Love Life
04-05-2014, 11:19 PM
Hardline Industries 45-230-RN Mould Review
With alternative bullet coatings (HI-TEK, Powder coat, Paint) catching on in a large-ish way, the call for a groove less bullet began to rise up from the masses. At first I was highly skeptical of a groove less bullet as it seemed to answer a question that I had never really asked. Well, recently my attention was snatched up by a groove less iron mould that Gunoil posted about. It was an iron mould, RN configuration, no grooves, and oozed quality in the pictures posted. It was made by a new company known as Hardline Industries. Hmmmm….
Well, I have been testing one of these moulds for the last couple weeks, and I can say that I am very impressed. Let me slow down though so I don’t get ahead of myself. I’ll put forth the reservations I had initially and address them throughout this rather long winded post.
Reservations about any smooth side mould made by any manufacturer:
Poor fill out
Not necessary (bullet design)
Poor performance
Won’t coat well
On to the mould and stuff.
The mould: The mould I received from Hardline Industries is the 45-230-RN slick side bullet mould. This is a 230 gr round nose mould with no lube grooves, and designed for the 45 acp.
Initial impression: QUALITY!!! Oh, and whole mess of oil on the beast. This mould is iron, has 3 alignment pins, closes like a bank vault, and has a sprue plate that could be used as a vault door. I completely disassembled the mould, scrubbed it in scalding water and dawn, dried it off, and put it through 3 heat/cool cycles in the oven. I reassembled the mould and lubed it with Bullplate sprue plate lube (what else?) in the places that require lube. I wish I would have snapped some pictures of the new mould, but I didn’t. Oh well, here are the pictures of the thoroughly tested mould:
101505
101507
101509
101511
Inititial casting impressions: I used too much Bullplate… The 1st casting session was really a break in. It burned out any residual lube, plus the Bullplate I got in the cavities, etc. I ended up scrapping that whole batch. There was a slight learning curve with the trough in the sprue plate, but I got the hang of it pretty quick. I used a medium pour rate and let the stream of alloy hit the sprue hole edge and swirl into the mould. Alloy was at 750F (I dug out the thermometer just for this and broke my multiple year no thermometer streak. I feel kind of dirty.)
2nd and subsequent casting sessions: The 2nd casting and subsequent casting sessions went like a charm. The bullets filled out perfectly. This was a pleasant surprise for me as I did not expect it to. Of course the BPCR guys cast huge slick side bullets, but the dendrites and synapses just weren’t popping on that one. A benefit is due to the mass of the blocks, I could cast many more bullets between cool downs. The sprue plate cut the sprues cleanly and did what it was supposed to do. Other than that it was pretty uneventful. No pictures of the cast bullets. Picture a RN cast bullet with no grooves. I weighed 10 random bullets on a RCBS chargemaster and got the following weights:
230.3
230.1
230.2
230.6
230.3
230.0
229.9
229.4
230.2
230.4
Coating qualities: Here is where I was really skeptical. I really didn’t expect the smooth bullet to coat well. I was wrong. I applied two coats of bullet coating. It coated very well as seen in the picture (Bullet is on the left).
101512
Loading: This bullet was loaded over 4.8 gr of Red Dot powder (Random load so I could get shooting) to an OAL of 1.270-ish. As you can see in the pictures, the 1.275 OAL loaded rd did a solid kerplunk in the Glock barrel. All loaded rds fit in the magazines and cycled 100%. The nose design is correct so that you can seat to book OAL unlike with the LEE 220 gr RN that needs to be seated super deep. Lyman dies were used to load including a M-Die.
101513
101514
101515
Shooting: Here is where the meat hits the griddle. The 1st thing I did was load 2 magazines and shoot them as fast as I could to test for function. Passed it with flying colors. I did this drill 3 times.
No amount of mould quality, bullet quality, coating quality, etc is worth your time unless the bullet is accurate. Well…look at the targets. They say 25 yds, but they were actually shot at 20 yds (verified with a Leupold LRF). These were shot out of a Glock 36 (you did not read that wrong) from a sitting position with my forearms rested on my knees like Mr. keith. Each target has 14 rds in it because that’s how the math worked out. I was very impressed with this bullet from this platform. No leading occurred throughout the testing.
101516
Recovered bullets: As you can see, the rifling was able to grip the bullet just fine. The coating also stayed intact.
101518
Summary: At the end of the day I truly put this mould through its paces. I cast it super hot and made it rain 45 caliber slugs. I was pleasantly surprised by this mould across the spectrum. It casts like a dream. It casts consistent bullets. The bullets coated well and were quite accurate considering the shooting platform. I wouldn’t hesitate to buy other caliber moulds from this company. The moulds are quality through and through.
