Learned something today

[rickt300]

Got two new molds, one from NOE and another from LEE. The NOE mold is a hollow point design, the 36-182. I got them both hot on a hotplate while my lead was melting in the Lyman pot. I had already cleaned an lubed them with some more light lubing when I got them hot. The LEE mold was first and in a short while I was getting good bullets 2 at a time. The NOE mold is a much heavier and thicker mold which took longer to get in the groove with. The HP pins gave me a bit of trouble not letting go of the bullets and I kept getting wrinkles in the front third of the bullets with the back 2/3 looking perfect. I figured I hadn't cleaned the mold well enough and wanted to graphite the pins or look closely and see if they were rough to explain why they wouldn't easily let the bullets drop. I set the mold down to cool and cast a hundred or so of the LEE 200 grain 35-200 FN rifle bullets. Well the mistake was I had left cast bullets in the NOE mold and when they cooled they really grabbed the pins. My fooling with them made it so the mold would not close fully on the bullets so crap tomorrow I will get them off with a propane torch. I did make around 20 good bullets with it. Want to change pins anyway to the flat nose pins, no reason to make a break in more trouble.

[DDriller]

When you get the NOE mold hot enough the bullets will fall off the pins. Takes a while to heat the pins up.

[Minerat]

My brass hp moulds work well with the pid set at 750° and run fast till light frosting. The smaller the boolit the hotter you need the lead as the pins cool fast and you get wrinkled hps. If the pins are rough I chuck them in my hand drill and polish the tips with 320 grit wet and dry and use a #2 pencil to graphite them.

[MT Gianni]

When casting with an RG NOE mold I find a hot plate almost a must.

[rickt300]

When I start up again I am going to up the setting on the hotplate. These bullets are slated for 2000fps so they should expand some with the shallower HP pin or flat nosed. I just have no experience with hollow point molds and their pins, education is good.

[JonB_in_Glencoe]

This is what I have done with a New NOE RG mold.
First I polish the pins.
I heat cycle the mold/pins three times.
then I smoke the pins, light butane smoke (I almost never smoke a mold, but NOE pins are different).
I preheat the mold on a hotplate oven,
Then I apply sprue plate lube on the sprue plate, alignment pins, and yes the hollow point pins.
Then start casting.
Pins need to be smooth and HOT for the boolits to release easily.

[rickt300]

Well I got some perfect bullets. I did polish the pins but still it is a pain to get them to release the bullets. I changed the HP pin to one that is even a bigger HP and it was even harder to get it to release. I mistakenly thought this pin would not run as deep into the bullet. Nice big HP though. At any rate powder coated and GC's 24 and am about to load them up.

[rickt300]

Ok they shot just fine, had to fine tune bullets seating depth for feeding but accuracy is still excellent. No leading and velocities are around 1900 fps.

[Greg S]

As above, I've had problems and corrected it by polishing the tool marks off the pins and then scrubbing the with a pencil.

[LenH]

My experience with a NOE RG pin mold at first was not pretty. After talking to AL at NOE. I polished the pins got that mold rocket hot and had good bullets in no time.

I have a can of the Frankford mold release spray and the only thing I use it on is the pins for that stubborn mold. Getting the pins hot enough and keeping them hot
is something of a chore but got it to work.

[RogerDat]

I bought a bottle of powdered graphite. I use it on the pins applied with a Q-tip or toothpick. Seems to help. I also use the graphite for tumbling cast buckshot to coat the shot which makes buying the bottle worthwhile. Before that it was one of those big fat soft lead pencils to "color" the HP pins with. Some have spoken well of a graphite spray from Lowes or Home Depot. Those tend to have fast evaporating carrier that dries in moments leaving the graphite behind.

[rickt300]

Well for some reason everything is going smoothly now, improved my alloy and figured out how hot the mold likes it's metal. The bullets now drop right off the pins and look great. The LEE 35-200 mold gets frosty with just 5 drops using metal the NOE mold works perfectly with.

[44Blam]

I set my NOE mold on the hot plate with the pins against the plate. I also occasionally use graphite on the pins - it helps when the pins are not HOT.