NOE RG molds

[machinisttx]

I tried casting with one of the NOE RG molds earlier today and got nothing but frustration. Sometimes the bullets would drop freely, but several times bullets stuck to the pins and refused to come loose. I had to remove them with pliers. :?:

I cast with a MP cramer style right after and had no issues. Bullets dropped free with a couple of taps of my mallet. Prior to using either, I cast with an ancient Lyman 31141 and bullets literally fell out of it when opened...at least until the sprue plate screw broke and put me out of business with that mold.

[Blammer]

machinisttx, best I can suggest is do the break in period, 3-4 heat up and cool downs, then when you start casting, get the mould HOT to start with, and perhaps lightly smoke the pins.

Also notice which way the pins set the highest in the mould, try to avoid that. Turn mould right side up, then give a gentle tap and close, this will allow the pins to set closer to the bottom and not grab the boolit as much. IE the HP pin won't be as deep in the boolit and should release easier.

heat is going to be your freind here. I've had to start my RG's at a hotter temp than usual but once they start dropping (maybe with a tap to the handle) keep the mould closed to keep the heat in.

[machinisttx]

I cold blued the pins last night thinking it might help. I got the idea from the pins on the MP mold, but I have no idea if it will help or not.

I plan on trying again today, so I'll set it on the hot plate for a bit before trying to cast. I just dipped a corner in the melt to preheat yesterday.

[Blammer]

yea, gotta get the whole mould really hot, that way it transfers the heat to the pins.

keep us posted.

[machinisttx]

Success. I don't think the bluing helped any though. I set it on the hot plate for a bit and got it up to around 400. Then I tried casting and boolits stuck on the pins again. I decided to just rest the mold over the lead pot for a few minutes to see if I could get enough heat to get the boolits to drop. After maybe five minutes, they finally came loose. I had to repeat that a couple of times before boolits would fall free with a couple of taps. I wound up casting a bunch with cold marks all over them before I turned the heat up. After I got the heat high enough, it finally started filling out and I got nice frosty boolits. I cast for two or three hours and might have gotten 100-150 good boolits. I should probably mention that I'm ladle casting since my lead pot won't get hot enough(bad thermostat).

After I finish eating lunch, I'm going to head back out to try the other RG mold I have. They seem to be pretty cranky regarding temperature.

[machinisttx]

After getting the 358429 RG4 to cast properly, I decided I'd go ahead and give the 429421 RG4 a try. It dropped bullets on the first pour. I had to turn the heat up on my pot to get rid of the wrinkles, but after I got going it was addictive.[smilie=w:

Boolits want to stick in the wrong side of the mold when opening though. Would smoking the cavities help?

[Blammer]

lightly smoking I think would help, it's helped me on occasion.

[Dale53]

machinisttx;
I find that a light application of mould release (microfine graphite in de-natured alcohol) on the pins solves that problem neatly.

Dale53

[pls1911]

Elsewhere here I read the unthinkable.
Lube the aluminum mold with kroil and come back in a few days.
After a very few castings will jumpout of your mold.
It's against common knowledge, but it worked for me too.

[GL49]

