Robs building me a gun and we talked for about an hour on the phone last night about just about everything. For you that dont know Rob a smarter and more knowlegable man on every facet of guns would be hard to find. I passed on a question to him from a buddy who is make a 12 guage swc mold about how differnt mold materials and how much to compensate for shrinkage when designing a mold. He brought up a good point that never crossed my mind. I allways thought when he used to make molds he made the brass because it was easier to machine. I should have know better as hes not one to take shortcuts. I have to explain this in dummy terms as he used stuff that was way over my head. He said that if you think about mold cavities as two pieces of wire your trying to solder together it makes sense. Lead alloys are very simular to solder and its a lot tougher to solder two pieces of steel together then it is brass or aluminum. Lead has a much better tendency to flow toward brass and aluminum and it makes mold fillout much better and tends to eliminate pour fillout in hot spots on molds. He said hed never make a mold out of steel. Now ive been one that preached the superiority of steel molds for years. Mostly though because im rough on a mold and they hold up but his talk has me thinking differntly. Maybe veral has been on to something for years that i wouldnt admit.