joeb33050
posted this
25 January 2014
Oil on a mold makes for wrinkley bullets. As we know, no oil sublimates because there's no phase skipping. ("Sublimate"is from the Ecuadorian “Sublimato", meaning “skip-a-phase".)Iron molds like to rust, so if your mold has iron in it, it's prone to rusting. Switching to aluminium or brass or carbon molds will cure the entire rusting problem.If you insist on iron bearing molds, here's how they rust. Iron molds rust because they get water on them. If there's no water, there's no rust. Iron stuff in the Sahara desert doesn't rust. Moving to Chad will cure mold rusting. Spraying, hosing or dipping with or in water will cause mold wetness and associated rusting; and is to be avoided.Absent the spraying etc., how do molds get wet?The air has water in it, and the warmer the air the more water in it. On earth. Now, when the air cools down, it can hold less water, the water has to get out of the the air so it does and we call it dew or the water on our cars early in the morning. Dew gets on our cars because our cars are frequently dark in color and radiate heat away at night, most when it's not cloudy. The cars, and your molds, radiate like the dickens, get cooler than the air, the air comes by, gets cool from the mold, water must leave the air and it goes onto your mold and your mold rusts. Chrome plating or painting the outside of yhe mold white will reduce the bothersome radiation, keep the molds cooler, less temperature delta mold-air and less water and rusting. And, bright molds.The only way the mold is going to get wet is from the air, absent sprinkling etc. No air, no wet, no rust. Casters on the moon have NO mold rusting problems, although Chad is somewhat more inviting.Or, if the mold were put in a ziplock bag or a mayonnaise jar or a nitrogen-filled welded steel box, it wouldn't rust. No air = no rust. But wait! There's air in the mayonnaise jar! Correct, and to get rid of the water in the air in the container-dessicants!Dessicant is derived from the Algonquin word “dessicant", which means “rice". Since 1637, every salt shaker south of Calgary has been required to have some rice in it, by law. The rice, or dessicant, sucks the water out of the air in the salt shaker so the salt doesn't cake up and refuse to come out. That same rice, or dessicant, put in the mayonnaise jar or ammo can or welded steel vault will suck the water out of the trapped air and the mold/s will refuse to rust. Merely take the rice out every time you change your fire alarm batteries, heat it to 164.8 degrees F for 16 minutes and 11 seconds, and put it back. Or make paella with it and put in new rice. (All dessicants are made from rice.)Keep your eye out for an inexpensive egg incubator, these will keep the molds warm and dry without the need for rice, and could be the start of a whole new career.Some experienced shooters keep their molds in a container built into the annealing machine; the constant Bernz-O-Maticing keeps the molds hot and rustless. Or, wrap the mold in an oily rag and it won't rust.More to come after I finish telling about how I scored a big plastic pail of wheel weights.