I'm having the same problems as machinisttx. After three warm-ups & cool-downs, I tried using my new NOE RG mold. The bullets froze to the pins so hard, I had to remove the pins from the mold and remove the bullets from the pins with a pair of channellock pliers, clamping the pins in a vise so I could hold them without scarring them. After smoking the pins, the bullets could be pulled off the pins after casting with a set of channellocks without removing them from the mold, and after 15 pours, they finally began to drop off on their own with only a little pounding on the mold, but it sure is uncomfortable to me reaching between two aluminum blocks with steel channellocks to yank the bullets off the pins while trying to get the pins hot enough to cast. I tried to preheat the mold by leaving it on top of my casting pot, but that didn't help much. End of first day, 130 bullets on the bench, (none acceptable), time to go to my son's football game, tomorrow will be better, right? Same problems 2nd day getting started, but now I'm finally casting, but the mold seems to want to be run hot to get complete fill-out, getting frosty bullets. I can't get pretty, shiny bullets like everyone else seems to get. And running it hot, now the bullets are sticking in the cavities, even with a little mold release on the cavities, and some are breaking apart like the have a kind of crystalline structure when they drop out. Once in a while they seem to break when I am opening the mold. Am I opening the mold too soon? I'm still having fillout problems at the point on the bullet where the two halves of the mold come together, I'm guessing that the time I spend getting the bullets free of the half of the mold with the hollow point pins is cooling the edges of the mold at the bullet cavities. Beat, pound, hit, tap, cuss, finally reach in with my casting gloves and work the hollow point pin & bullet free of the mold half. Not having a lot of experience at casting, and none with hollow points, I'm kinda lost. 200 bullets on the bench, maybe 10 of them that I might want to run through my sizer, frustration level at 9.7, knowing I'll do all this over again after my next batch of alloy heats has be believing that those neat looking hollow points aren't worth the trouble. Flat nose pins are looking pretty good. I've got to believe that as good as my mold looks, it's got to cast great, but I figured I had better ask before I somehow damage the mold. Alloy is WW's with 2% tin. Anybody have any tricks or suggestions?

[denul]

GL49 - which NOE RG mold are you using? Most of mine do well but my new 41 mag behaves badly, but probably not as bad as yours sounds

[nighthunter]

I had posted on another thread about my experience with the 313640 RG2 mold. Getting the alloy hotter and the addition of tin helped quite a bit. Useing a ladle and pressure pouring is what tamed my mold. Very few rejects when pressure pouring. Believe me ... I hate to remelt bullets after a casting session.

Nighthunter

[Dale53]

I haven't used the NOE hollow point moulds (I DO have a five cavity mould that works well, from NOE, but no hollow point moulds).

However, I would expect them to work like my MiHec Cramer Style moulds.

1 - I use Mold Release on the pins.

2 - I run the metal at 750 degrees.

3 - For hollow points, today, I was using 20/1 lead/tin.

4 - The bullets fell off the pins (H&G #503 with the small tapered round pins).

5 - I had VERY few rejects

6 - I ran twenty pounds of bullets in an hour and a half.

I believe the critical elements are pre-heating the mould and possibly the alloy I am using today (although I have used a mixture of WW's+lead from 50/50 to as hard as 80/20 WW's/lead all WW alloy with 2% tin added without a problem, either).

Do NOT discount the value of lightly coating the pins with mould release. I believe this is critical to the bullets dropping off easily.

Good Luck,
Dale53

[GL49]

The mold is a brand new NOE 460350 RG4 from the group buy sponsored by SciFiJim. It sure looks great, I've just got to figure out how to make the bugger work for me. A NOE 460425 RG4 is coming in the future and I'm hoping I can learn from this one. A couple of my other molds for my revolvers seem to have their own "personality", I just haven't figured this one out. And the sample Bullplate Sprue Lube included with the mold, neat stuff! My other molds will see that applied to them. Thanks to all for the feedback. I think I'll add a casting thermometer to my Christmas wish list, maybe that'll help.

[btroj]

With my smoking hot 32 mould in an rg4 I too had trouble with stinking to the hp pins, with a cold mould. I just closed the mold back onto the boolits and poured into the other cavities. Generally the next time I opened the mould the stubborn boolits fell off the pin fine.
Seems to me the key is getting the mould hot. With the 460350 that will not be a problem. I would try running it with 2 fp and 2 hp pins. Use the fp cavities only for ten first 10 to15 pours to get some heat going. Then try all cavities.
I also had to run my bottom pour pot wide open heat wise to get the melt as hot as I wanted.
As my boolits are much smaller than yours it should be easier for you to get the heat you need.
I also find that aluminum moulds seem to cast better after a couple of sessions. Not sure why but they all seem to have a break in period.
Stick with it. This is a novel, and well made, mould design. I have been happy with mine. And I am happy with my 3 cave 460350 mould, with 1 hp cavity. Best casting mould I have.

