So I bought my first Arsenal mold a few weeks back for my 30-06 project. I’ve been wanting one for a while and finally purchased one. I ran it tonight for the first time, and we did not get off to a good start. It was all my fault, somehow I forgot to clean the mold with dishwashing liquid. I literally took it out of the box and sat it on my desk in the shop, pulled the mount screws out of my NOE and put them in and took it to the hot plate. The mold didn’t have the handle screws and I haven’t had time to call them about it. Anyway. I ran almost a full 20 lb pot through it and only got about 50-75 that I kept and probably 25-50 of those are culls. Took it and let it cool off while I ran another mold( that’s a whole nother story). After I finished with that (other mold) I reloaded the pot with a full load, and while it was getting up to temp went back in the shop and gave the mold a bath in dawn dish soap, toweled it off and back to the hot plate. Cleaned the dross off and fluxed my melt while it was drying and coming up to temp. I grabbed the mold (about halfway up to temp) and made about 10-15 pours and that thing fell in line and started dropping some of the finest boolits I believe I have ever cast. They came out really nice at 11-12 BHN water dropped(with some unknown alloy), .3105 on the thin band above the check and .311 on the first full band, and 169-170 grains. Took a couple over to my Check box and the checks, both hornady and sage copper slide right on. Weight after putting check on is 173-174gr. I ended up with 8lbs or 325 pieces by weight on the second run. Ran a whole pot of alloy with it.
Needless to say I am very happy with the mold and will purchase more of their molds in the future. You truly don’t know what your missing until you have a very nice mold of this quality.
One thing I did learn, ALWAYS WASH YOUR MOLDS BEFORE USE!!! (Laughing at myself on that one) Also as a side note, I don’t water drop these necessarily to harden them as much as I do to protect the boolit from damage when dropping out of the mold.
I really like this design and I have high hopes that this might me the hunting boolit of choice in my 06. I hope it performs as good as it looks.
Thanks for taking the time to read my small novel.
Needless to say I am very happy with the mold and will purchase more of their molds in the future. You truly don’t know what your missing until you have a very nice mold of this quality.
One thing I did learn, ALWAYS WASH YOUR MOLDS BEFORE USE!!! (Laughing at myself on that one) Also as a side note, I don’t water drop these necessarily to harden them as much as I do to protect the boolit from damage when dropping out of the mold.
I really like this design and I have high hopes that this might me the hunting boolit of choice in my 06. I hope it performs as good as it looks.
Thanks for taking the time to read my small novel.