Be forewarned, they look sad and will make you laugh probably but I have tried every thing to get some boolits from this mould and failed. I have no problems with any aluminum mould I have, just this one which is my first brass.
I have tried dadgum near everything and I can not get this mould to drop anything worth noting to save my life. I have tried everything from 800+ temps, 20 minutes on a hot plate to bring the mould up to temp, switching pins, alloys, you name it and I am having the greatest trouble getting this mould to drop decent boolits. Granted, this mould could be too complex for this noob but i am seriously debating putting it up for trade for a LEE 6 cavity as it's of no use to me. What is the first and foremost problem boolit fill out. Main area obviously is the pins. The cavity cause by the pins will either be incomplete, wavy, or look collapsed. I will also get the stray that will have almost a hairline crack running in a spiral up the boolit itself.
Alloy has been straight clip on WW, WW/plumbers pipe, and WW+tin all have failed.
Mould was soaked in mineral spirits, pins coated with KROIL and cavities have been cleaned with a toothbrush all prior to getting started.
My process is this:
Warm up the hotplate with the mould on top on med/high setting on this hotplate
http://www.gehousewares.com/Browse_P...category_id=33
For about 20 minutes as the alloy gets to temp in the LEE 20lb drip-o-matic. I start off at setting 5 until it starts to melt (usually 1/2 full of alloy) and then crank up to 7 which is usually about 750ish maybe a little less. The spout is about 1/2in from the mould, pour, cut sprue dump rejects as usual and keep trucking. Not much rest between to keep the brass mould hot which is obviously MUCH hotter than I need to run aluminum which I learned to cast with. I understand that even with a pretty lengthy pre-heat I will have rejects in the form of wrinkles and what have you, no big deal. But when that 1/2 the pot goes down to 1/8th of a pot with not a keeper, I am at a loss for words.
These were the last ones to drop after 1/2-1/8 pot
You can see all around the cavities that it looks like they are sagging or even have a small crack. The rest of the boolit is fine but what good does that do me?
What am I doing wrong?