factor in eliminating shrinkage cavities.   Tried it with a .25 cal mould that I've always had trouble with, and darned it if doesn't work.  My weight dispersion dropped by more than half.  Used my dipper to pour lead into the mould from half an inch above, and deliberately spill quite a bit over the sprue plate, too.  Now I'm thinking how much easier that would be with a bottom pour.  (Except for capturing the runoff, which now spills into the pot.)

I have a story nearly identical to GunLaker. I used bottom pour with the nozzle tight to the sprue plate. What I found was a big difference in weights as the volume of the pot dropped when casting 520gr 45's.

I am now casting with this completely redneck setup and a closed dipper. And my bullet weights are very consistent. I think because the head pressure is very consistent with the dipper.

The burner is a propane turkey cooker I picked up at Lowes on clearance for $35. It has ample power to get the 60lbs of lead in that pot up to temp in a hurry. The arrangement of bricks in the upper right is my mold oven. While I'm casting one bullet the next mold is sitting in the oven and I twiddle with the brick placement to get 400deg in the oven

That's a really neat setup Sean. 

In order to compensate for the loss of pressure as the lead level went down, I'd adjust the flow ( the RCBS pot has a screw for that ).   It seemed to help, but not a lot.

I'd been casting for a few years that way.  Everyone told me I should switch to ladle casting, but my casting time is precious as I cast at my cabin, a long drive of 5-6 hours away.  I thought I didn't have time to learn a new technique.  Then one day I was having trouble getting good fillout on a mould so I thought I had nothing to loose and started using the dipper.  In about an hour I had decided to switch and never look back.

That's not to say that bottom pour doesn't isn't best for some people.   One of the things I've learned when playing with these rifles is that just when you think you've found an absolute truth, someone will come along that does it better than you, and their ideas are quite different than yours .

Sean, after seeing your picture, I'm definitely going to pick up some fire bricks for my alloy mixing setup.

Chris.