Lead Casting

The biggest downside to pouring my own has been which mold to purchase next, some aren't so cheap, but they sure are great to work with.

A big 10-4 on that! Always another design type, different weight, or a better built mold to be longing for.

Case in point, my last purchase was this 44 mold made by Miha MP-molds in Slovenia.

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Cost was $155.00 delivered. That's a cramer type mold, the HP pins stay with the mold, so they stay hot making great HP boolits with few rejects. Those are 255 grain, the larger HP is a bit less. The HP pins can be reversed to cast a solid nose, which would be around 270 grains.

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Another MP cramer type mold I have, this one is a .452 200 grain HP. You can see one of the pins is moved out away from the cavity on it's rods that slide into the base of the blocks. That's how the boolits get released from the pins, hence the cramer system for HP molds.

I'm in another group buy right now for a .357 semiwadcutter GC based on the 358156 lyman design. It too will be a MP cramer type, but this time a 2 cav. Limiting it to one style of HP pins it'll be ONLY 100 bucks.

As far as weight consistency, that has everything to do with consistency with your casting rhythm. A proper alloy with enough tin to make the molten metal flow, and VERY important, closely held alloy temperature. Then cast without stopping to admire the shiny boolits, or to quality check every one. This results in about 3-4 casts per minute, keeping the mold hot. Wrinkled boolits are the result of a too cool mold, MOST OF THE TIME.

A common mistake is to see wrinkled boolits, then turn the alloy temp up. pouring too hot metal into a too cool mold won't fix anything. Casting furnaces have poor temp control. The lee pots are the worst. Temps can vary by as much as 50 degrees +-. Lyman and RCBS melters are better but not much. The REAL answer to exact temp control is using a PID control.
PID means;PID stands for Proportional, Integral, Derivative. Controllers are designed to eliminate the need for continuous operator attention.

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This control maintains the temp of the lead alloy +- 1 degree! Consistent boolits are much more obtainable with this temp control.
 
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