Why Not Go for Highest Cavity# Molds?

[inuhbad]

One thing to consider is the more cavities the more sprues that have to be cut at the same time adding to using it.

Not to mention sometimes the mould heats & cools unevenly as you're casting!

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.

[Dale53]

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

[JSAND]

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?

[JSAND]

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.

[Dale53]

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

[dualsport]

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.

[Hank10]

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

[Cowboy T]

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

[Dannix]

Some nice vids you got there Cowboy T.

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.

[NuJudge]

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.

[ReloaderFred]

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

[quasi]

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.

[hammerhead357]

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