Radarsonwheels
02-13-2014, 11:15 AM
I'm learning a ton and having a great time getting started casting. So far I am making boolits for my ruger SBH .44. I started with a Lyman 429640 gas check hollow point and thought I was in for a challenge learning how to cast nice boolits.
Armed with the Lyman book and a couple weeks of sticky reading and intense lurking the hollow points came pretty easy. I'm good with crafty production work and going fast enough to keep the mold and pin hot was no problem. After two casting sessions I was already making around 100 'keepers' an hour with the single cavity mold.
I ordered a Lee 310 .44 mold with six cavities thinking that if I could cast 100 an hour with a single cavity then I should have 500 in an hour with this badboy! Boy was I wrong. The six cavity so far has been a false economy. I might try 'leementing' this thing because it wasn't dropping bullets as easily as I'd like, but heat control is the biggest challenge so far.
The mold itself is not hard to keep hot enough but the sprue plate gets rippin hot after just a few pours! After casting the Lyman HPs and trying to find a fast-ish rhythm the Lee mold is the opposite- an excersize in patience. I find myself with the 4-20 pot turned way down, cutting sprues and waiting a little while because cooler boolits seem to drop way better, dropping them, then closing the mold to try and keep heat in the aluminum, and holding it by the fan with the sprue plate open to try and cool the steel.
The meplats are filled out fine but almost always verging on cooler/shiny. The bases are on the ugly side of acceptable but it's so easy to get them too hot and past frosty into grainy broken cast iron texture that yields crappy bases. Also the iron Lyman mold dropped bullets 10 grains heavier than advertized but the Lee '310' mold is dropping 287-289 grain bullets. This is with the same lot of #2 alloy.
My 1st run was garbage that got inspected and remelted with all roundish past frosty bases. My second run was much better- I went way slower and concentrated on cooling the sprue plate and taking my time after cutting but before opening and dropping. Still- I only made 90 keepers in an hour- the same production speed as the Lyman one cavity HP that I expected to be a challenge!
So what's the deal? Is a 6 cav only good for making piles of boolits if you have two of them to rotate, casting 12 boolits then setting it on a hotplate to keep heat in the aluminum with the sprue plate open to cool off? Or do I need to try hissing a wet sponge on the sprue plate every time I open it? I don't want to warp the mold and keeping water on the bench is a little disconcerting.
If you made it this far reading my post- my sincere thanks and any thoughts you might have are super appreciated!!
Thanks from Noob city PA
Radar
Armed with the Lyman book and a couple weeks of sticky reading and intense lurking the hollow points came pretty easy. I'm good with crafty production work and going fast enough to keep the mold and pin hot was no problem. After two casting sessions I was already making around 100 'keepers' an hour with the single cavity mold.
I ordered a Lee 310 .44 mold with six cavities thinking that if I could cast 100 an hour with a single cavity then I should have 500 in an hour with this badboy! Boy was I wrong. The six cavity so far has been a false economy. I might try 'leementing' this thing because it wasn't dropping bullets as easily as I'd like, but heat control is the biggest challenge so far.
The mold itself is not hard to keep hot enough but the sprue plate gets rippin hot after just a few pours! After casting the Lyman HPs and trying to find a fast-ish rhythm the Lee mold is the opposite- an excersize in patience. I find myself with the 4-20 pot turned way down, cutting sprues and waiting a little while because cooler boolits seem to drop way better, dropping them, then closing the mold to try and keep heat in the aluminum, and holding it by the fan with the sprue plate open to try and cool the steel.
The meplats are filled out fine but almost always verging on cooler/shiny. The bases are on the ugly side of acceptable but it's so easy to get them too hot and past frosty into grainy broken cast iron texture that yields crappy bases. Also the iron Lyman mold dropped bullets 10 grains heavier than advertized but the Lee '310' mold is dropping 287-289 grain bullets. This is with the same lot of #2 alloy.
My 1st run was garbage that got inspected and remelted with all roundish past frosty bases. My second run was much better- I went way slower and concentrated on cooling the sprue plate and taking my time after cutting but before opening and dropping. Still- I only made 90 keepers in an hour- the same production speed as the Lyman one cavity HP that I expected to be a challenge!
So what's the deal? Is a 6 cav only good for making piles of boolits if you have two of them to rotate, casting 12 boolits then setting it on a hotplate to keep heat in the aluminum with the sprue plate open to cool off? Or do I need to try hissing a wet sponge on the sprue plate every time I open it? I don't want to warp the mold and keeping water on the bench is a little disconcerting.
If you made it this far reading my post- my sincere thanks and any thoughts you might have are super appreciated!!
Thanks from Noob city PA
Radar