New NOE 92 gr 380 mold

[Dakotared]

I got a new NOE 5 cavity 92gr 380 mold and for the life of me I can not get a a good bullet out of it. I tried for over an hour to night and I got 7 bullets that would be close to shootable.

Most were so wrinkled or did not fill out worth a damn.

I am using straight WW for my lead.

I have a lee 4-20 pot. I tried setting the mold on the little shelf and letting the lead pour into the mold and I also tried pressing the mold up to the spout no difference.

With my lee molds I usually have it at #6 on the dial. I started there and turned the heat up a little at a time and when I quit I was at #8. The hotter I got it did seem to get a little better.

Any ideas what I am doing wrong?

[Mike / Tx]

I'm guessing it is aluminum? Did you clean it out with some dish washing detergent, or brake cleaner to remove any oil residue? If not you might give that a try, using Comet works great as well with an old tooth brush to scrub it out really well.

Also you might want to set your mold on the top side of the pot while it is heating up, or use a hotplate to preheat it if you have one. Not knowing the actual dimensions of the mold block I can envision a 1.5 x 4-5" aluminum block with small cavities in it. Could just be that you don't have you mold up to temp as well. With the smaller cavities you will need to keep a fast rate when pouring to keep the heat in the blocks.

Also you might add in a 4-5" strip of 95-5 solder to your wheel weight alloy to help with fill out.

Give those a try and see if anything helps, I would bet though it is simply not up to temp as you mentioned having the alloy hotter helped. If you have a thermometer I would try pouring them at around 700 but probably nothing higher. With the mold blocks up to temp you should be able to easily keep them there and pouring good bullets if you keep a decent pace.

[reloader28]

You need it hotter. Smoke the mold, turn up the pot aways and cast faster.
I got an NOE 311165 a couple months ago. SWEET mold.
Tried cleaning it twice and casting three different sessions. It still threw wrinkles. I finally started casting faster and kept turning up the pot until it was hot.
Once I got it HOT I made a big pile in no time with hardly any rejects.

I've since heard from others that you need it hot with an NOE.

[Stick_man]

As has been indicated already, the aluminum molds cool fairly quickly so your mold may not be hot enough to maintain good casting temps to eliminate the wrinkles. The mold fillout issue is usually remedied by adding a little tin to the alloy.

The NOE molds are generally wonderful to work with. I am now up to 7 of them and once they are cleaned of the cutting oils they work great. I clean them with hot soapy water a couple times, then once with brake cleaner, then they are usually good to go.

[snuffy]

http://noebulletmolds.com/NV/product...roducts_id=329

Nowhere on his website does he say what material that mold is made of! Looks like steel to me.

Your mold is too cold! If you have a hotplate to pre-heat that mold, turn it up to high, then leave it there for 20 minutes while the pot gets up to temp. Otherwise, park the mold on top of the pot while it melts the lead.

Now, get to pouring, not looking at each boolit to see how it looks. Those huge blocks and those tiny boolits mean you will have to cast fast, no stopping to admire your work.

Like Mike said, if you did NOT clean that mold before using it, it still has machining oils on it. What I doe with a new mold is submerge it in VERY soapy water,(dish soap), then boil the water. Heat, lots of it, and soapy water will draw the oils out of the pores of the mold material,whatever it's made of! The oil is there as a coolant as the mold was machined, it has to go away!

Mould Construction

We offer moulds in both C360 brass and 2024 Aluminum alloys. All of our brass moulds are noted in the descriptions. If it is not explicitly marked, it is an aluminum mould.

OH I See! Just had to look around, must be the lighting in the picture to make it look like steel. Aluminum molds heat up quicker, but they also cool quicker. But the important thing is to get them hot to begin with.

Turning up the heat on the lead is NOT the answer. The numbers on the lee pot are simply reference numbers. Without a thermometer, you have no idea how hot the lead really is. WW metal should cast fine @ 700 degrees, IF the mold is hot!

Edit; Keep smoke the h*** away from that pretty mold! Smoke is to hide in while in combat! it don't belong on/in a mold! You paid a hundred bucks for a mold so you wouldn't have trouble with the boolits falling from the mold once you open it. No need for smoke!

