454424 ?

[a1albert]

I have a Lyman 454424 2 cavity mold. This mold has a lighter color than all of my other lyman molds. This mold looks like aluminum including the screws and sprue cutting plate but is steel. It was setting in a box with a bunch of other molds that I aquired about 10 years ago. Some of the other molds had surface rust but this one looked clean. Any idea if some one did something to this mold or was Lyman experimenting at one time?

Albert

[theperfessor]

The dark color of a Lyman mold comes from heat induced oxidation. It's just another type of rust. Naval Jelly (and other cleaners) designed to remove rust will also remove heat blue. If somebody cleaned it up to remove a little surface rust it they also removed the heat blue and left a dull grayish silver surface.

Pictures would be helpful.

By the way, NJ will also remove gun blue quite quickly!