Clean 'em After Every Session???

[Grump]

Okay, my Dad and I were quite spoiled by the dry climate he settled in, and all he really taught me about the end of the casting session was to leave the cavities filled and wrap the moulds in oiled paper to keep the rust away.

Now I'm noticing that tiny bits of lead "hair" you might call it, less than 1mm long, and the occasional super-thin goober of lead maybe 1mm in diameter, tend to accumulate on the mould faces for every session.

So it looks like I gotta get that stuff off lest I start "beagling" the next batch. Cold blocks before the next session is a drag--bore cleaners work way to slow.

Wondering:

A. Is the best practice to get these tiny bits off after every use? I found one of them was IN what I consider the undersized vent grooves of an RCBS mould, right where I was getting some unreliable fill next to the lube groove.

B. Looks like it is, so does anyone do the beeswax and Q-tip/bamboo skewer treatment on the hot mould at the end of each session? That's gotta be better than 6 or more rubdowns with bore cleaners of various sorts. Once clean, I intend to fill the moulds up and leave them "loaded", as before.

BTW, Butch's Bore Shine seems to remove lead bits better than Outer's whatever stuff, or the Barnes high-ammonia bore cleaner.

[John Boy]

Yes, clean after every casting session ... Cleanliness is next to Perfect Bullets

[462]

I would look into why the lead is accumulating on the mould faces, in the first place.

[rollmyown]

I only clean off any obvious lead dribbles, re lube the pins and sprue plate and put them away in a clean and dry draw. I mostly use brass and aluminium and have no problems.

[swheeler]

You shouldn't be getting lead on the mold faces, but if you do it should be cleaned off as you are casting otherwise you have "Beagled"

[Grump]

This is really, really tiny stuff. Literally the thickness of a hair and very short. Maybe even thinner. Probably little bits that string off of the sprue as it pops off, and/or smeared off the bottom of the sprue plate or something. This is while being very careful to open the mould and dump the sprues in a separate pile almost a foot away from where I drop the boolits.

Much different from the -still not that much larger- stuff I had from the brilliant idea of dumping my sprues straight into the pot when using a ladle and the big pot. Otherwise that was nice when using a 4-cavity unit. But I was getting splash on the top of the mould and the bottom of the sprue plate and that was making its way onto the faces.

For all I know, some of this from both types of casting sessions could even be getting knocked around from the outsides of the blocks.

So, a new era of cleanliness has begun in my life.

Now I gotta get my hands on some more beeswax. Every little bit I have is in lube right now. Is beeswax on a hot mold THAT much better than, say, wax bullet paraffin or other waxes for getting lead off? I don't think that the Three Amigos' SL-61 or 62 leftover lube chunk I have laying around would work that well. The extra I've tried as flux doesn't seem to flux that well...