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Well I'm joining in on a mold GB, my first mold and first foray into casting, but I still need to decide on how many cavities to go for.
I understand the 1-cavity concept, boolits as identical as possible concept, but why go for 4 and not spend the $7 more for 5 cavities?
Thanks
p.s. while I'm asking newbie questions, what does RF stand for, e.g. " TLC311-165-RF"?
RF is Round Flat nose bullet. The TL is for Tumble Lube and the first 3 digits are usually the moulds expected bullet dimentions. Why go for 4 what you could go for 5 for $7 more. I don't know. Personal preferance perhaps. I myself if I was in that boat, I'd just go ahead and get the 5. I do sometime perfer the 2 cavity over the 6 at times though. If you don't need allot of one style bullet it is simpler and quicker to just whip out a hundered or so instead of going through the trouble of getting the 6x going. Yes the 6x is great when you need allot of bullets but sometimes it takes awhile to get it up to speed before you get good bullets.
One thing to consider is the more cavities the more sprues that have to be cut at the same time adding to using it.
Dannix, in the group buys I have gotten, I have always gotten the 4 cavity instead of the 5 cavity. It makes a lot of boolits like the five cavity, but is a little easier to get up to casting temp. The four cavity is the longest that will sit flat on top of the melt in my pot and will warm up evenly. The five cavity I would have to stick the far end in the melt and the near end wouldn't heat up as evenly. So, in answer to your question, the four cavity fits MY pot better. If you decide to use a hot plate to preheat your mold this would not be an issue. Its more of a preference issue than an expense issue.
The single or double cav. mold will be easier to learn with.
That said, the 5 cav. will shorten your casting time after you learn it's quirks.
Weight is also a consideration.
As with every thing else, experience makes a huge difference. Progressing from a double cavity to a bigger mold is less of a learning curve, when done separately.
I went with a 5 cavity and would have gone with a 6 if it had been offered. If you preheat your mold on a hot plate, the mold is up to casting temp within one or two cycles. The weight difference between a 4 and 5 cavity is pretty small.
John
In an aluminum mould, I ALWAYS go for as many cavities as is available (with NOE, as a for instance, I picked five cavities because they do not offer six). It is a superb mould.
With iron, however, four is the magic number. I have a six or eight cavity H&G #251 (can't remember which) and it is so heavy I am worn out by the time I finish a 20 lb pot. The mould and handles weighs nearly five lbs! That is definitely TOO much for this "Certified Old Fart". Using a four cavity iron mould, it is NOT a problem. There is a limit to everything... The only reason I keep the H&G is that it casts beautiful bullets that just FALL from the mould.
At one time, it was a truism that you couldn't get precision with a multi cavity mould. That is no longer true. When I got my MiHec six cavity mould, after I got it up to temperature I cast a mould full and set them aside. They weighed within .2 (two tenths) of a grain between cavities. That is fantastic but true.
When Walt Melander was still alive (NEI Handtools) I bought a four cavity mould from him and the same from LBT for my black powder cartridge rifle. BOTH will cast a 425 gr bullet +or- .6 of a grain. Again, fantastic performance. Further, in front of witnesses, I shot a ten shot six inch group at five hundred yards (with a 20 power scope) in good conditions.
So, for me, as long as I can pick my mould maker, the only consideration I would give is as above - five or six cavity in aluminum and four with iron.
Now, one disclaimer: I have two MiHec hollow point moulds (two cavity) and I can live with the capacity because it is about three times as fast as a Lyman one cavity hollow point mould.
FWIW
Dale53
Thanks a bunch for the comments. I'll go 5 cavity, at least for this one. Now I just have to decide on going HP, but I'll start a new thread for that one.
Thanks again
Everone's situation is different. I have at least 30 molds, not many by some standards, a huge number by others. The most cavities I have in any one mold is two. I am not in the bullet business so production is not a priority, I cast about three times a year and casting 150 of any bullet is a fairly large number for me. I have a ball while doing it.
I have a friend who, when he sets up to cast, will cast 1500 to 2000 of one bullet. His casting sessions will last five to seven hours and he has a casting session about every two months. He shoots more in a month than I do in a year so he really likes to pound out the bullets. He has many, many six cav. molds and uses 'em. He has a ball.
So, there isn't a single "best" answer. It's what's best for each individual. Fool around and find what's best for you while having fun. That's what it's all about.
Gerry N.
