Why not nose-pour?

[earlmck]

I own one nose-pour mould, a Hoch 22 cal 60 grainer. I hadn't used it in many years and couldn't think why not, other than it is a single-cavity mould and my back doesn't like casting for more than about an hour so I have this strong bias toward multi-cavity moulds. Kinda' nasty weather in these parts, time on my hands so thought "why not?". And they pour pretty nice, though it takes a tap or two to get them out of the mould so production is slower than it would be with a mould that just drops 'em. About 200 per my almost an hour of casting.

As I looked at all those absolutely perfect bases produced by this little nose-pour baby I got to wondering why we don't make all moulds as nose-pour. So why don't we?

 

[fiver]

the cherry's break too easily.

 

[Bret4207]

Harder to make a nose pour. Far as I know, that the only reason.

 

[Dusty Bannister]

In addition to the above, perhaps the meplat size is a factor. Some like a spitzer or round nose and that is not possible with a nose pour mold. More importantly, given all the reasons above, does the nose pour bullet shoot better than base pour? If they did, that would be all that is used in CBA competition, as an example.

 

[Brad]

The better base is more of an issue with plain base bullets. The nose pour style is a bigger deal for BPCR type shooting. They are also,shooting at ranges where the differences begin to really show up.

Are they better for a gas check bullet? Don't know.

Now a guy like Miha and the way he cuts moulds, I wonder if he could do nose pour?

 

[USSR]

I have Miha's 359-395 mould that casts a .38 HBWC bullet. It is a nose pour and, like all his moulds, is a great mould.

Don

 

[Ian]

Many of the BPCR moulds also have a cupped base and spud, so they must be nose-pour anyway.

I've often wondered myself how much difference nose-pour makes, particularly regarding those pesky, random flyers. When investigating "light" bullets culled during a weight sorting session, I found some hidden voids in the base end, commonly in the area of the base-most lube groove shank. Ladle-casting with a Rowell #2 from a big pot of lead tends to reduce such voids considerably vs. bottom pouring. A few years ago, Midway had a sale on .30-cal Hoch moulds and I bought a 180-ish nose-pour gas-check mould to try out and see if it improved the void situation when bottom-pouring, but I still haven't fitted any handles to it yet to find out. One day.....

 

[popper]

My solution has been to pour, then drop onto something hard before the puddle hardens. I pull the mould from the shelf on the Lee and let it fall onto the stand plate. Reduced culls almost entirely. Just finished ~ 400 for rifle, very few culls, only a few rounded GC shanks -too small a puddle or stopped pouring too soon. Used to have a terrible time with minor flaws in the base band & rounded shanks. Gone now. Even my PB come out sharp now.

 

[Ian]

I do that too, Popper, together with swirl-pouring and sometimes even jiggling the mould a little during the pour. It does help.

Something else I don't usually mention is a vibrating mould rest, think "garage-sale electric razor and a worm-gear hose clamp".

 

[popper]

It depends on the momentum of the liquid alloy to force venting. I've had a horrible time trying to adjust pour rate, broke the tops of the moulds, etc. to reduce those flaws, this seems to solve the problem.

 

[earlmck]

I think the discussion emphasizes the point of my question. Us fellers who have been casting a while have figured out how to pour a "real close to perfect" base with our base-pour moulds. And I also deliberately pour a gas-check design to have a slightly less than 100% filled out base so it starts easier into the check. So maybe we olde pharts don't want to give up this hard-learned advantage over our beginner friends?

Yeah, I have a couple of spitzer-style moulds that couldn't be done with nose pour, and several round-nose moulds though I wouldn't be bothered by a little flat spot on the nose on any of my round-nose boolets.

I look at these beautiful moulds produced by the fellers at Accurate and Arsenal and LBT and NEI and think how these are made these days and seems to me they could most all be made nose-pour just as easily as base-pour. Or am I mistaken on that?

And I can report that as you might suspect, the absolutely perfect base on this mould makes it a little harder to start the gas check. And the mould is undersize (just the way I ordered it 25 years ago I'm sure, as that was my "theory" back in those days. So this little harder-to-start-the-check boolet is the one boolet design I have that the Star won't put the check on perfectly for me. Just no resistance in putting a .2245 boolet through a .2255 size die to enable the check to seat even with my best "pop the handle" technique.

Lordy I hate to go back to putting the checks on first before placing into the size die. Seems so tedious. And I have two beautiful 6-cavity Lees that make fine 22 cal boolets by the bushel. So this little Hoch isn't going to be seeing much use unless I get some uncommon accuracy out of the sample I cast up the other day.

But wouldn't it be nice to make absolutely perfect bases every time with our plain-base boolets? A not-quite-perfect base is my primary "reject" button.

 

[Rick]

A not-quite-perfect base is my primary "reject" button.

Yep, open the sprue plate and before opening the blocks if I don't see a perfect base it goes in the sprue pile, don't care what the rest of the bullet looks like.
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