With alternative bullet coatings (HI-TEK, Powder coat, Paint) catching on in a large-ish way, the call for a groove less bullet began to rise up from the masses. At first I was highly skeptical of a groove less bullet as it seemed to answer a question that I had never really asked. Well, recently my attention was snatched up by a groove less iron mould that Gunoil posted about. It was an iron mould, RN configuration, no grooves, and oozed quality in the pictures posted. It was made by a new company known as Hardline Industries. Hmmmm….
Well, I have been testing one of these moulds for the last couple weeks, and I can say that I am very impressed. Let me slow down though so I don’t get ahead of myself. I’ll put forth the reservations I had initially and address them throughout this rather long winded post.
Reservations about any smooth side mould made by any manufacturer:
Poor fill out
Not necessary (bullet design)
Poor performance
Won’t coat well
On to the mould and stuff.
The mould: The mould I received from Hardline Industries is the 45-230-RN slick side bullet mould. This is a 230 gr round nose mould with no lube grooves, and designed for the 45 acp.
Initial impression: QUALITY!!! Oh, and whole mess of oil on the beast. This mould is iron, has 3 alignment pins, closes like a bank vault, and has a sprue plate that could be used as a vault door. I completely disassembled the mould, scrubbed it in scalding water and dawn, dried it off, and put it through 3 heat/cool cycles in the oven. I reassembled the mould and lubed it with Bullplate sprue plate lube (what else?) in the places that require lube. I wish I would have snapped some pictures of the new mould, but I didn’t. Oh well, here are the pictures of the thoroughly tested mould:
101505
101507
101509
101511
Inititial casting impressions: I used too much Bullplate… The 1st casting session was really a break in. It burned out any residual lube, plus the Bullplate I got in the cavities, etc. I ended up scrapping that whole batch. There was a slight learning curve with the trough in the sprue plate, but I got the hang of it pretty quick. I used a medium pour rate and let the stream of alloy hit the sprue hole edge and swirl into the mould. Alloy was at 750F (I dug out the thermometer just for this and broke my multiple year no thermometer streak. I feel kind of dirty.)
2nd and subsequent casting sessions: The 2nd casting and subsequent casting sessions went like a charm. The bullets filled out perfectly. This was a pleasant surprise for me as I did not expect it to. Of course the BPCR guys cast huge slick side bullets, but the dendrites and synapses just weren’t popping on that one. A benefit is due to the mass of the blocks, I could cast many more bullets between cool downs. The sprue plate cut the sprues cleanly and did what it was supposed to do. Other than that it was pretty uneventful. No pictures of the cast bullets. Picture a RN cast bullet with no grooves. I weighed 10 random bullets on a RCBS chargemaster and got the following weights:
230.3
230.1
230.2
230.6
230.3
230.0
229.9
229.4
230.2
230.4
Coating qualities: Here is where I was really skeptical. I really didn’t expect the smooth bullet to coat well. I was wrong. I applied two coats of bullet coating. It coated very well as seen in the picture (Bullet is on the left).
101512
Loading: This bullet was loaded over 4.8 gr of Red Dot powder (Random load so I could get shooting) to an OAL of 1.270-ish. As you can see in the pictures, the 1.275 OAL loaded rd did a solid kerplunk in the Glock barrel. All loaded rds fit in the magazines and cycled 100%. The nose design is correct so that you can seat to book OAL unlike with the LEE 220 gr RN that needs to be seated super deep. Lyman dies were used to load including a M-Die.
101513
101514
101515
Shooting: Here is where the meat hits the griddle. The 1st thing I did was load 2 magazines and shoot them as fast as I could to test for function. Passed it with flying colors. I did this drill 3 times.
No amount of mould quality, bullet quality, coating quality, etc is worth your time unless the bullet is accurate. Well…look at the targets. They say 25 yds, but they were actually shot at 20 yds (verified with a Leupold LRF). These were shot out of a Glock 36 (you did not read that wrong) from a sitting position with my forearms rested on my knees like Mr. keith. Each target has 14 rds in it because that’s how the math worked out. I was very impressed with this bullet from this platform. No leading occurred throughout the testing.
101516
Recovered bullets: As you can see, the rifling was able to grip the bullet just fine. The coating also stayed intact.
101518
Summary: At the end of the day I truly put this mould through its paces. I cast it super hot and made it rain 45 caliber slugs. I was pleasantly surprised by this mould across the spectrum. It casts like a dream. It casts consistent bullets. The bullets coated well and were quite accurate considering the shooting platform. I wouldn’t hesitate to buy other caliber moulds from this company. The moulds are quality through and through.