I agree, even though I've yet to get a 4 cavity mold. My first mold with more than 2 cavities was a Lee, bought on a group buy, with 6 cavities. You scrap a lot of bullets, even though the thing is aluminum, before all 6 are dropping smooth boolits. Iron would probably take even longer. My guess is 4 holes are about as much as I'd want for hand-casting.Quote:
Originally Posted by SciFiJim
When casting with multi cavity molds, it's just as important to keep the sprue plate warm as the mold. It's the sprue plate that the melt hits first, so it has to be hot too.
Open time is where the sprue plate looses it's heat so getting the boolits, out of the mold, and cycling the mold has a big influence on boolit quality.
The best trick I have learned in over fifty years of casting is to pre-heat the bullet mould. When I turn on the electric pot (RCBS 22 lbs) I also turn on the hotplate and put the mould on the hotplate (set at just higher than medium works for me). When the pot is ready, the mould is ready. I prefer to have the mould just slightly less than casting heat - so that it takes one or two casts to be fully up to heat.
After I get up to speed, I have almost NO discards. It's just a matter of "time at the pot" and you begin to be sensitive to "what works".
I LOVE the five and six cavity aluminum moulds. When you are talking iron, then four cavities have all of the weight I need. Any more, and it is just too dern heavy for me.
Dale53
I'm probably going to go with Lee 20lber, so I don't anticipate having a problem keeping the mold warm.
jlchucker, did you clean the mold and smoke it first? Just curious. Going to pickup a 9mm Lee 6-cavity at some point as well. I'm enjoying 6.5cent FMJs right now though.
Im retiring my dual molds for singles.
I like the constant weights I get from a single
quality over quantity
Remember with a two cavity you can just cast using one cavity---you can then determine if one cavitry casts more accurate bullets than does the other...Quote:
Originally Posted by Lead Fred
Even with a quality mold like a NOE?Quote:
Originally Posted by Lead Fred
I use lyman, dont no what quality they are, but they sure make a nice shootin boolit.
No I mean, if the mold is made well the cavities should be as near to as makes-no-difference identical, right?Quote:
Originally Posted by Lead Fred
I have a Schuetzen bench rifle that is a bonafide 1/2 minute rifle (1" at 200 yards). I am only interested in a one cavity custom mould for that rifle.
However, modern made handgun moulds are so good that you cannot tell the difference in a multi-cavity mould by weighing OR measuring. A good handgun of normal design is often considered quite good if it'll shoot under an inch at 25 yards. That is a four minute handgun. Plus the factor that we often shoot a handgun many more times a trip to the range than we do a rifle leads me to INSIST on multi-cavity moulds for handguns.
As I mentioned above, I recently took delivery of a MiHec six cavity mould for my .45 ACP and Auto Rim revolvers and pistols that vary + or - .2 tenths of a gr. It just doesn't get any better than that and you would NEVER be able to demonstrate that using one cavity would give you better results than ALL cavities. To clarify, I mean a world class pistol shooter could not tell the difference - even a Ransom Rest could not tell the difference.
My Schuetzen rifle, maybe...
Just a thought or two...
Dale53
Quote:
Originally Posted by jlchucker
Sit an iron mold on top of the pot while its warming up. And its ready to go after 2-4 pours. A aluminum mold, might be a little quicker warming up without an initial heating, but no one here can debate the fact that an Iron mold holds the heat much better then a aluminum. If I sit my mold down on the rim of the pot for a couple minutes to drop a few more ingots in the melt, then walk away and wait for it to come back up to temp, when I start pouring again its right at the right temp. The aluminum molds are ok, but you nothing is as good as iron, though brass is a pretty good medium as well...
Not to mention sometimes the mould heats & cools unevenly as you're casting!Quote:
Originally Posted by Doc Highwall
Sometimes my larger moulds are putting out EXCELLENT boolits from one end of the mould, and wrinkled boolits from the other!
Thermodynamics and cooling issues are important to me - so I don't own anymore molds with more than 4 cavities, and I LOVE the Lyman steel 2-Cavity molds for their consistency.
inuhbad;
My experience differs from yours. I have NO problem with five and six cavity aluminum moulds - NONE, that includes our friends on here MiHec, Lee, NOE, as well as LBT, NEI, etc. However, when it comes to iron moulds, four cavity is my limit simply due to more weight than I want to handle. I have a six cavity, iron, H&G #251 dbl ended .38 W/C that casts beautifully, but it is really too heavy to enable me to enjoy casting with it. However, I DO put up with it because it produces a very useful bullet for me - I just don't enjoy it like I do six cavity Aluminum moulds.
