So I broke out the MiHec 359 Hammer hollow point mold I recently received from the group buy. Gorgeous mold. Should be mounted and displayed. It is the first brass mold I have ever used.
Like all my molds I blast it with brake cleaner when new. It came with a little bottle of what I believe is 2-stroke oil, so I applied it as directed to the sprue plate, alignment pins, and the little cramer rods. Very, very small amounts.
I fired up a pot of my preferred alloy 91-6-3 (lead-tin-antimony+pinch of magnum shot for the arsenic), fluxed it (tallow and sawdust), and poured two. Mold is still cold so I was expecting them to be wrinkly and they were. I poured about 15 more and the mold was quite hot by this point, and so was the alloy. Still terrible wrinkly bullets with round edges. I figured the alloy must be messed up so I broke out two molds--an iron RCBS 358-158-SWCGC and an Aluminum Lee 358-125-RNFP six-cavity (which was new, and I sprayed with brake cleaner and lubed with the same 2-stroke oil). After the second or third throw I was getting nice boolits from the RCBS, lightly frosting (to me indicates that its nearly too hot). I cast a 60 or so. Then I refilled the pot with the same alloy and started with the Lee and cast about 200. I had to turn the pot temp down a bit because the Lee mold was getting too hot.
So my conclusion is that Brass is some vodoo or there is something on this mold that brakekleen can't remove or there's some mold prep step needed for brass that I am omitting.
What do you think?