I've been casting for about a year with Lee molds and I've come to the conclusion that while they are decent molds, they are not optimized for my process. I mass produce two calibers and want a high quality mold for each, 9mm & .312 for 300BLK.
One if the biggest decisions I'm trying to make is what metal composition I should go with. Obviously I only have experience with aluminum, so trying to decide between aluminum, steel, brass, etc. is a bit daunting. What would you recommend, or what about my casting style lends itself to one or the other?
I powdercoat all of my boolits so I wouldn't need lube grooves on either mold. I'm a bit of a stickler for uniformity and I cull far too many boolits due to less than perfect ridges and fill out, a smooth Boolit might not make a lick of difference in accuracy, but it will help with my mental health.
On the .312 mold I want something in the 150-165g range and I would need a gas checked base. I would also like a more pointed tip, see the picture below, both came from the same model 312-155 6 cavity mold, but the first mold I ordered had a more pointed tip than the second, for whatever reason the pointed tip cycled my AR better and was more accurate.
The 9mm mold needs to be a little fat, .358-.360 would be ideal. Weight I'm debating, since these boolits would be used for competition steel/3gun matches I would imagine a lighter 115g Boolit would be ideal, but the recoil difference between the two is negligible at best. Another design feature I'm debating on is the slight boat tail at the base, I can't figure out if it serves a purpose or if it's a positive/negative, I'm leaning towards negative because powdercoat can creep under it and make the second electrostatic coat a pain.
So I've looked online at all the better known mold manufacturers and haven't been able to find exactly what I want, so what do I do now? Should I send this checklist to one or more to get a custom mold made? Which shops do a better job than others? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.