Sprue Plate Maintenance

[Ben]

Whenever you get a new mold, if you're like me, you look it over real close. I traded for a mold and I'm very happy with the trade. Catch is .......when I opened the mold the first thing that caught my eye was an " arc " across the top of the mold halves.

At 1st glance, I thought it was a lead smear. Upon closer examination, I realized that it was more than a lead smear. The edges of this sprue plate ( a Lyman mold ) were very rough. I don't know, but it appears that these Lyman sprue plates are punched out of steel plate leaving a fairly rough edge.

Of late , I make it a practice to clean up these edges so that they cannot cut gouges in the tops of the mold blocks.

Here are some photos . Hopefully if you've got a troublesome mold that may be displaying similar characteristics of behavior , this thread will cause you to take a closer look at the offending mold.

Thanks,
Ben

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v494/haysb/Damaged%20Sprue%20Plate/DSCN1744.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v494/haysb/Damaged%20Sprue%20Plate/DSCN1746.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v494/haysb/Damaged%20Sprue%20Plate/DSCN1747.jpg

You can see enough detail in the photo below to see how rough the edge of the sprue
plate was. It was like a serrated knife. It really needed to be cleaned up to prevent
future damage to the tops of the mold blocks.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v494/haysb/Damaged%20Sprue%20Plate/DSCN1748-1.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v494/haysb/Damaged%20Sprue%20Plate/DSCN1752.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v494/haysb/Damaged%20Sprue%20Plate/DSCN1753.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v494/haysb/Damaged%20Sprue%20Plate/DSCN1754.jpg

[casterofboolits]

I have over 60 Lyman four cavity moulds and some of the sprue cutters were really rough on the edges. I did some damage to the moulds until I learned to deburr and polish the edges of the sprue plates. Luckily I had acess to surface grinders and was able to skim the tops of the mould blocks to remove any damge.

Early Lyman SC's were blanked from bar stock and that was blanchard ground with really rough finish and I would skim cut the bottoms of the SC's to clean them up. Later Lyman SC's were made from bar stock with rounded edges, but the "nibbled" notches had to be cleaned up.

Lee had the same problem with stamped steel SC's.

[leadman]

That damage was caused by the sprue plate stop pin in the mold block. Yes, the plate probably took a hit to cause this. I have found that on some sprue plates the taper on the holes are too shallow. There is a straight section of hole at the bottom of the taper, causes the lead sprue to hang in the hole after it is cut. A counterbore tool from Home Depot fixes this.
The set screw holes for the sprue plate screw have not been properly tapped as the bottom is tapered. Lyman probably uses a strarting tap only, rather than following up with a bottom tap. his is why so many sprue plate screws won't stay where you put them.

A shame to have to finish what the company selling the product should be doing.

[Ben]

All that gives a person great confidence when they order a new Lyman mold ? ? ?

[Hardcast416taylor]

Back in the `70`s I loaned a nice #358495 Lyman 4 cavity mold to a friend so he could make up a supply of the wadcutter. I got the mold back about 6 weeks later. He had taken the mold to work and let anybody that wanted to make bullets use it. They were using fork truck counter balance weight lead that must have been of a stiff nature. They used a steel hammer, probably a ball peen, to beat the sprue plate open and then beat the hinge rivet on the old style handles open. The mold was hammered and peened beyond re-deeming and the handles were like pieces of loosely held together junk. I congratulated my friend on ruining a precision bullet mold and handle set. About a month later he brought me a new mold and handle set making a remark about how he hoped I was "happy" now! I never have loaned him anything since, I had often wondered why he was always buying himself new molds?Robert

[Ben]

Loaning out your molds , your favorite rifle or your wife isn't recommended ! !

Ben

[Echo]

All that gives a person great confidence when they order a new Lyman mold ? ? ?

And Why would a person choose to order a new Lyman mold? ? ?

[Ben]

They seem to have some serious quality control issues now. I ,for one , will buy an old IDEAL mold, but I'm not interested in any of their current inventory.

Ben

[adrians]

They seem to have some serious quality control issues now. I for one will buy an old IDEAL
mold, but I'm not interested in any of their current inventory.

Ben

you took the words right out of my mouth ,,,well said ben.:twisted::coffee::evil:

[Ben]

adrians :

I really don't know what is going on at Lyman. I know that a few people seem to be getting reasonable service from Lyman, and for them.....that's great. There are just as many or more who have been having all kinds of problems , particularly with their molds. Maybe it is old machinery, maybe it is poorly trained employees, maybe it is a lack of pride in their own internal quality control. I don't know ?

Ben

[Hardcast416taylor]

I`ve gotten fairly good customer service from Lyman on molds I returned to them with "problems". However, why should you have to return faulty molds to be re-cut, straightened, etc. in the first place?Robert

[smoked turkey]

Good thread with some good info on fixing damaged moulds and sprue plates. Ben you sure did a nice job on fixing the new radius on the sprue plate that had a raised nib on it. All this leads me to a couple of questions. The first concerns the proper way to approach getting rid of the problem area. Is this usually done with with wet/dry sandpaper or if it is really bad do you start with a small file and finish up with the fine grit paper? I had a mould with some rusting in the cavities. I tried using some fine compound on a pencel eraser but that didn't seem to work. I wound up using a Q-tip with the compound on it and lots of elbow grease. I resisted the urge to use my dremel tool for fear it would work too quickly and change the boolit in ways I didn't want it too. My last question concerns the appearance of the mould after the work has been completed. Do you cold blue the mould to restore the blued appearance or just leave it with bright spots where the wet/dry removed the rusty spots? Thanks. Hopefully I didn't high jack the original thread by asking these questions.

