Saeco 32-40 mould, poor fill out on base band

[stubbicatt]

Guys, received my 32-40 mould yesterday. It is a 200 grain Pope style bullet, mould by Saeco. I've always been happy with Saeco moulds. I had strange fill issues with it however, with an estimated 75% of the bullets cast having voids in the base band. Not sure what is causing this. I should have kept a few to photograph, but I dropped them back into the melt as they were discovered upon casting. Some too had overly large base bands, measuring .324", while most were right at .323".

Otherwise nice shiny well filled bullets. I am puzzled about this base band under fill/ over fill issue. Any ideas?

Just for grins I'm going to take another run at it, and clean the mould again before trying. I had smoked the cavities with a wooden match rather than using spray mould release. I haven't been all that impressed with the mould release, which I find sort of hit or miss in application... sometimes you get too much.

ETA: Only thing I can think of is I touched a piece of wax to the pivot screw, perhaps some migrated to the cavity? I just cleaned them really good and got some sort of blackened residue from the mould half that had been giving me issues, but it is the cavity without the sprueplate pivot. Oh well. Perhaps I didn't get all the preservative out of that one upon receipt. Mysteries galore. :)

[carbine]

The sprue hole is 1/8 maybe open it up a little?

[MT Chambers]

Cast hot, cast fast, and look the world right in the eye.

[stubbicatt]

Well, I re cleaned the mould and this time from the first pour it casted pretty boolits.

It does seem strange to handle such small boolits. But they are pretty! Found me a suitable pan lube container, just need to mix up some more Emmerts.

The container I have chosen is about the size of a sandwich, of some hard plastic. I hope that upon hardening the lube pulls back from the edges so that I may remove the entire block in order to properly press the boolits out of it.

ETA: The pan lubing is the bees' knees! Who would have thought that it would be so simple! Since I intend to breech seat these bullets, I'll need to find some method of transporting them other than tossed in a cardboard box. It might make a neat woodworking project to create a box sort of like how primers used to come, separated by those little wooden partitions.

[Finnmike]

For now, store your lubed bullets in 9mm styrofoam cartridge trays, available free at your local range trash bins. Two sandwiched together make for secure transport. I find that tugging the bullets from the lube pan with a pair of needle-nose pliers when the Emmert is warm makes for easier and cleaner extraction. Mold release is ****, smoking and eventual seasoning will prevail. Pin lube will mess up your bases, especially if it migrates to the sprue plate.

[Le Loup Solitaire]

Wax is bad news even in a small amount if it gets into contact with any part of a bullet cavity. It has to be thoroughly removed. Second issue in having any kind of fillout problem with the base band(s) is that the sprue cutter/plate is too tight. That interferes with the escape of air in the cavity. The cutter should lie flat on the tops of the blocks with no up and down slop, but should slide on its own weight when the mold is tilted. Another contributor to base band fillout is the diameter of the pour/stream beith too fat and swamping the sprue hole and that can impede the flow of air out of the cavity/cavities. You have to do a little experimenting with that too. Mold release and smoking cavities....well maybe it works for some folks and their molds. I've never done either and never had a problem. If you find that either-or both help you then do it. If you have to clean your blocks use acetone...in a well ventilated setting and store your blocks in a rust free setup. LLS

[stubbicatt]

Thanks guys. Live and learn. Die and forget it all... :)