paul h
08-08-2012, 12:48 PM
I've been reading about the mihec molds and am waiting on a couple of group buys, but when I saw one of the group buy bullets I was interested in on the swap and swell forum, I decided to hasten my wait for one of the molds.
I've always avoided hp molds because the only design I was aware of was the lyman, and I figured that was just way to slow of a method of casting bullets. Once I became aware of the Cramer style I became intrigued.
Well, a USPS flat rate box showed up yesterday with a 359640 two cavity mold. The fit and finish was impressive and I quickly headed down to the garage to put some ww's in the Saeco. The mold had one round pin and one penta in it, so I swapped out the round to run pentas in both. I grabbed an rcbs handle and put the new to me mold on it. A couple drops of MP's lube on the alignment pins, the rods the hp pins slide in and out on and the sprue plate pivot and I let the mold warm up with the melt. Once the ~5#'s of ww's I'd melted was ready to go I dipped the edge of the mold in the melt to bring it up to temp. It took about 60 seconds before the lead would stop freezing to the mold.
The first several casts yieled incomplete hp's, but once I got my casting cadence down the mold came up to temp. I finally remembered reading one should open the mold inverted, and then the bullets were mostly just dropping out of the mold. Occassionally I'd have to push on of the hp pins to get the bullet to drop, but more often than not just a vigourous opening of the mold would drop the bullets from the mold.
I probably ended up with around 200 bullets, with very few rejects. I never realized one could make hp's so easily. I ran them through the 450 .358" sizer with bac and need to head to the range today to make some empty brass to try them out. I'm also going to need to crank out some with a flat point nose.
I've always avoided hp molds because the only design I was aware of was the lyman, and I figured that was just way to slow of a method of casting bullets. Once I became aware of the Cramer style I became intrigued.
Well, a USPS flat rate box showed up yesterday with a 359640 two cavity mold. The fit and finish was impressive and I quickly headed down to the garage to put some ww's in the Saeco. The mold had one round pin and one penta in it, so I swapped out the round to run pentas in both. I grabbed an rcbs handle and put the new to me mold on it. A couple drops of MP's lube on the alignment pins, the rods the hp pins slide in and out on and the sprue plate pivot and I let the mold warm up with the melt. Once the ~5#'s of ww's I'd melted was ready to go I dipped the edge of the mold in the melt to bring it up to temp. It took about 60 seconds before the lead would stop freezing to the mold.
The first several casts yieled incomplete hp's, but once I got my casting cadence down the mold came up to temp. I finally remembered reading one should open the mold inverted, and then the bullets were mostly just dropping out of the mold. Occassionally I'd have to push on of the hp pins to get the bullet to drop, but more often than not just a vigourous opening of the mold would drop the bullets from the mold.
I probably ended up with around 200 bullets, with very few rejects. I never realized one could make hp's so easily. I ran them through the 450 .358" sizer with bac and need to head to the range today to make some empty brass to try them out. I'm also going to need to crank out some with a flat point nose.