Boomer Mikey
06-03-2008, 09:04 PM
I borrowed my CAS shooting buddy’s Lyman 452424 mold last week to cast some SWC’s for my new EMF Hartford 1892 rifle in 45 LC; I remember how well his 1894 Marlin Cowboy shot them (1/2” groups at 50 yards.) I’m not in the habit of borrowing molds as I won’t loan my molds out; I’m fussy that way, he gave me his new 45 auto RCBS 45-230-RN mold to break in and try with my new 1911’s too. Leapin Otis is a long time friend; we’ve been going to CAS matches for quite some time now and one of these days he’s going to beat me.
I inspected the molds in preparation for a casting session along with a couple of molds I picked up at the gun show, a Lyman 452460 and an RCBS 45-200-SWC, I also setup a new Lyman 454190 mold for the session that I recently purchased from MidSouth. The 452424 had surface rust on the blocks and the cavities had some badly rusted grease groove corners with 80% surface rust. I decided to clean the surface rust from the mold with a brass brush and then cast some bullets with it to see if it was OK. The Lyman 452460 mold was made in 1974 and was absolutely rust free; the person who owned it smoked it on a regular basis and there was what appeared to be a varnish or lacquer coat on the outside surfaces.
The RCBS 45 and Lyman 454190 molds were new; I removed their sprue plates and I used an India stone to check the mating surfaces and flatten dings, remove wire edges off the blocks, rounded any sharp corners, and remove burs in the handle slots. A countersink was used to take the sharp edges off the sprue plate bolt hole. All the molds were oiled with Bullplate lube and mating/sliding surfaces treated with a lead-away cloth.
I’ve run as many as 4 or 5 molds at a time before but it’s been a while… I’m spoiled with the Lee 6 cavity molds, it’s easy to run a pair of 6 cavity molds at the same time and prep work is less too. All of the molds produced decent boolits but the rusted mold’s boolits were on the rough side. It took about 1-1/2 hours of careful work to clean, cold blue, and polish the mold to restore it to near new condition. I also cleaned the 35 year old 452460 mold to remove years of smoke buildup and prepped it - restoring it to better than new condition then ran another casting session to compare the first session’s boolits to. Boolits from the second session from the two molds weren’t significantly different in weight or size except for their appearance, nice sharp lines with smooth, almost polished looking surfaces.
I called Leapin Otis and recommended he take a look at his molds and the way he stores them, then I took a look at my molds… some had very minor patina and the time spent checking my friends molds was well spent as several were rescued to cast another day.
Take the time to see how your molds are doing, we're glad we did,
Boomer :Fire:
I inspected the molds in preparation for a casting session along with a couple of molds I picked up at the gun show, a Lyman 452460 and an RCBS 45-200-SWC, I also setup a new Lyman 454190 mold for the session that I recently purchased from MidSouth. The 452424 had surface rust on the blocks and the cavities had some badly rusted grease groove corners with 80% surface rust. I decided to clean the surface rust from the mold with a brass brush and then cast some bullets with it to see if it was OK. The Lyman 452460 mold was made in 1974 and was absolutely rust free; the person who owned it smoked it on a regular basis and there was what appeared to be a varnish or lacquer coat on the outside surfaces.
The RCBS 45 and Lyman 454190 molds were new; I removed their sprue plates and I used an India stone to check the mating surfaces and flatten dings, remove wire edges off the blocks, rounded any sharp corners, and remove burs in the handle slots. A countersink was used to take the sharp edges off the sprue plate bolt hole. All the molds were oiled with Bullplate lube and mating/sliding surfaces treated with a lead-away cloth.
I’ve run as many as 4 or 5 molds at a time before but it’s been a while… I’m spoiled with the Lee 6 cavity molds, it’s easy to run a pair of 6 cavity molds at the same time and prep work is less too. All of the molds produced decent boolits but the rusted mold’s boolits were on the rough side. It took about 1-1/2 hours of careful work to clean, cold blue, and polish the mold to restore it to near new condition. I also cleaned the 35 year old 452460 mold to remove years of smoke buildup and prepped it - restoring it to better than new condition then ran another casting session to compare the first session’s boolits to. Boolits from the second session from the two molds weren’t significantly different in weight or size except for their appearance, nice sharp lines with smooth, almost polished looking surfaces.
I called Leapin Otis and recommended he take a look at his molds and the way he stores them, then I took a look at my molds… some had very minor patina and the time spent checking my friends molds was well spent as several were rescued to cast another day.
Take the time to see how your molds are doing, we're glad we did,
Boomer :Fire: