Tried release spray - rather than normal matches - results....?

[RegisG]

I normally coat the mold cavities on a new mold with a few wooden matches to blacken them. Got a new lee 6 cavity TL358 -158 today and thought I'd try a mold release that I bought at local reloading shop. I ran through a couple hundred and most of the time 1 or more stuck in the mold and I had to rap them with a club. I played with the mold temp some by waiting longer between pours. If mold got a "little" hot, I had lots of sticking. Waiting 30 seconds or so between and sometimes all would fall out.
So much for that experiment for me. I'm going to clean it well and start over blackening with kitchen matches. If mold release works for others, great but, I'll not waste any more time with it.

Regis

[Casting_40S&W]

Mold release spray reduces the "as-cast" diameter of the bullet, especially on TL bullets. Wood match is the best.

[nicholst55]

And many of us don't feel the need to smoke cavities before casting, either.

[blikseme300]

I don't use any coating or smoking in any of my molds. In my experience CB's stick in the mold due to burrs or other imperfections. Deburring and/or lapping the molds fixes this problem every time. If ever a stick or hammer is needed to pound the mold to drop the bullets then it needs fixing as no adding of release agent or smoking will help.

[bangerjim]

I have always lightly smoked Al molds with a beeswax candle ONLY. Brass and Fe molds....no.

Beeswax flames give a finer carbon coat than anything else. Regular candles and lighters do not work nearly as well. The fine carbon coat does not make the boolits smaller and aids in release from all the messing around I have done. I only smoke a mold ONCE B4 I use it. And do NOT worry about scrubbing the grease/oil out, as the only things that cause wrinkles is a cold mold and/or cold lead alloy.

bangerjim

[VHoward]

Then how come getting oil in the cavity of a hot mold caused wrinkles in the bullet? That's been my experience.

[dragonrider]

A properly prepared mold does not need mold release of any kind, including smoke. The only thing that gets into my molds is lead.

[RegisG]

I never knew about NOT coating mold. I had always read & did use candle or wooden matches to lightly coat mold cavity.

Any tips on properly cleaning out the mold release would be appreciated. Otherwise I'll go with mineral spirits and Q-tip.

thanks,
regis

[Moonie]

Acetone or brake cleaner would be my preference, I would think mineral spirits would leave a residue.

[matrixcs]

+1 on the no smoking or mold release. Squeaky clean with properly prepared mold drops every time. Burrs can be hard to see. I frequently lap new molds if they have sticking cavities. Lapping does not need to increase size of cast boolits.

[RegisG]

Now, that interests me. How would I lap a mold? Some kind of grit imbedded in a cast boolit???

Regis


+1 on the no smoking or mold release. Squeaky clean with properly prepared mold drops every time. Burrs can be hard to see. I frequently lap new molds if they have sticking cavities. Lapping does not need to increase size of cast boolits.

[Shooter6br]

Wooden matches work for me

[LenH]

RegisG, check out the sticky at the top of the main page on lapping a mold, Sure-Fire-Lee-Menting-Technique-(Aimoo-Post-Revisited). I didn't use Comet but use a valve lapping
compound the fine type to loosen up an iron mold.

I found out the hard way about mold release but it came off with brake cleaner & and an old toothbrush.

Len h.

[bangerjim]

Then how come getting oil in the cavity of a hot mold caused wrinkles in the bullet? That's been my experience.

I cast hot melt glue boolits all the time and use PAM (OIL!) as a release agent very profusely in the mld cavities. When I am done, I just wipe off the PAM from the molds with a paper towel, heat the mold up on a hotplate and start casting lead. No scrubbing and cleaning at all. Grease/oil has NEVER caused me any wrinkles. ONLY a cold mold and/or cold lead will cause wrinkles.

Think about the physics of it.............a HOT mold filled with HOT lead will push any oil right out of the way. And if there is oil, it will be gone in 1 or 2 fills anyway. How could a tiny bit of oil cause wrinkles and poor fills in dozens of boolits as some moan about on here????????? Just does not make any scientific sense at all. And I have proved it many many times with my molds and casting.

Your best friend is a good electric hotplate. Not brake cleaner, soap & water, and a toothbrush!

Heck, I even put a little beeswax down in some cavities to test the theory. Guess what.........NO wrinkles at all..........if the mold and lead were at the proper temp. Only beeswax on a few boolits that floated on the dump water.

That has been my experience for years.

bangerjim

[gwpercle]

Liquid Wrench Dry Lubricant. It's an alcohol base with micro fine teflon particles as the lubricant.
Give a cool mould a coat or two, dries fast, boolits jump out and doesn't wrinkle/contaminate cavities. Use it on sprue plate, top of blocks and in cavities. Spray on or use liquid applied with a Q-Tip. Works much better than graphite based mould release spray. doesn't gunk up your mould either.
Make sure cavities are free of burrs...dry Q-Tip will snag any along mould edge.
Gary

[bangerjim]

Liquid Wrench Dry Lubricant. It's an alcohol base with micro fine teflon particles as the lubricant.
Give a cool mould a coat or two, dries fast, boolits jump out and doesn't wrinkle/contaminate cavities. Use it on sprue plate, top of blocks and in cavities. Spray on or use liquid applied with a Q-Tip. Works much better than graphite based mould release spray. doesn't gunk up your mould either.
Make sure cavities are free of burrs...dry Q-Tip will snag any along mould edge.
Gary

