35XCB

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I received my 35XCB mold today.
I had a lot going on, but I disassembled it immediately after opening it, scrubbed the blocks with soap and water till the water would not break on the faces, then blasted them with carburetor cleaner and started heat cycling them in the oven. I cooked them for an hour at 425, then removed the blocks from the oven for an hour. I repeated this three times.
In the mean time, I stoned the sprue plate to be sure there were no burrs on it, and used the stone to thoroughly break the leading edge of the sprue plate that slides over the blocks.
I shut the shop down at 10:00, cleared the bench, and got the Promelt heating up. I also set my hotplate up, put the mold together (still a little hot from the last heat cycle in the oven) and installed a set of Lee handles on it.
I put the mold on the hotplate and set a heat tunnel over it that I have bent out of aluminum roof flashing. This just gives the top of the mold a fighting chance of keeping up with the bottom.
Once the lead was all melted, and the mold was up to temp (450 degrees) I started casting. I spent some time finding the sweet spot where the bullets would drop flawlessly.
This is a four cavity brass mold BTW.
I started out with a 45 second cycle time which is typical for a mold of this size, but I was losing heat too fast and getting blemishes, so I shortened my cycle time to 30 seconds and I was pleased to find that 30 seconds rendered a sustainable heat cycle that I could keep using indefinitely.
Great starting point!!!

Once I had a little pile of bullets going, and I was satisfied that they were representative of what the mold will cast, I checked one on the scales. 227 grains. Perfect.
Then I checked the diameter with a micrometer. .3612. Perfect
Then I slipped one in my OAL gauge and checked it against the 35XCB chamber for seating depth. 2.798 inches from the nose to the case head. Not perfect. It was supposed to be 2.800 LOL!
The angle that connects the driving bands to the ogive was an excellent match, and it seized in the throat like a Morse taper exactly as it should and I had to break it loose with a cleaning rod from the muzzle. This after having been seated with light hand pressure. That’s certainly a sign of perfect matching angles.

Al Nelson has done it again. He took my drawings and gave me a way to drop a piece of frozen metal from a mold, and that bullet matches my machined mock-ups within a few ten-thousandths of an inch. Simply astounding.

I’m going to pile up a bunch of them tomorrow after church. Thank you Al. You’re a real craftsman, and I respect your attention to detail more than you’ll ever know. Well done sir!!!

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