Cramer HP, boolits stick on pins?

[Steel185]

not sure exactly how to describe this, so i will walk you through. I have a NOE cramer style HP mold for .452, it was a group buy here year or so ago, makes 230gr HPs. It took me a long time to get it to work right, but now i found you have to really crank the heat to get the pins hot to allow the alloy to not wrinkle. Things have been going well the last few times I casted in the past month. More and more the boolts stick on the pins when i go to dump them out. I check and there isn't rust or anything. but after pouring the alloy and i open the mold they stick on the pins, I have to use my wooden hammer and really smack the handles several times for them to drop. Do i need to polish the pins? I tried putting kroil on it but i thought that contrubuted to the wrinkled boolits i was fighting.

What sort of reuglar maintenance do i need to do to all them to not stick so much. At this rate I'll have to buy another hammer soon. Other than that, it throws a beautiful and accurate HP .452 boolit.

[geargnasher]

The pins and mould are to cold. If you "cranked the heat" on your pot, it's probably way too hot which contributes to the sticking problem. Lower the pot temperature to 125F over full liquidus for HP boolits, and cast faster, MUCH faster, like four complete cycles per minute. When the pins get hot enough the boolits will fall off on their own.

Gear

[Steel185]

i can't seem to go that fast with the boolits sticking every time. I'll give it a shot, maybe it will get better.

[btroj]

Key is getting the pins hot. Once they are hot the bullets will drop from the pins easier and you can maintain a quicker rhythm.
The key is using an outside heat source up front to get the mould and pins hot enough. The pins are the key part.

[Down South]

I've had this problem before with Cramer style moulds. On some of the ones I've had problems with, I've noticed that the pins were not machined well and had small ridges on them. What I did to cure the problem was to chuck the pin up in a drill and using a piece of emery cloth was to polish the pins to remove the ridges. Then I would polish the pins in the drill with graphite powder.
This seemed to help a lot.
As mentioned above, temperature makes a lot of difference too.

[Dale53]

I paint my Cramer style hollow point pins with mould release before each session. I use Rapine or NEI mould release (microfine graphite in an alcohol base). It only takes a minute or so and I am good to go for the whole session.

I have at least four of these moulds from Mihec and that treatment works for all.

Dale53