No ventlines

[jimkim]

I bought an Ideal 311241 the other day. It looks great except it doesn't have any ventlines. Will this be a problem? Is this common with old moulds? Thanks in advance.

[square butte]

Very common with older ideals and others not to have vent lines. It will probably cast quite well. If it looks like it's used, which i suspect it was, just think about all the thousands of bullets it cast before you got it. Just give it a whirl.

[WHITETAIL]

Jimkim, Do not fix what is not broke.

[missionary5155]

Good morning
I have nunerous old molds without Vents... and they cast as nice of boolets as new ones that have all sorts of vents. You may need to use HOT mix to get good fill out but I normally run my lead 800+ all the time anyway. My old Winny 44-40 200 grain mold is well over 115 years and that is the boolit my Colt New Service shoots best.
Many old molds were used around a campfire and temps were very Hot as we think of a pot today and the old timers were more concered with "staying alive " and eating.

[jimkim]

It seems to cast fine. I had to run a little hot(like missionary said) but it dropped some pretty nice bullets. The thing that kinda threw me was the high polish. It almost looks like someone put it on a surface grinder. Thanks guys. Oh yeah by the way the bullets are dropping from the mould at 0.3115". It turns out it is a 308241 not the 311241, so it may be even older than I at first thought. The crimp groove is also identical to the lube grooves. I like it.

[stocker]

My old 311299 Ideal is sans vent lines. If pot temp is below 800 it produces bases with a rounded edge. Rest of the boolit is fine. Changing sprue plate tension to increase venting does not relieve it. Casting above 800 does fix them. This old mould drops them at .315 and the boolits are 303 Brit. bound. I had previously broken the top edges of the mould with a diamond lap thinking that would solve it by positive venting. It didn't. Finally concluded that the old original thin sprue plate loses heat too quickly and the base was solidifying before the sprue metal could fill the base. Back to higher heat and end of problem.

This is a single cavity and consequently is slow to build a pile, but the consistency is great. I weighed 50 of the over 300 boolits that I cast one evening this week and the maximum deviation was +/- 1/10 of a grain but most of them were identical. There go the excuses.

[mooman76]

I recently p/u a couple T/C conical moulds. They aren't marked T/C just the mould number. The odd thing is they only have vent lines on one mould half. Works good. The only mould maker that I have seen that does that. Kind of makes sence I guess. it would cut production down some and why do you really need vent lines on both sides.