Pentz wrote on May 26
th, 2015 at 1:04pm:
I'm using a PID for the pot and a wet sponge to cool molds when they get too hot.
Pentz
Looking at the image of your two bullets, it appears that neither have sharp edges to their bands and grooves and yet, one of them was frosted and deformed "sucked-in" by an overheated mold.
Simply put, your alloy and or mold were too cold for the bullet on the left and the mold was too hot for the bullet on the right.
You just need to learn the pace of that mold.
I would cast with the alloy a bit hotter, allow the sprue to solidify, and i would wait a few seconds with the mold open before casting another. On such large bullets and 650-700 F alloy, i would guess 15-20 seconds of air cool time with mold open would produce good bullets and avoid frosting.
I keep each mold in a plastic box and inside each box there are notes on temperature and cooling seconds/pace between pours. You see, i keep pace by counting.
I also learned to use a 6" fan for cooling. I don't cast such large bullets, but with 350 grain .458" double cavity, at 60F outside air temperature, i cast 700F lead alloy, i wait for the sprue to solidify, i cool 5 seconds in front of the fan, i open the mold, dump bullets, leave open 10 seconds, etc etc You need to learn these for your own mold/temperature/bullet/alloy.
I would
NOT use the wet sponge, it cools too fast in one end of the mold and you don't have the same temperature of the mold with each casting. I tried the wet rag method and the resulting bullet weights spanned over 3 grains. After learning to pace myself by counting and to cool with air and fan, i now cast 200-500 bullets in one seating and 90% of them are within 1/2 grain of each other.