Hard to cut sprueplate

[crabo]

I have a 6 cavity H&G pb 68. It casts beautiful boolits. When I got it, I noticed it looked like the sprueplate had been beat with a hammer instead of a stick.

It also looked like it had the wrong sprueplate because the holes were so small. I had problems with that big base filling out, so I opened it up with a 90 degree countersink. That cured the base fillout part.

I then lightly sanded the back of the sprueplate to make sure it was flat. I kissed the top of the mold blocks with fine sandpaper to make sure they were flat. Both are flat.

I cannot cut the sprues with a wooden mallet unless I want to bang it 10 or more times. The hole for the screw that holds the sprue plate on seems to be wallowed out a bit and there is some slop in that. Could that be the reason the sprues are so hard to cut. I have a bunch of molds, and no other mold has this problem.

Anyone have a suggestion other than "don't force it, get a bigger hammer"?

[hotwheelz]

I had a similar issue with a lyman 4 cavity I replaced the spuce plate and screws with a rebuld kit problem solved. IM not sure you will be so lucky with a H&G mold you may want to try some Bull plate lube I can cut my spuce off sooner when using the bull plate lube and not get any smearing.

[garandsrus]

Crabo,

I have a 10 cavity H&G that also has a handle that was beat on by a previous user. As long as the mold is hot, I can open the handle easily with a mallet. This is definitely a mold that needs to be preheated before casting!

I have also found that if I am not casting fast enough or hot enough, the mold will cool down and require a re-heating before continuing.

John

[HeavyMetal]

How large did you make the holes in the sprue plate?

Once upon a time I did the same thing to a two cavity Lyman and I doubled the size of the sprue hole.

It was way harder to open after I did that! Got much better fill out but I could feel the difference in twisting the sprue plate open.

I can just imagine how doubling the size of the holes on a 6 banger could make it a lot moe difficult to open!

In my case I took a strong magnifiying glass and realized I had left a very small area of the hole with a "straight" edge on it! I took a 90 degree countersink and ran it down until I got a sharp edge on the bottom of the sprue plate.

Lots easier to open after that!

[mooman76]

I'd try to sharpen the hole some. That should help. Also I switched to a plastic headed hammer a few years ago when I saw someone else use one. I believe it's like 4 or 6 oz. It's not hard enough to do damage the mould but it's hard and doesn't give as much as wood so has a sharper rap to it.

[crabo]

1. I'm using Bullplate

2. The holes are sharp because of the countersink and I sanded the back of the sprueplate. The new holes are smaller than on my other 45 molds.

3. The mold is plenty hot. It is casting great boolits. I am using BruceB's speedcasting method.

I had none of these problems with the 185 grain 68 6 cavity that I sold.

The only thing I can think of is the slop in the hole is not letting it cam well. I may have to weld up the hole and redrill it.

[HeavyMetal]

If thats the case the only thing you can do is try to "bush" it and see if that does indeed remove enough slop to make cutting the sprue easy again.

However I'm not sure how that can be?? The sprue plate is anchored at one end (and on the oposite block) from the area you strike to cut the sprue.

When you've filled the mold the individual cavities form 6 "pins" that connect to the extra lead forming the sprue on top of the plate itself. In the case of an H&G mold they have that trench cut into the plate as well making an even bigger wedge holding the sprue plate tight against the boolit bases.

Now when you strike the sprue plate you actually have to cut all six "pins" from the boolit bases before any slop in the bolt that hold the plate on kicks in.

So my thought is unless the slop in the bolt hole is so great that your actually moving the location of the sprue plate each time its closed, and thus are changing the leverages each time it's filled and cuts the sprue then something else must be affecting the action of the sprue plate.

This is one of those times when you wish three or four people could actually be on hand to "brain storm" this problem while you were using it.

And I just had a thought! Does this mold have one of those "Guides" I've seen on some of the H&G molds? Looks like the mold slides on a semi circle set up?

If it does is it possible the slop allows the radius of the semi circle to "change" and possibly rub against the guide making it hard to open??

Mind you this is a W.A.G. on a mold I've never seen so don't laugh to hard.

[Texasflyboy]

I have a 6 cavity H&G pb 68. ....
Anyone have a suggestion other than "don't force it, get a bigger hammer"?


My suggestions:

#1- Order a replacement 6 cavity spruplate from Ballisticast. Sprue plates are a fairly easy item to manufacture vs. the actual mould. I would not hesitate to use a Ballisticast sprue plate. You may want to call them and see if they will fit it to your mould.

They want $36.00 for a six cavity sprueplate:

http://i37.tinypic.com/24awt9f.jpg

#2 - (More expensive) Buy another Hensley & Gibbs 6 cavity mould and swap sprue plates. Shouldn't be an issue to move the sprue plate between blocks as I have done that in the past.

Tom in VA

[Bret4207]

You can bush the pivot pin. You can also try a rawhide mallet. Thats my go tool tool on my H+G 10 cav.

[hiram]

Are you sure the countersink got down to the bottom of the hole??

When you double the sprue hole diameter, you quadruple the surface area of the hole. This is 4X the lead to cut.

[garandsrus]

I am using BruceB's speedcasting method.

Crabo,

Are you cutting the sprue before cooling the blocks? If not, I would give that a try. I only have a 4 and 10 cavity H&G, but I don't need to cool the blocks and can cast pretty fast without overheating the mold.

John

[crabo]

The thing here that confused me, is that I have opened the holes up a lot bigger on Lee 6 cavity molds and they still cut easy. I only opened up the holes when I found it so hard to cut the sprues. The original holes match my 4 cavity 358 Ballisticast mold. (51)

Of course, I already sold my other 45 acp 6 banger H&G mold.

I'll try cutting before I cool the sprue. I hadn't thought about that. I may not need to cool the sprue to cast fast with that mold. I just got in the habit of doing that with my aluminum molds because it speeds up the output. This is the only possibilty that has made any sense to me so far.

[hiram]

My purpose of asking if your countsink reached the bottom of the hole is that if it didn't, you still have a dull edge. When the countersink reaches the bottom, you should be able to feel a small burr on the underside of the plate.

[crabo]

I had to sand the small burr off the backside so it did go all the way through. I tried not cooling the sprue on the wet towel, but it was just as hard to cut.

I'm going to call Ballisticast tomorrow. I am also going to call a friend of mine who used the mold last time. He cast about a gallon of 68s and I don't remember him having any problems.