New Mould Questions

[Ramjet]

I do not want to make you feel bad but I cast my first bunch of bullet with it yesterday and by far of all the molds I have owned and worked with this is the best the bullets dropped so nice and cast so well with such little effort it was actually fun. Get on the group buy it is worth the wait.

[Ramjet]

Loaded some up and ran them across the chronograph 1345 FPS.

8.0 grains of Longshot
Longslide LW with flash suppressor.
CCI large pistol primers.
Bullet finished weight was 197 grains. Deep HP version.

The lead was 2 lbs of Lino for every 10 lbs of plumbers lead. Probably alittle soft.

Standard deviation was only 14FPS

Accuracy was really good when I test the DRT in wet Pak I will test these as well.

[Oreo]

Yea but who wants to cast pistol boolits out of linotype? That dog won't hunt.

The mold can be salvaged a couple ways. I'm no expert on how so I won't try to give details but one way is using something to keep the mold halves separated a bit during casting. This produces an oval boolit which is made round again in a sizer. The other way is to cast a boolit and then apply a polishing compound to it and spin it in the mold cavity with a drill. This polishing hones out the cavity a thousandth or so and can be done repeatedly to enlarge the cavity as desired.

My favorite way is to just buy MP molds. They come cut to glorious perfection the first time.

This is the route I am on.  He got back to me and said he has the 190 and 200 available. 
Your design, is the 190 a .403 as well?  The diagram is cut off and does not show that dimension.  The 190 is 4 cavity as well, yes?

If it is, that is what I will get.

These were only made in 4-cavity. The only difference between the 190gr and the 200gr is that the 200gr cavity is cut a little deeper so as to drop a longer heavier boolit. They all seem to drop about 5gr heavier then spec regardless of alloy. The 190gr molds are quite a bit more popular. And yes they actually drop .4035". That should be large enough for most 40cal pistols.

  It's not lookin good for me to get one of these. 

I sent him a PM and he replied with 190 or 200.  I replied 190 along with my PayPal email address.  Bin about a week with no reply.  Darn, I was so looking forward to one of these.

Steve,
Try sending him another PM. He'll get back to you. He's just difficult to get a response from sometimes. Send him a new PM once a week till you get a response. And keep checking your junk mail folder for a paypal invoice from MP Kalupi.

[Ramjet]

Did some tests I will post a pic of the recovered button tomorrow but wet-pack penetration was 18" the cavity and disruption was stellar and classic tapered channel. The bullet shed its nose after expansion the button traveled like a wad cutter. I am very impressed with this mold.

Steve if you want few of these bullets to test or load PM me. I will be luring them with the HiTek bonded lube but I will fix you up.

Here is the pic of the recovered bullet. The lead mix was 16 lbs plumbers lead to 4 lbs linotype with one roll of 50-50 solder. I was driving this bullet at 1325 FPS. I shot 4 bullets in the same wetpak the results were consistent between all four of them. The distance from the wetpak was 30 Feet. The weight was 197 Grains as cast The recover wadcutter was 97.1 grains it was found 18" into the wetpak.



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[Oreo]

Ramjet, please also share your experience in the results thread over on CastBoolits.

18" of penetration is fantastic, perfect actually. That's the FBI ideal standard for a duty bullet and exactly what I wanted from the design.

I have been contemplating doing some actual ballistics gel testing according to the FBI protocol, including 4 layer denim tests, drywall tests, and 20ga steel tests just for fun. That all requires time of course and I have none at the moment. (Hard to believe, but I have yet to actually fire a single one of these boolits.)

[Steve4102]

Did some tests I will post a pic of the recovered button tomorrow but wet-pack penetration was 18" the cavity and disruption was stellar and classic tapered channel. The bullet shed its nose after expansion the button traveled like a wad cutter. I am very impressed with this mold.

Steve if you want few of these bullets to test or load PM me. I will be luring them with the HiTek bonded lube but I will fix you up.

  Thanks for the offer, but I think I may have a mold coming.
I did as Oreo suggested and sent him a few more PMs.

Wouldn't ya know I got a Paypal request for all of them.  I informed him of the mixup and payed for one.  Hopefully he it gets sorted out.

Thanks

[Ramjet]

Pics posted above

[Oreo]

Great news Steve!

Thanks for the pics Ramjet. Any of the wet pack?

[Ramjet]

Yea but when I noticed what the magazine that was showing I deemed them inappropriate. Bill Ruger would be mad at me...........LOL you will have to take my word it looked really good.

[Oreo]

Ha! Fair enough.

[Steve4102]

Well, my 190gr Mold came in the mail today.  Beautiful, a work of art!

Now, so I don't screw this thing up, what should I do to set it up?

So far I scrubbed everything with a tooth brush and Dawn dish soap.  Dried everything and laid it out on a dry paper towel. 

Tomorrow I am going to lightly lube what needs to be lubed and install the handles.  Anything else I need to do to this mould before I preheat it and start casting?

Thanks

[Oreo]

Well, its not absolutely necessary but I recommend heat cycling the mold block a few times to get a bit of oxidation on the brass prior to contact with molten lead. I strip the mold halves down and place them cavity side up in a stainless frying pan then place the pan on an electric hot-plate set on high. After an hour turn off the burner and allow to air cool for 20min or so. Repeat twice more. Each time you'll see the color of the brass get a little darker.

Check the bottom of the sprue plate for burrs. I usually run a ceramic sharpening rod over the bottom a few times to remove them. This way you don't scratch the top of the blocks opening the sprue plate.

Other then that, there's a few tricks with adjusting the mold parts. For instance, the Cramer hp pins each have two locating pins. The locating pins slide in the mold block better when they're left just a little loose in the cramer pin.

[Steve4102]

  Thanks, I'm going to give that a try and cast some bullets tomorrow.

[gandog56]

Isn't mould a fungus? 

[Steve4102]

  Well, I tried out the mould today.

Sadly I was struggling right from the get go.

Cavity #1(closest to the handle) will not fill out.

I had the mould hot, I had the mould really hot, I had the melt 650, 675, 700, 725, 750 and even 800.  I had bullets that were super frosty, I had bullet that were shiny.

I added tin, I added Mono-Type, I started from scratch with a fresh melt of pure WW ingots, no help, then I  added tin and Mono again, again no help

I poured slow, I poured fast, I poured with the mould at an angle and I poured with the ladle 2-3 inches high.

Nothing I did got all four cavities to fill.  #1 was always less then a complete pour.  I even tried filling #1 alone several dozen times and the results were always the same, less than a full pour.

At this point, I'm at a loss as to what to try next.