When casting volumes of bullets, I MUCH prefer multi-cavity moulds.
The only two cavity moulds I enjoy using are MiHec's Cramer style hollow point moulds. They work extremely well and I don't need thousands of h.p. bullets (so, I have a comparable design in six cavities for volume needs and just use the hollow points for "business" use).
FWIW
Dale53
When you pre-heat your molds, by laying them on the pot or putting them on a hot plate do you flip them over heating both sides or do you just allow the heat to radiate through the mold from one side to the other?
And you guys would also recommend a newbie starting out with double cavities to get our feet wet and gain some experiance. Have run .490 and .375 RB in single cavity brass moulds using a lead dipper as a melting pot on the coals of a camp fire, how big of a jump is it to Lee aluminum moulds and boolits rather than RB, all info is greatly appreciated.
JSAND;
I pre-heat by putting my moulds on a hot plate, directly (my hot plate has a solid sheet metal surface - I do NOT believe it a good idea to put a mould directly on a calrod unit - in that case I would lay a piece of sheet metal on the hot plate and placing the mould on that).
I "level" the mould (I block up the handles so the blocks rest level on the hot plate). I do not rotate - they will heat just fine sitting flat on the heating surface.
On my hotplate, I set it on slightly higher than "Medium". The idea is to get it just UNDER final casting temperature and bring it to final heat by casting a couple of moulds full, then proceeding.
Using a double cavity aluminum mould is no harder than using a single cavity round ball mould. Often, round balls are harder to cast well than are bullets.
If you are using Lee moulds, their six cavity moulds are made of better aluminum and are in general better moulds. Further, I LOVE six cavity aluminum moulds for general use bullets. When casting .44 or .45 caliber bullets, I can empty my RCBS electric bottom pour pot in about an hour. That gives me 20+ lbs of finished MATCH GRADE bullets. THAT is production. Others say that they can do even better...
FWIW
Dale53
I've been preheating my molds with a propane torch, like the kind used for soldering copper pipe fittins(I'm a plumbing contractor). I don't get too carried away with it, just a good warm up, rotating the mold in the flame. So far so good. Am I risking warping my molds? It also works good to speed up the melt in the pot and to make sure ingots are dry before putting in the pot. Warms up my Lee 6 cav nice and even.
I like large cavity molds and even with a 10 cav iron mold I just sit it on top of the pot and it's ready to go when the melt is. More often though I'll be using 2 two cavity molds or 2 four cavity, alternating them so neither ever gets too hot. With 2 double cavities I'll cast around 350 to 400 bullets in an hour which is about as long as I cast these days. An hour casting ,once a week ,will be all most will need.
H10
I've got several Lee six-cavity moulds and some of their two-cavity moulds. Having tried both, I prefer the six-cavity models. I can just go so much faster, and the boolits turn out great.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blk6dKNinlo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MVp76UDw_4
- Cowboy T
Some nice vids you got there Cowboy T. http://castboolits.gunloads.com/images/icons/icon14.gif
If I recall correctly, those are the first vids I've seen with bottom pour. Didn't realize mods require cooling quite so quickly either. Now I understand why I've read comments here about alternating between two molds when casting.
A 10 pound pot will not keep up with most 5 or 6 cavity molds. I can't even keep up with a 6 cavity mold with a 20 pound pot, so I use a 20 pound to cast from and a 10 pound pot as a melter.
I have two H&G 10 cavity molds for casting DEWC bullets, but I haven't used either of them in years. I'm not young anymore, and it takes a young man to use those molds for any length of time.
The Lee 6 cavity molds work fine for a bottom pour pot, but I wish they made them from brass instead of aluminum. I think they would hold up better.
I've gotten lazy in my old age and really prefer to cast on the Magma Cast Master, which is only a two cavity set up, but I can cast all day and not be worn out and still have a pretty good pile of cast bullets to show for it.
Hope this helps.
Fred
I have said this before here. Life is way to short to be casting with single and double cavity molds. The more cavity's the better for me. I would happily buy 10 cavity molds from NOE.
I too like large number of cavites for high production. I have several old H & G 8 and 10 cavity moulds and use them as needed. But I find myself using a lot of other moulds to. But the heavy ones are not a problem since I only lift them from the preheater to the heat sink slide under the pot. I have more of a problem keeping moulds cool enough than keeping them hot enough...Wes