One of the things I noticed when this mould arrived was just how small the sprue plate " pour hole " was on this CBE mould. I have lyman .22 cal moulds with a larger hole.
Unfortunately, in my 1st trials casting with the mould, regardless of how hot the alloy or how hot the mould blocks were, the bullets would be an incomplete fill or the nose would have wrinkles and drive band wrinkles.
I thought " OK, I'll clean the mould cav. some more and smoke with a butane lighter ". I did this several times.
No improvement at all. I continued to experience the same identical problems.
I then compared the sprue pour hole dia. on the CBE sprue plate with some of my Lyman / Ideal moulds in .44 and .45 cal. Quite a difference.
I thought..." OK, I'll take my HSS 5 flute counter sink tool and enlarge the hole on the CBE.
In my mind I said " Not enough hot alloy is able to get through this small hole and fill the 216 gr. , 35 cal. mould properly . " Once I recut the sprue plate hole, there was an
instant change in the way the mould cast !!!!!!!
Ben
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The hole as it came from CBE :
This is what I use on my sprue plates :
Here is the hole after I recut it :
After the hole was enlarged, I'm looking at near 100% keepers :
This is what my cast bullets looked like
AFTER I enlarged the
sprue hole :