I have smoked some molds when new, some not. My experience has been that the ones that got smoked seemed to start dropping good boolits sooner. Then I had a problem mold. My experience seems similar to the problems you are having- hopefully sorted out by now.
My suspicion is that my trouble started when I was a touch too liberal lubing the sprue plate. After difficulty, I cleaned out with dish soap and hot water and followed up with acetone and smoked the mold with a bic lighter. It was STUBBORN dropping decent boolits, but it eventually did start dropping good ones.
I wish I knew the exact reasons for this, but some information about aluminum might shed some light on what goes on:
Aluminum nearly *instantly* oxidizes a very thin layer that protects it from corrosion, and many aluminum alloys age harden. Exposure to heat often will cause "precipitation" hardening which is basically vastly accelerated artificial age hardening by exposure to heat. Lead melt temperatures might be high enough for small amounts of other elements to alloy with the surface exposure- especially if the alloy is not eutectic- for lack of a better description eutectic means a balanced true alloy mix. These issues may play into the mold "breaking in".
But my understanding is that they always do eventually start dropping decent boolits, and once they do, they tend to work fine from then on. If it were me, I'd clean the mold as noted in above posts, smoke the mold with a bic (won't hurt and may help) and use the preheat methods noted and just drop them until they start dropping pretty.