[FrankenMauser]

It's full of cutting oil. You need to clean it. Al or his contractor may have accidentally skipped the cleaning before he assembled it. (They normally go into an ultra-sonic cleaner after they're cut.)

Completely disassemble the mold, soak it in the hottest soapy water you can stand until it's at the water's temperature, scrub every nook and cranny with a clean tooth brush (or similar), rinse each part in the hottest water you can get from your tap (speeds drying time), blow/shake water off each part, set aside to dry, and reassemble when finished. Next time you cast with the mold, you may have to adjust sprue plate tension, but it should drop wrinkle-free bullets once it's at casting temperature.

[armoredman]

I have an NOE 5 cavity mold, and I despaired of getting good boolits out of it, until I took to warming it on the stove set a notch or two above simmer. Left it there while the lead was melting, and when I was ready to cast, so was the mold.
The ONLY difficulty I have with this mold is the fact that the far end guide pin will often refuse to release, meaning I have to wiggle it fast and hard to get the two halves apart...

[Beagle333]

Your mold is too cold! If you have a hotplate to pre-heat that mold, turn it up to high, then leave it there for 20 minutes while the pot gets up to temp.

+1! I have a NOE 4 cav, and it is brass, but if I didn't have a hot plate I doubt if I could get a bullet out of it..... It's a great mold and makes my favorite bullet, but it's gotta be hot!

I know all LEE pots are different and thermostats are not exact, but I run my 4-20 pot on 8-1/4 until I get halfway empty and then drop back to 7-1/2 on the dial. I haven't ever measured the temp, because that setting works just fine for me.
(I don't diagnose things too much if they are working.)

[Dakotared]

Thanks for the advice I scrubbed it to day and will try it again tomarrow. When I tried it last night I did leave the mold on top of the pot for about 20 min to warm it up. Also I am use to the lee 6 cavity molds and cutting the sprew is easy on those. With the way the plate is made on these it seems hard to get the sprew to cut. Any advice on this. I was using a piece of wood to hit it and cut it but it would take me 5 or 6 hard wacks to cut it.

[TXGunNut]

Big moulds generally like to be run fast & hot, moulds with small cavities take a little longer to heat up. Moulds with big cavities may eventually get too hot but it's a simple matter to cool it off on a damp towel.

[Mike / Tx]

With the way the plate is made on these it seems hard to get the sprew to cut. Any advice on this. I was using a piece of wood to hit it and cut it but it would take me 5 or 6 hard wacks to cut it.

If your having to hit the sprue plate that is the #1 indication your mold isn't hot enough. When I got started I was told that you should have to wait on the sprue to cool on the top of the plate and then count to 2 and be able to shove it open with a gloved hand.

My biggest issue with both my Lee, and my wonderful MP molds is getting things going and then having to coll them down. If your tearing the bottoms your going too fast or hot, and if it's hard to cut your going too slow or to cool.



If you look at the bottoms of the ones above, you will see some that are almost smooth, and some that look a bit torn, the smooth ones are when I was running just right, and the torn looking ones I was running a bit fast. It only takes a 10-15 second cool off to keep them at the proper temp, but it does help out.

Also as mentioned above, if your mold is clean, and up to temp, you will not need anything to help the bullets release other than opening the mold. I smoked a couple of my Lee 6 cavity molds when I first started, but have since cleaned them out and use them nice and shiny, and they pour bullets out just great.

[Dakotared]

Thanks for all the input. I tried it last night and made sure I got the mold nice and hot and it work great!! I had a few that did not fill out grate but I only casted about 50 bullets before I got interrupted. A little more time with this mold and I should have it down

[FrankenMauser]

As Mike/TX mentioned, I'm also in the "cut your sprues with your hand"-camp (with good welding gloves ). If a mallet or other 'whacking' device is required, something is off. It could be a cold mold, waiting too long after the pour, a bad sprue plate, too much tension, misaligned mold blocks, or a few other things.

Every mold has a personality, so I don't have a hard-and-fast rule, but... one of my favorite molds (brass, 2-cav, with very large cavities) gets a 3 count after the sprue sinks and flashes. If I can't easily cut the sprue with a twist of the wrist, something isn't right. (It usually means the mold or alloy is below temperature.)