Smoke or no smoke??

[trixter]

I have this thing about nice clean molds, but I recently purchased another 6 cavity mold from Lee. It had been smoked in #1 and #6, but the others were not, ??? So i got my trusty Comet and brush, and hot water and cleaned it up. Now no smoke, and it drops the boolits out of the mold just fine. BUT WAIT, they are undersized. The mold is a .45, and should drop boolits .452 +/- .455. Well some do not even hit .452. So I email Lee and they tell me the temp might be too low (I cast at 675deg), or that I need to smoke the mold to get it to "wet" and thus mold larger [?????], or my lead mix might need more tin ( I might be able to buy that one a little bit). The thing that i don't understand my lead mix works just fine in all of my other Lee molds. Something smells a little fishy.
What do you think?

[MikeS]

What alloy do you use? If it works in your other moulds, but not this one, there is something wrong with the mould. You should try cleaning the mould really good, and see if that helps. If it doesn't you can try beagling the mould, that will make it cast larger boolits. Did you buy the mould new, or used? If new, you might want to consider sending it back to Lee, and see what they say.

[462]

The two smoked cavities tell me that they sent you a mould that had been returned. Now, it's your turn to send it back.

Request that they reimburse you the return postage, too. After all, it's not your fault that the mould is defective.

[geargnasher]

Smoke makes the holes smaller. I found a clean cavity is a happy cavity, although, like Marvel Mystery oil and engines, there may be a time and place for it's application, but certainly not on a new one.

Gear

[MBTcustom]

They must not spend much time here on cast boolits.com
If whoever told you that, hung out here for a couple weeks, they would blush every time they think about that "advice" they gave you.

[cbrick]

So I email Lee and they tell me the temp might be too low (I cast at 675deg), or that I need to smoke the mold to get it to "wet" and thus mold larger,

Smoke? Wet? Larger?

Smoking a mold does do some things. It will gunk up the mold, it will block vent lines, it will cause the cavity to cast SMALLER.

Think about it (Lee obviously didn't), if you add anything to the cavity you are effectively decreasing the internal capacity of the cavity. And this will make it cast larger? :veryconfu

Rick

[Jim]

I tried that smoking thing and it didn't do nothin' except black up my mold. What works for me is to clean it REAL GOOD.

I have what some would say is a bad habit of runnin' my pot a bit on the hot side, around 750. I have to wait a bit longer for the sprue to harden, but once I get the pot and mold up to temp, I get almost no rejects.

[garym1a2]

It seems to be the best thinkg to do with a mold is to heat it up a couple times with no lead and let the surfaces build up an oxide.

[jecjec13]

The two smoked cavities tell me that they sent you a mould that had been returned. Now, it's your turn to send it back.

Request that they reimburse you the return postage, too. After all, it's not your fault that the mould is defective.

+1 you have a mould that someone else has all ready send back. If you got it new I would return it to lee asap.

Dan