Cooler is Better

[Bass Ackward]

I'm trying to understand how it is the sprue plate can be warped and I don't completely understand.

It seems though that steel would have a much greater resistance to warping, especially if was stress relieved in the first place.

John,

All steels can warp. But what makes you think a $50 mold that is mostly labor has been stress relieved? Even if the origional steel has been, the speed at which and the cutting process itself can induce stress that will cause it to warp again at some point. That's why most molds need adjusted after they are "broken in". The larger the bullet diameter and length, the more likely the remaining material is to warp. And the larger the warp will actually be.

After the first couple of heat / cooling cycles "ALL" molds .... shift. That's why it is so hard to guarentee roundness. Mis-adjust your pins, and you lose roundness. Beagle, and you lose roundness. Choose to do nothing and ignore warpage movement, don't adjust your pins, and you've lost it.

Kinda damned if you do, ........ type of thing. This is why I always have my molds cut larger than I need by .002 or more. This covers most minor warpage or shrinkage problems, allowing me to correct it by sizing.

This is a reason I like brass molds. It doesn't seem to warp as readily. If brass is going to warp, it does so when the cavities are being cut. Then that is on the maker, not me. He will probably try to use that set of blocks for a larger / longer bullet on another order that is large enough to clean up the warpage. But sometimes it just keeps walking too. Still, when you get a good brass mold, you got a good mold for a long time assuming you take care of it.

[Bret4207]

I now realize I MISSED carpetman!

[Willbird]

Also on a sprue plate, and mold blocks for that matter,normal use heats them hotter than what is typically used for stress relief, and the heat is applied unevenly.

actually heating and quenching the sprue plate as is done when casting fast would eventually make it settle down and take a final set I think,however that may not be flat.

Maybe I'm doing it wrong but I do not often have to quench blocks, just the sprue plate.

I have smoked around 5,000 thru a 4 cavity saeco 122 grain round nose 9mm mould and quenched the sprue plate 1250 times or more and it has not gotten wierd, ditto for 200 quenches and 1200 boolits on a Lee 158 grain 357 RF 6 cavity.Neither of these molds need the blocks quenched to run 750-1000 boolits an hour with an RCBS promelt wide open as lead melt.

Being a chinest and working with steel and other metals for over 20 years I'm here tell you if you get a piece that has stress in it it is gonna walk no matter what, I have seen metal that would bend and twist every time you took a cut off it, and I'm sure that heating it slow and cooling it slow, or fast, whatever that sucker would walk.

Titanium would be a good mold material I think, at least from the standpoint that it is pretty much as strong at 1000 degrees as it is at room temp, it also expands less per degree than steel, and it is much lighter....it is a weird material, picking up a 2" bar of it 6' long is a very odd sensation, it does not seem possible that you could feel the stiffness differance by lifting it but it feels.......odd...even if you didnt know it was TI if you have handled steel and alum bar and not TI if I handed it to you and you did a few curls with it you would get a weird look on your face.............must be flying saucer metal or something hehe.

with carbide tooling it machines much like any other material. HSS tooling tho it runs as I recall 12 sfm cutting speed, as opposed to 80-100 for most steels.

Bill

[wills]

I now realize I MISSED carpetman!

Sight picture……… breath control ……….squeeeeeze the trigger

No, wait,………….you meant…………

Never mind

[carpetman]

I now realize I missed carpetman--I think he said the same thing about hemorrhoids.

[trooperdan]

Well MrOliver 77 and I are working on a project where we run two superconductor wires, one to the earths core for heat to melt, and heat the house and shop, and one to the antarctica for chill to quench boolits, and cool the house and shop in summer.

that way in the winter I will just keep my 10,000 lbs of clean alloy molten at all times, and covered with 1 metric ton of kitty litter.

Bill

Man alive, the first liar doesn't stand a chance around this place!

[StarMetal]

Handling titanium kind of reminds me of magnesium, it's weird too when you pick a long rod of it up. It's how light it is for it's size for one things that is strange after handling stuff like steel or even aluminum.

Joe

[Willbird]

The thing is guys, I'm not kidding about the hundreds of thousands of water dropped boolits, I took this week off but the week before that I ran 4500 boolits in just 3 evenings.

thats 234,000 a year, and only loafing at it 6 hours a week. With a Saeco 4 cavity and a 22 lb RCBS promelt. When I get into boolits I have 6 cyl for it will go faster. I only need 600 lbs more alloy to be able to pull that off and MrOliver77 and I are gonna score that at the end of this month.

I am


Bill

[BLTsandwedge1]

"You are hiring Eskimoes to work at the South Pole? I hate to be condescending (that means talking down to you),but any offset you might gain if their labor is cheaper is consumed by the cost of transporting them around the world. Besides they are oriented for the North pole. While on the South pole they are in effect standing on their heads and instead of digging up bullets they would be burying them deeper."

Cman, This reverse-posture hypothesis was disproven- at least with antidotal evidence, as early as 1947-48 during RADM Richard Byrd's "Operation Highjump." The 1947 expedition, fueled by what Byrd found during his first expedition in 1928, showed that, due to the centrifugal force of the earth spinning on it's axis, Englishmen and Germans tilted about 10 degrees, Mesoamericans tilted about 30 degrees but Eskinmos stood erect. It seems that the Eskimos, in their own environment, developed under the same effects of the earth's axis spin. What did happen is that the Eskimos became left-handed and left-eye dominant.

[Willbird]

Well an old navy guy my dad knew said the navy motto was "if it doesnt move, scrape and paint it" "if it does move grease it" but the eskimo's kept licking the grease off stuff hehe

Bill

[StarMetal]

As a Navy man that certainly isn't the saying we heard in the 60's Navy. If it doesn't move paint it, if it moves fondle it.

Joe