[Ben]

smoked turkey :

Those are all good questions. To start , I used a fine cut jeweler's file. That took 90% of the problem area away. Then I took a small 1" square piece of thin hardwood and wrapped some 220 grit sand paper around the block, I took the last little bit off with the sand paper.

I have a small buffing wheel, I used it to polish the very edge of the sprue plate. I used some cold blue to touch up the spots that I'd worked on. The before and after photos pretty much tell the tale.

Thanks,

Ben

[smoked turkey]

Ben: The pictures do indeed tell the tale. Very nice. I have some moulds that cast pretty good but since I buy mainly used moulds I have some that were not always treated good in their earlier life. Using your techniques the moulds are probably better than they were when new. The cold blue idea is a good one to restore the outside appearance as well. I had considered having a friend with hot blueing tanks drop some of my worse offenders in when he has some other blueing project. However I think overall the cold blueing idea is best. Thanks for sharing.

[Bret4207]

In the past I've polished a good many sprue plates up. I take them off and lap them on a piece of 320 autobody paper on a hunk of heavy plate glass I have. I use a figure "8" motion. Then when the majority of the "scars" are gone I take a cone shaped Dremel stone and use it in the sprue hole turning it with my fingers! Not with the Dremel! Then I lap that and repeat till I get the edge I think it needs- sharp, but strong. The only possible down side I see to this is the chance of losing some venting, but breaking the moulds top edges with a stone seems to cure that.

I had a Lee 6 banger once that I did a pretty good job on as far as scarring the top. Anytime you get the least sign of lead build up CLEAN IT FAST! I use good old 4/0 steel wool and follow with a carpenters pencil. Seems to work for me.

[Bad Water Bill]

Bret You are the first person I have seen saying "use glass as a backing"

Congratulations sir.

The nice thing about glass is it is as good a true flat surface as money can buy for most of us AND it is readily available and inexpensive.

My 10X12 piece of glass must be at least 20 years old and still in great shape.

[Catshooter]

I use a fine cut file for the top of the blocks - in particular it's a Handi File. Nice file. Then for finish I will figure 8 a fine grit sharpening stone. They usually are pretty flat. Same thing for the bottom of the sprue cutter.

I don't bother to blue a mould as I find that at least when I cast by the end of a session the mould is back to being all blue again.


Cat

[GaryN]

I had a wave washer on the sprue plate digging in. I took it off, worked it down with different sizes of sandpaper until I was using 1600 grit. Now it works like a ball bearing. It's the smoothest to open sprue plate I have.

[tomme boy]

OK, how would you fix a sprue plate that yo have to use something from the bottom to pop off the lead? This thing is driving me crazy. I don't even want to use it.

[cuzinbruce]

I use ceramic sharpening stones. A small round one to chamfer the edge. A a large bench stone to flatten the bottom of the sprue plate

[Bret4207]

OK, how would you fix a sprue plate that yo have to use something from the bottom to pop off the lead? This thing is driving me crazy. I don't even want to use it.

You mean the lead is sticking to the sprue plate? Start with simple- rub the area the lead is sticking with a pencil. I like a big, fat carpenters pencil. If that doens't help, the start polishing it. Chances are there is are shards of metal that the lead catches on or around that is causing the issue. Auto body paper is available at most auto supply stores. 220 is a good starting area. Just rub till it's shiny. Wrap it on a stick of some sort to get into the narrow areas.

[casterofboolits]

Back ln the late 80's I spoke to Wayne Gibbs about the best way to remove lead build up frome sprue plates and he told me to "carefully" use a single edge razor blade to remove the majority of the lead build up and 0000 steel wool to remove what was left. Worked like a charm.

Works on Lyman and Saeco steel sprue cutters too.

I also use a 1/4" piece of plate glass and wet/dry sandpaper too.

[tomme boy]

The whole sprue that is cut off sticks to the plate. Does not mater how big or small it is. It will not come off unless you pry it or push it off from the bottom.

[Bret4207]

Start with the pencil trick, see what happens. The mould is up to heat and acting good boolits, right?

[MikeS]

The whole sprue that is cut off sticks to the plate. Does not mater how big or small it is. It will not come off unless you pry it or push it off from the bottom.

I have a couple of moulds like that. I've tried putting a coating of sprue plate lube (like Bullplate) on the top of the sprue plate as well as the normal bottom of the sprue plate, and it seems to help a bit. While I've had this happen to a few moulds, I've never had lead stick to an aluminium sprue plate (like the ones on Lee six cavity moulds), I wonder if it's how the sprue plate is made, or if the metal it's made from has anything to do with it?

[tomme boy]

I ended up polishing the bevel in the sprue plate and sanded the bottom with 2000 grit to flatten it. It worked. It falls off when you open it or when you close it. Better than when you had to use a pick to push it off like before.