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nobade
I got to run my new PP mould last night, and have some thoughts on it. The mould itself is great! Well centered, fills out fine, makes beautiful bullets. That removable adjustable base plug, however, is not. It doesn’t have enough bearing surface to keep it aligned in the bore, allowing it to cock to one side and produce bullets with lopsided bases. Beautifully made, but not the best design.
Today I am going to make a modification to my new mould – I’ll use the existing hole the stop screw was in, and add another one just like it on the other side of the cavity in the same side. Then fit a steel plate that screws into both holes and extends to cover the bottom of the hole that will allow me to screw steel cylinders to it. The effect will be to hold the base plug on one side of the blocks and allow the other to close around it. With a variety of different cylinders I can produce different weight bullets, and they won’t get cockeyed in the bore. As a bonus, it will cast a lot faster without having to handle the separate base plug.
Has anyone else used this mould yet, and have any observations or ideas?
nobade-
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SwedeNelson
nobade
The pin system we offer works fine if you use it right
It is short so you can get it in the block for the heavier (longer) bullet
You also need to make sure that when you move the pin up you set it on a groove
It needs the groove to center on. If it was a straight sided bullet it would work easier.It will cast good usable bullets
Post some pictures of you mod.
Bullet maker, maker
Al Nelsonanthonylafleur
nobade, that was basically the original suggestion, something similar to an adjustable core mould. I had thought that a single plug with a threaded rod to adjust depth/weight might be feasible, and more convenient in use.
Al had the tooling in hand for the removable plug design, and thought it would help keep costs down. The group buy proceeded in that direction.Weather here has prevented testing the new mould, but I am looking forward to breaking it in.
Can you report on as-cast diameter with the alloy content you’ve tried?Swede,
Thanks for the reply – I did try it various ways, most of the time it worked OK but occasionally it would produce crooked bases. Probably 20% of the time. I did have it set on a groove, since it was obvious it needed to be there to support it properly. One thing that got me was the lock screw backed out and it took me a bit to catch that. Once I torqued it back down it was in too far and the plug wouldn’t engage it. So I spent some time chasing that around to keep the adjustment just right. And it did cast good useable bullets, about 100 of them. I do like the mould a lot, just thinking I can improve it a bit. We shall see….I will certainly share pics once I get it done. Hopefully sometime this week.
Cainttype, the diameter is .454″ – .4545″ cast from stick-on wheelweights.
I thought about making it a screw type arrangement as well, but figured interchangeable plugs would be good since they’re easily repeatable. Lots of ways to do this. Nice thing about the way it is delivered is it would be easy to make a hollow base plug for it as well.Hollow-base, cup-base, even beve-based plugs will be easier to switch out with the current set-up. Having used the adjustable style core moulds quite a bit, their convenience seemed attractive if mainly casting one style.
I’m thrilled with the potential of this mould. I’ve earmarked several toys for the various weights it is capable of throwing.
I look forward to your range reports, nobade.Well, it looks like I must defer to Al’s original design! I tried the mod I dreamed up, and while it worked well for making nice sharp square bases, the problem I envisioned occurred. By having the bottom of one cavity closed by the plug, the bullets didn’t want to release from the cavity. I had to rotate them out instead of tipping out like they are supposed to do. So, I went back to try to come to terms with the original system. I decided what had happened was the lock screw kept changing its adjustment, and if it backs off at all it allows the base plug to tip and make a crooked bullet. Once I figured out there was a set screw in the bottom of the hole, it was a simple matter to adjust everything so it would just barely capture the base pin and not allow any slop to exist. Presto – that’s how it is supposed to work! It was fun trying my idea to modify this mould, and I believe the best way to go about it would be to make it like the RCBS Minie’ bullet moulds. Those have the core pin captured on a sliding steel plate bolted to both mould blocks. That way, when they are opened the bullet extracts itself from both sides and sits on the core pin. No separate parts, and very fast. The blocks can’t open all that far but it is far enough. I’m not going to change this one to that system, but it does work very well. Thanks Swede, your work is the best!
lwatson
I have cast a full ‘family’ of 5 available weights to patch up and take to the range.
Was wondering, can you supply as an option-extra, a pin with a modest hollow-base profile for tongue-tucking the paper-patch ‘tail’ in?
I found casting with this mold very easy, no crook bases.
It’s very well engineered, a beaut’
SwedeNelson
anthonylafleur
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