rintinglen
11-27-2014, 09:01 AM
122945I
I finally got off my duff and ordered myself an early Birthday present. Monday when I got off work in the morning I went on line and ordered one of his 360-148 4 Cavity hollow base wadcutter moulds. Wednesday it was in my mailbox! Two day turn around! So, I fired up the pot and in between honey-dos I managed to find time to cast up about 5 pounds.
If you are interested in one of these, he has several more on the shelf. Here are few pointers based on my initial run.
First, clean and heat cycle the mould per the included instructions. I didn't, and I had about a 15% reject rate because I didn't get all the the oil out of the pores of the mould. Despite pre-heating, I still had about 6 casts before I began to get good fill out. Despite what some have said, I have never managed to get good boolits from an oil-contaminated mould.
2nd, experiment until you find the best rate of production. There is a fairly narrow range that will let you get consistent, good fill-out and clean sprue cut-off. You have to balance the hot required for best fill-out against the cool required to freeze the sprue and give you nice meplats. I found that I had to slow down to about 5 casts per two minutes to get good boolits to drop out. Too fast and I got gouges in the nose and damaged skirts on the hollow base: too slow and I started to have fill out problems. I am going to lightly swab the pins where they enter the base of the boolit with a small drop of Bullshop Mould Lube on a Q-Tip to see if that helps. Expect to use your impact device of choice to help some of the boolits to come out. I gave the hinge bolt of my Lee handles a stout tap with a cheapy, Orange, 12 ounce, dead-blow hammer as I opened the mould which served to expedite things. Otherwise, one or more boolits would be afraid to leave the nest, delaying things and chilling the mould, thereby increasing the likelihood of poor fill out.
I used a small fan as recommended by Mike Venturino to cool the sprue a little quicker.
Once I got everything sorted out and things were going smoothly, SWMBO reminded me I still had to go to the store, so I had to cut things short, but I still ended up with a bit over 250 boolits of which later inspection left about 220 keepers.
This another great NOE mould. If I had to pick one mould manufacturer for all my needs, it would be the Swede at NOE! Premiere quality at decent prices.
HAPPY THANKSGIVING, EVERYONE!
I finally got off my duff and ordered myself an early Birthday present. Monday when I got off work in the morning I went on line and ordered one of his 360-148 4 Cavity hollow base wadcutter moulds. Wednesday it was in my mailbox! Two day turn around! So, I fired up the pot and in between honey-dos I managed to find time to cast up about 5 pounds.
If you are interested in one of these, he has several more on the shelf. Here are few pointers based on my initial run.
First, clean and heat cycle the mould per the included instructions. I didn't, and I had about a 15% reject rate because I didn't get all the the oil out of the pores of the mould. Despite pre-heating, I still had about 6 casts before I began to get good fill out. Despite what some have said, I have never managed to get good boolits from an oil-contaminated mould.
2nd, experiment until you find the best rate of production. There is a fairly narrow range that will let you get consistent, good fill-out and clean sprue cut-off. You have to balance the hot required for best fill-out against the cool required to freeze the sprue and give you nice meplats. I found that I had to slow down to about 5 casts per two minutes to get good boolits to drop out. Too fast and I got gouges in the nose and damaged skirts on the hollow base: too slow and I started to have fill out problems. I am going to lightly swab the pins where they enter the base of the boolit with a small drop of Bullshop Mould Lube on a Q-Tip to see if that helps. Expect to use your impact device of choice to help some of the boolits to come out. I gave the hinge bolt of my Lee handles a stout tap with a cheapy, Orange, 12 ounce, dead-blow hammer as I opened the mould which served to expedite things. Otherwise, one or more boolits would be afraid to leave the nest, delaying things and chilling the mould, thereby increasing the likelihood of poor fill out.
I used a small fan as recommended by Mike Venturino to cool the sprue a little quicker.
Once I got everything sorted out and things were going smoothly, SWMBO reminded me I still had to go to the store, so I had to cut things short, but I still ended up with a bit over 250 boolits of which later inspection left about 220 keepers.
This another great NOE mould. If I had to pick one mould manufacturer for all my needs, it would be the Swede at NOE! Premiere quality at decent prices.
HAPPY THANKSGIVING, EVERYONE!