Getting better base fill out

Joshua

Taco Aficionado/Salish Sea Pirate/Part-Time Dragon
I bought an NOE 325365 that I was able to trace back through at least two different owners. It had been used at least a few times before I got it. It still took two more cleanings and casting sessions for it to settle down and start casting nice. That mold has a really long pointy nose.
Josh
 

Ole_270

Well-Known Member
This has been my practice on alum molds, especially Lee for some time. Break the top edge of the blocks, then take a craytex? rubberized abrasive stick and rub the edges of each cavity to get rid of burrs. Been having good luck with the process.
 

waco

Springfield, Oregon
I agree with Josh. I have a few NOE molds thT took like four to five good casting sessions before the mold started to perform well.
 

Ian

Notorious member
My neighbor takes new NOE moulds and boils them in a saucepan with a squirt of Dawn liquid detergent. They get a nice dull grey haze all over and cast pretty well from the get-go.
 

L Ross

Well-Known Member
I'll be darn. there are little slivers of aluminum blocking off the vents on opposite sides of the cavity, just like Ian said. One side nice and clean cut, the other side has a tiny burr that I can see under magnification, and it is even more obvious by feel with a dental pick.
So I inspected every cavity of three NOE moulds and deburred them all. Then I took my problematic 5 cavity XCB mould out in the casting shed and went at it. Definite improvement! Many more visually perfect bullets especially as the mould got really hot. I had preheated it on the hot plate and cast fast. After about 100 bullets I added 50 degrees to the melt and soon they were dropping better and better. The last ice cube tray full look to be very high quality. The only disappointing thing is that a vent line exactly intersects the very nose of the bullet. Darn the luck. By the time I give them a tumble the tiny little exaggerated parting line on the nose should be gone.
These good bullets will be processed and carefully loaded along with matching loads utilizing the Lee 312-155-2R. Then I can conduct drop tests and I will report that on the ballistic coefficient thread.
 

Ian

Notorious member
Bruce Brandt of BRP moulds used to rake those back toward the cavity with a scribe and then carefully turn the cherry in the cavities with his fingers to clean the chips and burrs out. He also cut vent lines on top of the blocks, and did not put vent lines across the noses where not only are they not needed, but where they are bound to make little nibs when the alloy stream drops directly onto the crack between the blocks.