I have cast a few times with my Lee 6 cavity 200 grain H&G clone. It seemed like a couple cavities stuck pretty bad. I tried to lap the mold tonight. I wanted to post before banging my head against the wall too much.
With my initial casts, I was able to produce some good bullets, after culling them. I had a few issues but I won't get into them. To prepare the mold, I cleaned it with alcohol to remove the grease from manufacture. I lubricated the sprue plate, the bolts, and the alignment pins using anti seize. Like I said, I was able to cast decent bullets after this but some would stick a fair amount. I wanted to avoid having to whack my mold (at the bolt between the handles) 3-4 times to drop the bullets. Even using a mallet it seemed I had to hit the mold harder and more times than I should need to.
I lapped my mold using bolts rather than screws. I poured the lead through the bolts into the cavities rather than through the sprue plate. I then made a paste with Comet and water. I applied this paste to the bullets using a q-tip. I turned the bullets in the mold about 20 times for the problem cavities. I gave the good cavities a couple turns as well. I am wondering if I did something wrong here. I thought Comet wouldn't be so abrasive but now that I'm done I have some circular marks on my bullets. I am wondering if the paste was too thick.
I rinsed the comet out of the mold using tap water, and cleaned the cavities as best I could using a fresh q-tip. I did not smoke the mold again after I cleaned the cavities. I feel like this is a dumb question, but should I smoke it again? I tried to search for this but came up short.
Should I clean the mold again using alcohol? I thought that comet being a cleaner, it would rinse off well enough.
Could the issue be temperature related? My alloy wasn't pouring particularly fast. I was casting with my pot turned down a bit in comparison to my previous attempts.