Food for thought:
Polymer fume fever or fluoropolymer fever, also informally called Teflon flu, is an inhalation fever caused by the fumes released when polytetrafluoroethylene (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polytetrafluoroethylene) (PTFE, known under the trade name Teflon (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teflon)) is heated to between 300 °F (149 °C) and 450 °F (232 °C). When PTFE is heated above 450 °F (232 °C) the pyrolysis (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrolysis) products are different and inhalation may cause acute lung injury (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acute_lung_injury). Symptoms are flu-like (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza) (chills, headaches and fevers) with chest tightness and mild cough. Onset occurs about 4 to 8 hours after exposure to the pyrolysis (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrolysis) products of PTFE. A high white blood cell count (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leukocytosis)may be seen and chest x-ray findings are usually minimal.
The polymer fumes are especially harmful to certain birds whose breathing, optimized for rapidity, allows toxins which are excluded by human lungs. Fumes from Teflon in very high heat are fatal to parrots,[1] (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymer_fume_fever#cite_note-1) as well as some other birds (PTFE Toxicosis).[2] (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymer_fume_fever#cite_note-2)

[RegisG]

Got it,
Thank you,
Regis


RegisG, check out the sticky at the top of the main page on lapping a mold, Sure-Fire-Lee-Menting-Technique-(Aimoo-Post-Revisited). I didn't use Comet but use a valve lapping
compound the fine type to loosen up an iron mold.

I found out the hard way about mold release but it came off with brake cleaner & and an old toothbrush.

Len h.

[Ben]

I did this with a Lyman mold , but it works equally well with any bullet mold that has sticking bullets . As has been mentioned already, I'm no fan at all of spray mold release.

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?126129-Lyman-Mold-quot-Tune-Up-quot

Read this for application to your Lee mold :

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?47669-More-quot-Lee-Lementing-quot

[VHoward]

I cast hot melt glue boolits all the time and use PAM (OIL!) as a release agent very profusely in the mld cavities. When I am done, I just wipe off the PAM from the molds with a paper towel, heat the mold up on a hotplate and start casting lead. No scrubbing and cleaning at all. Grease/oil has NEVER caused me any wrinkles. ONLY a cold mold and/or cold lead will cause wrinkles.

Think about the physics of it.............a HOT mold filled with HOT lead will push any oil right out of the way. And if there is oil, it will be gone in 1 or 2 fills anyway. How could a tiny bit of oil cause wrinkles and poor fills in dozens of boolits as some moan about on here????????? Just does not make any scientific sense at all. And I have proved it many many times with my molds and casting.

Your best friend is a good electric hotplate. Not brake cleaner, soap & water, and a toothbrush!

Heck, I even put a little beeswax down in some cavities to test the theory. Guess what.........NO wrinkles at all..........if the mold and lead were at the proper temp. Only beeswax on a few boolits that floated on the dump water.

That has been my experience for years.

bangerjim

ONLY a cold mold and/or cold lead will cause wrinkles. This is a false statement as I have done the oil in a cavity test. Getting oil in the cavity of a hot mold will cause wrinkles. The wrinkles will not last long, but it does cause wrinkles. I think you need to think the physics of it out a little more. You have oil in the cavity of a hot mold, it is smoking turning to vapor, you pour hot lead in that cavity, now the oil vaporizes quicker. That vapor has to go somewhere and it causes wrinkles in the bullet as it solidifies. My procedure with any mold whether it is aluminum, brass or steel/iron when I receive it new is to scrub it with a toothbrush and dish soap, then heat cycle it 5 times heating it to 400 degrees and then cooling it. Never had bad bullets from this as I also preheat my mold on a hot plate. But accidentally get oil in the cavity while lubing the alignment pins and it causes wrinkles in that cavity until the oil has burned off.

[bangerjim]

As I said, any oil will be mitigated in 1 or 2 pours. Reread my post! Some on here claim dozens and dozens of bad boolits are caused by one teeny tiny bit of oil in the cavity and any is totally detrimental to all casting until the mold is scrubbed & cleaned and cleaned and scrubbed before the next pour.

That is what I was referring to. A bit of oil cannot cause continuous wrinkles. A cold mold will....until it gets toproper temp.....with or without oil.

I still stick to my original claim.

Do we WANT oil in there? Of course not! But the extreme cleaning ritual may just be leading new casters down a path they need not tread to drop successful boolits. They need to target using a hot plate to pre-heat all molds B4 even starting the casting session.

banger

[VHoward]

Thanks for the clarification. I was reading that ONLY temperature causes wrinkles. Yes, no need to stop the casting session to clean a tiny bit out. I don't. I just pick the few out that do get wrinkled if I manage to get oil in the cavity during the casting session.

If you find you need a release agent or to smoke your cavities to get your bullets to fall out easily, then you are just using a band aid to cover up the cause. You either have a burr keeping the bullet from releasing, or your mold and/or lead temperature is not correct. Each mold will be different depending on what material it's made out of, the size and shape of the cavity and what alloy you are using.

A good read and lot's of good info for any caster is Glen's book "From Ingot to Target". http://is.gd/9VOt2i