please shoot me...........

[sergeant69]

a link to any threads about "finning" please. got in my lee 6 cavity molds in 40 and 45acp. the 45's are good but the 40's are showing finning on a few of them, and i know i have seen a thread b4 about it can't find it now. THANKS !!

[randyrat]

Whenever i get finning, usually it's a speck of lead somewhere on the face of the mold. I always check my molds before i start casting, hold them up to the light and hopefully you can't see daylight inside the cavities.
Heat the mold up and carefully use a fine wire brush to remove any lead that is preventing the mold from closing all the way.
One more thing, it could be too much Tin in the mix.

[AZ-Stew]

I almost agree with randyrat. He's right on about the finning, but too much tin or pressure casting (with the pot nozzle held against the countersink in the sprue plate) produces whiskers, not fins. My $0.02.

Regards,

Stew

[mooman76]

On the 6x moulds make sure you are not holding the sprue handle at the same time as the mould handle or it can force the mould open enough to get finning.

[Orygun]

On the 6x moulds make sure you are not holding the sprue handle at the same time as the mould handle or it can force the mould open enough to get finning.

I'll second this one!

[Heavy lead]

I've got a RCBS270SAA mould that does and always has given me wiskers, the vent lines are just too big, but it casts a good boolit (.455 and nice and round) so I just live with it.

[sergeant69]

On the 6x moulds make sure you are not holding the sprue handle at the same time as the mould handle or it can force the mould open enough to get finning.

how'd you know? THATS EXACTLY WHAT I AM DOING!:groner:

[lwknight]

Grease the alighment pins too. Very lightly. Most stuff will migrate into the cavity
and mage fugly boolits if you use too much.
I like silicone lube.

[sergeant69]

ok. and right now i am squriting in kroil after sessions, after the molds have cooled down of course. that ok?

[Down South]

ok. and right now i am squriting in kroil after sessions, after the molds have cooled down of course. that ok?
Some folks here swear by it.

[fryboy]

they say the kroil works best applied hot and allowed to flash off .... i have a couple mold that like it and a couple that dont ( plus the ones i really love -it doesnt seem to matter to them lolz )

[XWrench3]

kroil does not work for me. maybe i am doing it wrong. or maybe it doesn't work with lee molds. it just made ugly boolits when i treated the mold with it. took me a long time to grt them clean again to cast decent boolits. now, i use nothing in the cavities at all.

[snuffy]

I recently bought a Lee 6 cav in 9mm 124 2R. It was for a buddy to use for his glock, so I didn't try it myself. He reported it made finned boolits! I said bring it back.

I discovered that the front alignment pin hole had never been driven in flush. Quality control missed that one! A few taps seated it completly, then the mold made good boolits!

Oh and I always use bull plate sprue plate lube on all the alignment pins and on the under side of the sprue plate.

A quick pass of the finger over the pin holes should tell you whether they are flush or slightly below flush. Before or quite a while after heating the mold up,,,---OF COURSE![smilie=s:

[HangFireW8]

a link to any threads about "finning" please. got in my lee 6 cavity molds in 40 and 45acp. the 45's are good but the 40's are showing finning on a few of them, and i know i have seen a thread b4 about it can't find it now. THANKS !!

I recently got a 44 and a 45 Lee 6-cavity molds. The 45 was OK (hard to get good fillout on the TL grooves) but the 44 gave me fins every time it got hot. Cold it was fine, but cold wrinkly boolits are not fine.

I checked it out with a magnifying glass, deburred it, cleaned it, tried everything, finally resolved that heat warp was the issue.

Sent it back to Lee via Priority Mail and got a FedEx back a few days later with a new mold, lubed, sample of 50/50, two cavities smoked and a note of apology.

Wow.

Works great.

-HF

[Mk42gunner]

Granted most times finning is caused by putting pressure on the sprue plate handle; it can also be caused by the alignment pin swaging the aluminum out of place, holding the mold faces apart by an almost undetectable fraction. What a PITA to find.

Robert