Tea w your molds?

Roger Allen

Active Member
tried something that worked well today on accident

Normally I need to do 3 cycles of casting to get the mold working just right and perfect but something worked out in my favor or maybe it's just the ranch dog

I cleaned my new mold w soap and tooth brush then I took a pot my wife said I could have and dumped the tea out of it but didn't rinse the pot out, added water and boiled my mold in it.

Here's the kick, my mold came out tea treated color like a off brown. My mold is aluminum just in case your wondering. I proceeded to do the soap and bush again and the color of tea didn't clean off and I was like this shouldn't be a big deal......perfect bullets after 4 cast.

Great bullets w no probs knocking out
 

Ian

Notorious member
I'll be. Tannic acid must have anodized them. I boiled this one in a few different things and it casts like a dream:

Anodized mould.JPG
 

RicinYakima

High Steppes of Eastern Washington
IMHO filling the pores in aluminum moulds is a very good thing. Just because it is small, doesn't mean it isn't important.
 

462

California's Central Coast Amid The Insanity
Ian, I like that color -- looks kinda' like candy apple red. Do you remember what "the different things" were?

I have a six-cavity Lee mould that would look quite spiffy that color, plus it could use some help letting go of its bullets.

Jell-O has some wild colors, as do some "fruit" juices, but I don't know if their sugar content would harm the aluminum.
 

358156 hp

At large, whereabouts unknown.
I've had a lot of issues getting new moulds clean of machining oil in the past, this is really interesting. A friend of mine is threatening to try dusting a few mould cavities lightly with Cerakote to see if it improves some of his moulds "attitudes".
 

Roger Allen

Active Member
358 I have also. This isn't a knock against the Noe company as I own 10 of their molds and they are my only premium line of molds I continue to buy but their machine oil must be half the reason why their molds look so good in the cavities.......it's like getting moly axle grease on you, try but you won't get it off easy.

Tried carb cleaner tried a lot of things. Finally settled on scrub w bio friendly soap and tooth brush, boil on high temp water for ten mins after that's done pour off the water and go right back to tooth brush and soap.

Still then it has to do its heat cycle but I'm wondering if boiling it in super weak tea can replace the heat cycle as the oxidizing surface is now a treated surface.

URIKAH!
 

Kevin Stenberg

Well-Known Member
I had the same experience "once" and haven't been able to duplicate it. I do my 3 preheats for mold brakein on the stovetop. One of the molds came out a dark gray and drops its bullets like they are ejected. But can I do it again? NNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOO!
 

JWFilips

Well-Known Member
I know I had a brand new ( but heat cycled) brass mould.....constantly was "tinning" on me So I cleaned it up and then rubbed it down with Birchwood Casey's Super Blue then washed it clean and used a toothbrush on it.
After that it never tinned again and cast perfect bullets. Sort of ended up looking antique transparent black & It solved the problems
 

Ian

Notorious member
Michael, that's genuine stovetop anodized. "Type 1" is what I think it's called. Lye solution to clean, then sulfuric acid and electricity, dip in dye solution, then boil in distilled water for 20 minutes. The color is Rit fabric dye and it faded right out after a few casting sessions, but I didn't color it to be pretty.

Boiling aluminum in a mild dish detergent and water solution will make them a dull, smoke grey and pretty much non-stick, I think the alkaline detergent thickens the natural oxide layer and fills in the pores.
 

Chris

Well-Known Member
What role do the tannins and tannic acid from the tea play in conditioning the aluminum? If a little is good, is more better? It would be easy to whip up a serious tannic brew using hemlock or oak bark. I dye traps with that stuff.

I have a couple junker Lee molds I could toss into some brew and see what happens to the mold color. Not quite ready to have a learning experience with a fine NOE mold though.
 

Chris

Well-Known Member
Also, I wonder if exposure to ozone (O3) would speed up oxidization of brass and aluminum? I own an ozone generator, never thought of this application. Is it worth a try?
 

462

California's Central Coast Amid The Insanity
Thanks, Ian. I might try the tea method because I like simple.
 

Pistolero

Well-Known Member
Ian, did the anodizing reduce the as cast size any? I have wondered about doing this
intentionally to shrink a cavity a couple thousandths.

Bill
 

Ian

Notorious member
Yes it did, Bill. In fact, to maintain roundness, I dressed a thousandth (IIRC??) or so off of each face, anticipating about that much build up, which is what happened. This is a .457 mould and I wanted to use it in .45 pistol caliber cartridges, it casts about .4545" or so with WW now, so it worked as intended.
 

fiver

Well-Known Member
it wouldn't be too hard to run a lap back through the mold to clean things up again.
I have wondered about boiling molds in a weak acid to help clean them up/patina them a time or two.

I played hell with my first NOE mold getting it to cast well.
it was weird, I was using my 140gr 8mm mold to cast some cores to make some 38 special SWC's when it suddenly come to life and started just raining bullets that were perfectly filled out.
I had 7-8 heat cycles on it and had cleaned it 20 times before that, plus 4-5 pretty long casting sessions, and had resigned myself to just using it for that purpose.
I set the mold down on the pot to take a break after using it for about an hour and when I picked it up it was suddenly raining picture worthy bullets about as fast as I could pour them.
 

Brad

Benevolent Overlord and site owner
Staff member
Same experience I had with my first NOE mould. It was a 165 RD for 30-30 many years ago. It wouldn't cast a good bullet for anything. I cleaned it and cleaned it. No luck. One day I tried it again at it just flat out worked.
It isn't just Al moulds, have had some I didn't even clean and they dropped good bullets withing 20 pours.
 

Pistolero

Well-Known Member
Ok, that fits with what I figured should happen. Will keep it in the quiver in case of an
oversized mold.

Bll
 

KHornet

Well-Known Member
Have always said that the sensitivity of molds is due to the fact that they are female!

Paul
 

DHD

Active Member
Have always said that the sensitivity of molds is due to the fact that they are female!

Paul
Ahhh. That explains everything. As I prefer and married 2 different redheads, (at different times, of course) all of my moulds would have to be redheads too. Worth any cost when it's good, pure hell when it's bad.

This may make it easier for me if I remember this when casting.

On topic, I'm very interested in this experiment. Surface hardening and a miniscule loss of bullet size. Good stuff. Every handgun mold I have is an aluminum Accurate Mold, so I would be worried about messing them up though.