hot mold + hot lead ......wrinkled boolits ??? = you either pouring too slow, or sprue plate holes are too small, or temperature aint what you tellin usOk, I cleaned the mold up very well and I polished up a couple of burrs. Washed it again in hot soapy water and then again in acetone and tried casting. Forget it. Getting it super clean did nothing more than make the cavities that were releasing now become balky. So I smoked the mold with matches. Got the original cavities back but not the two bad ones. Still had major wrinkles. Lead at 800 degrees. This is way hotter that I have ever cast wheel weights in the past. So I smoked the mold with straight acetylene. At this point I really do not care. I am having to take full hammer swings at it to get those cavities to release. It is just a matter of time before the handles break. They are not going to replace the mold anyway so I don't care at this point. Came in and saw the thread about Leementing so cleaned everything up again and went about that. Only abrasive I have beside valve grinding compound is fast orange hand cleaner with pumice. Well, it cuts. Cleaned it all up again and tried it. Got one working a tiny bit but not number one. Broke it all down, cooled off and did those two again. No change. It will release but I have to beat on the mold arm opposite the bad cavity, and I mean I have to BEAT on it! Oh, still wrinkled and now at 900 degrees. I know this pot will hit 1,000 because I have seen it happen but I am done. Before anyone comments again about the hot plate, it is a piece of 3/16 steel plate on an old circular electric burner. I am checking the temp with the contact probe on my Fluke meter and also the laser temp gauge. They are within 50 degrees of each other. I even put a piece of lead on the plate next to the mold and it melted! Hot enough? Plate is reading 610 degrees. Mold is reading 530. Vent lines in mold are perfectly clear and I have not lubed the pins after all that washing so no oil contamination. That same alloy is working just fine in other molds at the very same time I am having trouble with this one. As far as a cold mold, the sprue is taking 10 plus seconds to cool.
I was going to call Lee but I don't think it is worth wasting any more time on this mold, they are not going to cover it anyway and telling them is is a *** is not going to bother them in the slightest bit. I don't even think the Lee family even has that business anymore, Like Midway I think it has probably been sold to a conglomerate. I may be wrong but the way they talk to customers leads me to believe that compared to how it was a few years ago.