Rebuilding an ancient bullet master mk3

[Tazza]

Any update on your machine, Tazza??

Sadly time is not on my side, i get so few hours free to dedicate to messing with them. I have been tinkering with the melting pot, i hope to have a new enclosure for it soon. K thermocouple will be fitted, possibly two, as they are cheap as chips and saves me opening it up if one was to go bad. I have the ceramic fibre insulation already

I hope to cast a few from each mould set i have as not all of them have sizes written on them, so it's a mystery of what i have till i get to fill them with lead. They are well used but he did a great job if repairing them, hopefully they have more life left in them, some i'll probably never use. See if i can attach a picture of moulds i cleaned up yesterday. There are more, one set is in a machine carousel, the others i haven't cleaned as they are in a bad way and of a size i don't see me using for some time. Some even have quite a bit of rust inside, so that will be an interesting job to clean out.

[HATCH]

That is a crap pile of molds.

Any update on your progress on rebuilding it?

[Tazza]

That is a crap pile of molds.

Any update on your progress on rebuilding it?

Sadly no updates, work is poo with covid, the un-paid leave i'm on i have been finishing other projects at home, so it's good and bad. I haven't had time to sit down and finish the melting pot. I think i have everything i need for it, insulation, PID and thermocouple. I actually want to install 2 of them just in case one goes bad i don't need to open the pot to replace it, they are like $1 each from china, so worth having redundancy.

I actually found another box of 32 moulds.... Plus one set in a machine, brings me to 18 sets of 8, so yeah, a crap load of moulds right there. Sadly some i'll never use, there are 3 or 4 sets of 40 cal ones.

The only real progress i have had was to get one mould of each set, set it up in the master caster and cast 30-40 of each. This way i know what i have, to weigh and measure to know as not all mould sets have numbers to tell me what they are. Now the box has a card with weight, diameter and profile. Plastic IKEA boxes hold 8 moulds pretty well. I was not sure what' i'd use, and IKEA came through, not real cheap, but they'll do the job all the same

[dverna]

If even 25% of those molds work well you still have lots of molds!!!

I believe you can mix molds on the machine as long as they are about the same size. IE run 122 gr 9mm with 125 gr .38's or 180 gr .40's with 200 gr .45's. So even partial sets of good molds will work out.

And there are Master Caster users that would snap up molds if you decide not to mix sizes on the carousel.

Watching with interest.

[Tazza]

The insides of the moulds look pretty good, the guy that ran the business did a great job of making them serviceable, The ones that were brazed up don't look great, but they close up perfect and have the sprue cuter sitting flat.

I agree that you can run mixed sets as long as the weight is fairly close. Ideally i didn't want to do that as it involves sorting after the casting session, but if needed, it's what you do.

My plan is to keep one that will be "dumb" and just run sets of 8, another i hope to add a computer so i can alter the pour times on each station so in theory, i can run 8 different weights at a time. Not that i want to do this, but it's an option if needed. Sorting 2 sizes and shapes is one thing, sorting 8 different ones is a nightmare.

Being in Australia, there isn't a huge market for .40, .45, .44 our main one is 9mm/.38 but there are western action shooters that do run .44 and .45.

Hopefully i'll get more time soon to get more progress and at least one of them running!

[m37]

any update?

[Tazza]

any update?

Sadly, no

Too many projects, not enough time to devote to them all.

With powder and primer shortages over here in Australia, the demand for round lead things isn't as high as it was

[m37]

Sadly, no

Too many projects, not enough time to devote to them all.

With powder and primer shortages over here in Australia, the demand for round lead things isn't as high as it was

same here in July got a new vent hood put over one of the the autocasters and reworked the autosizers
then the wheels came all the way off and haven't had time to touch it
mike