Last week I purchased on eBay what appears to be a new-old-stock single cavity Lyman 41028. There is no lead smear on the sprue plate and the blocks still have cosmoline on them. I plan to clean the blocks by boiling them in a pan with water and dawn dish soap, followed by a second boil in straight water.
Does anyone have a better method for cleaning a mold?
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Not for a Lyman mould, but I just use hot tap water. Boiling doesn't seem to make any difference on mine.
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I just got an ultrasonic cleaner. That will remove anything that would be an contaminate. What i used to do is heat the molds up to about 150* then spray with brake cleaner. Do that several times and they are clean of any oils. I have had one or two that I had to set on a hot plate and let it burn for several hours at temps that would be a heavy frost on a bullet. I tried every other thing besides the ultrasonic as I did not have one.
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With the mould disassembled, I spray everything with degreasing fluid, scrub with toothbrush, dishwashing liquid and hot water, then rinse off with boiling water. The heat dries the mould. Then I apply synthetic two-stroke oil to sprue plate, screw and locating pins, and reassemble.
Edit: Brush and rinse off degreasing fluid before the dishwashing step.
I do this as the lead pot heats up, so I can then sit the mould touching the pot to enure complete drying - and heat the mould.
The last bit is to get the mould hot by filling the cavity, running metal over the sprue plate, and dipping a corner in the melt (dipper casting from an open top pot). Initial casting then is with a pretty hot mould, and some smoke will come off at the start of the cast. If the mould is hot enough to begin with, good bullets can come after three or four casts.
I put my moulds away oiled if I'm not going to be using them for a while, so the above has become routine.
You are only as good as your library.
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Methylethylketone (MEK) works wonders. Use outside. Just brush it on or soak mold in it for a few minutes. Wear safety glasses.
With rifle in hand, I confidently go forth into the darkness.
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use MEK carefully, it's not nice stuff.
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Thanks everyone for the input. I cleaned it with acetone (MEK isn’t available in this area, I have looked), and then set it on a hot plate while the lead pot was heating up. Somewhere between 5 and 10 bullets they started dropping beautiful.
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