Brad

[excess650]

I found my 360-180 RG2 to like heat. I had started with mold prep on the HP pins, but have not used it since the first session. I have put some BullPlate lube on the pins just to keep everything moving smoothly. My last casting session yielded about 350 bullets in a couple of hours, and very few are rejects. According to my old Lyman thermometer, I'm running 800*F and pressure casting with a ladle. This is definitely more heat than my Lee 20# will maintain, and 80* more than I normally use with a double cavity, iron mold.

[AnthonyB]

Had my second casting session with the RG4 BD45 210 mold. There first session showed promise but I definitely needed more training; second session was better but I'm still not performing up to the mold's potential. I had very little trouble with bullets sticking to pins; my problem is getting the blocks to open and close - they seem to want to hang up both times. I know the mold can be made to work; I had several pours where the blocks opened easily, bullets all stayed in the left block, and a quick tilt resulted in four perfect HPs on the bench. Think the next session will be with FP pins in #1 and #4 cavities to see if that helps.
Any other tips on the RG4s greatly appreciated. I am not complaining about the mold at all; I just haven't yet figured out how to use it properly.
Tony

[btroj]

Tony, I agree the rg4 is a whole new technique to learn. I found myself wanting a wrist that could rotate freely round and round.
I think these are moulds that have unique requirements in technique and casting setup. Once a person finds out what works they are great. It just comes done to spending the time to find what works.
I really am starting to like mine and would buy another. They just are a different beast in use.

Good luck

[Heavy lead]

I've got one of the RG4's in the .434300 that Blammer did the buy on. Now I'm different than most and don't use a thermometer, or a hot plate to preheat, I guess I'm a bit of a hack that way, I preheat moulds in the melt, aluminum, brass or iron and never had any problems, with this mould the way the pins are held on by the holders on the bottom of the mould it heats the pins first. I never lubed, the pins or anything and after a couple of pours they started pouring out of the mould easy. Also of note, I cut the sprue and wait maybe 10-15 seconds more before dumping the boolits as the pins are HOT. Yes I get a little lead in the works on the pin holders, but they knock right off after the first pour.
Hope this helps.

[rayzer]

I got my .460-350 RG2 mold last week. Yesterday I tried casting with it, after doing the 4 heat and cool downs. In 1 cav. I had a flat nose pin. the other, a hollow point pin. After pulling the bullets off of the hollow point pin 3 times with pliers,I gave up. I changed to 2 flat nosed pins. I tried casting but could not get the boolits to fill out. I loosened off the sprue plate a bit, it helped a bit. But I wasn't getting good fill out, until I pressure poured with the ladle. But still the bullets were wrinkled. I kept turning the temp. up on the pot until I finally got the boolits to come out wrinkle free. Then it started to rain, so I was done casting for the day. Last night I was reading one of Blammers posts about RG molds. In it he said to smoke the hollow point pins with a butane lighter. This morning I woke up to clear skies, so I fired up the pot, changed the one flat point pin back to a hollow point pin, and then I smoked the pin with a butane lighter. I heated the mold on the stove. then I started to cast. SUCSESS!!! nice shiney hollow point boolits. I found that you have to wait a bit before you open the mold, remember these molds are running hot. so it will take a while for the bullet to cool down. I was running 2 molds, as I usually do. But I had to slow down a bit today. If I opened the mold to early the hollow point pin would bend the nose of the boolit, while the base was still caught in the mold.

[btroj]

Rayzer,
I found with all three of my NOE moulds that they were much easier to get good fill out after the first session. Seems they need a break in first. Even though my 460350 was degreaser before use I could smell oil burning off as it got hot. I actually have this with new Lee moulds too.

I do not smoke any of my moulds. I did lube the bottom of the pins where they slide in the retaining device and the sprue plate.

NOE moulds are great. I just find they need a session or two to settle in and then run em.

Brad

[Blammer]

I've also found on occasion that if one half of the mould sticks while trying to open, after it is cool I take that side with the pin sticking out, put a wood block on top of the pin and give it one good "TAP" to seat the pin maybe 1/32 or 1/16 lower and then it opens nicely. It still locks up tight and no wiggle when closed but opens easier. Only do one side. If you seat it too deep, turn block over and get a punch and tap it out a bit. :)