shootsblanks
12-29-2016, 11:56 AM
I just recieved my aluminum plain base noe sc311-165 5 cavity mold, my other 3 molds are lee,
With a set of noe handles, sprue plate lube and shipping it cost $220 dollars with the current canadian/us exchange rate.
I likely wont be buying another lee unless the canadian dollar gets really bad, and i need a mold for another caliber but dont want to wait for it to improve (my 44 mag carbine i have on layaway will be rescued when our dollar is forcasted to be worth .65usd for example). they cast fine bullets but holy quality batman, the phrase "not even the same ballpark" come to mind
I cleaned and preppared the mold as per the instructions and ran it through several heating and cooling cycles using my powder coating oven to control the exact temp. When i was on my last heating cycle i got my ingots ready.
I fired up the coleman stove and got to 20lbs of lead melting. It was a toasty -10° celcius (google says thats 14° in freedom units?) outside but it was warm near the stove, once my mold was ready, the pot was hot and i was excited to get started.
In about an hour i dropped 14.3lbs of bullets, i didnt count but math tells me that is roughly 600 bullets, my lee 2 cavity only gives me 250 in the same time span.
No bullets sticking in cavities, just piles of bullets pouring onto the towel, although i had some malformed and improperly filled that was my fualt, my ladle is good for 3 cavities but sometimes i would try for the 4th and it just wouldnt work out, in the end not more than 20 went back to be melted when i sorted them.
Overall the cavities all seemed to drop very consistant bullets, there was no variation in size, at least not that i could measure, all cavities dropped at .3115 with my alloy and my scale indicated 166.7 grains +/- .2gr.
I loaded some dummy shells trimmed to 2.019 and seating into the crimp groove, and while the round chambers easily it just slightly engraves on the rifling in both of my winchester model 94s,
my "beater" 94 has a tight chamber and no throat which from what i have learned here is standered, but the bore slugs at .3095, so i will be using these bullets unsized unless i feel the need to powdercoat and push to higher velocity, however if i can push this bullet along at close to 1600fps with tumble lube i wont bother with pc to save time.
With a set of noe handles, sprue plate lube and shipping it cost $220 dollars with the current canadian/us exchange rate.
I likely wont be buying another lee unless the canadian dollar gets really bad, and i need a mold for another caliber but dont want to wait for it to improve (my 44 mag carbine i have on layaway will be rescued when our dollar is forcasted to be worth .65usd for example). they cast fine bullets but holy quality batman, the phrase "not even the same ballpark" come to mind
I cleaned and preppared the mold as per the instructions and ran it through several heating and cooling cycles using my powder coating oven to control the exact temp. When i was on my last heating cycle i got my ingots ready.
I fired up the coleman stove and got to 20lbs of lead melting. It was a toasty -10° celcius (google says thats 14° in freedom units?) outside but it was warm near the stove, once my mold was ready, the pot was hot and i was excited to get started.
In about an hour i dropped 14.3lbs of bullets, i didnt count but math tells me that is roughly 600 bullets, my lee 2 cavity only gives me 250 in the same time span.
No bullets sticking in cavities, just piles of bullets pouring onto the towel, although i had some malformed and improperly filled that was my fualt, my ladle is good for 3 cavities but sometimes i would try for the 4th and it just wouldnt work out, in the end not more than 20 went back to be melted when i sorted them.
Overall the cavities all seemed to drop very consistant bullets, there was no variation in size, at least not that i could measure, all cavities dropped at .3115 with my alloy and my scale indicated 166.7 grains +/- .2gr.
I loaded some dummy shells trimmed to 2.019 and seating into the crimp groove, and while the round chambers easily it just slightly engraves on the rifling in both of my winchester model 94s,
my "beater" 94 has a tight chamber and no throat which from what i have learned here is standered, but the bore slugs at .3095, so i will be using these bullets unsized unless i feel the need to powdercoat and push to higher velocity, however if i can push this bullet along at close to 1600fps with tumble lube i wont bother with pc to save time.