I cast up a small lot of Mav Dutchman's boolits last Friday evening. I had jest a tad bit of trouble with mounting th block on my handles as the mounting holes were off jest a fraction or so, but I modified the handles to accept the blocks. I used my usual alloy of wheel weights plus an extra 1% tin. I cleaned the molds with soapy water and tooth brush, rinsed well with hot water and preheated the molds over the casting pot. I smoked the cavities with a wood match and lubed the pivots and pins with NRA allox boolit lube. Filled and dumped the mold very rapidly a few times to get it up to working temp so that the spru plate cut through with no reistance and so that the molten lead stayed molten for a few seconds after the pour. Then I started in Earnest. By golly, I tell ya Lee makes a fine mold in this 6 cavity commercial set-up! Every pill dropped picture perfect and just jumped right out of the blocks when opened. I cast out about 10# worth and wiped the hot mold down with asoft clean cotton rag and pey 'er away. Each cavity dropped boolits identical to the others. Mine mic'd out to .432" in diameter with .049 depth to the lube groove and all tipped my scale at 201gr plus or minus less than 1gr!!! That is superb even if it were a single cavity mold! The boolits look like smaller versions of the PRS with a slightly shortened lube groove width and without the above the crimp groove full diameter area (which is only very slight in width in the PRS).
Marshall Graybeard, if I send ya pics of the whole (so far) family of these new boolits, plus the Maxi-ball and modified by PRS Maxi-ball; could ya post it fer our Pards to gander at?
As an aside; to get pics of the Maxi, I had to cast some more. DANG what a chore! I am spoiled by the Lee 6 cavity PRS molds. That old single cavity steel mold was a real PAI to get working. I had to clean it twice and smoke it several times before it finally gave in and dropped (with persuasion from my old nearly lost wood hammer handle "mallet") flawless boolits every once in a while.
