Making a custom mold advise needed

I’m sure at least a couple of you are wondering if I’m dead since I said I’d be back after a week and it’s been quite a bit longer now. Work become more work thanks to mismanagement and poor corporate planning the likes of which I have never seen. I’m home now, I haven’t had time to touch a computer or work on my hobby projects at all. I’m going to be busy with other matters more important than hobby until the 15th and I’ll finish my Condor specific(70fpe 1:16 twist choked) pellet designs based on what I’ve read on ballistics over the past few weeks.
Revwarnut, pressing both sides at once would be faster and would be the proper thing to do if the hinge were already applied before the cavity is created but for this non-production little experiment of mine I’m going to press one side at a time in a vice and then match the sides before drilling and inserting index pins. A little more work for each but I’ll only be making a couple minus the defects I’ll throw away. If something comes out with decent penetration and/or accuracy then I’ll make a nicer mold but otherwise I’ve had fun and will move on to the next project.

Well I’m pissed off today. Did so much work that I got nothing done. Went back to designing my first projectile based on the measurements I took Friday. My first series of designs is based off of the known good JSB. The first of them is a nearly exact copy just with the skirt solid. When I did the math to find the total volume and then I converted that from inches to ml and then converted that to grams of lead and then converted that back to grains, I got over 151 grains after solving it all beginning to end 4 fucking times. Wow, lead is more dense than lead and uranium combined now! I’m having a friend that’s better at math solve it for me now to figure out just where in the series of equations I messed up. I’m sure you guys are bored of all the math and ideas but I’m having some fun with most of it.

Here is what I’ve worked out so far to use as my “mold machine”. I borrowed my father’s drill Saturday because it’s better than anything I have for this. It also has a mount point for a forehand grip. I’ll use this forehand mount point to mount it in a frame pointing downward between the jaws of my vice. I can then chuck the cherry/form tool into the drill once I get it close to the size and finish it as if it is a sort of vertical lathe. Pictured is the drill and vice so you can see what I’m talking about. As long as the drill is held fast at two points and the frame is solid it should be stable enough for usable tolerances. I can’t feel any play in the chuck but the measurement system I’m about to explain will determine any wobble.

Now for measuring. Originally I was going to use my caliper to painstakingly measure the cherry in progress after each minute cut like usual. I looked across the room the other day and realized there is a big mirror. So what about the mirror? Well it’s not perfect. Since the mirror is not perfect, a collimated laser will diverge after reflecting from it into a cone of light (previously tested). If this cone is shone across the workpiece it projects an exact, scaled up shadow on the wall. I can design the tool in qcad and print it out. Using one of my precision lenses I can scale the projection and calibrate it to the image. I’ll have a real time 2d laser projection of the work piece as it’s being cut so I can see the measurement without having to constantly stop to measure. Theoretically you could even project a second shadow of a real pellet with a different color laser and place it over the image of the workpiece to make an exact copy of any pellet. Once the cherry is made I can then use the exact same setup to press one side of the mold at a time onto the cherry. For this I suppose I could use the laser method to watch it cut to exactly 50% but the laser would have to be at absolutely exactly 90% or it’ll be off by a lot so manual measurements should be taken.
Now the part that pisses me off. I was thinking about the $%*& math I wanted to do and why the hell I didn’t pay attention to this crap in school while I was setting up a flashy cool demonstration with lasers and smoke to project a scaled up pellet on the wall for you guys to see what I’m talking about. I then saw a green flash and realized I just bypassed the circuit I made on my breadboard. Instead of stepping 12v down to 3.3v I applied 12v 25a directly to my diode!

Hopefully my new diode arrives when I get back from this work trip. I’ll be packing up my equipment and doing some vehicle maintenance in addition to my other work so I won’t have any time for hobby stuff until next week, sorry.

Now to address:
Powderburner, cool I didn’t think you’d be starting yours so soon. Be sure to keep posted here so we can feed off each other’s ideas. Your casting experience will come in handy for me later since I all I have to go on is my plastic casting, failed lead casting and stuff I found online.
I did find something reading about casting that lead does not like to fill around sharp edges in a mold. When I cast that emblem in school it had a lot of deep angular parts in the letters so instead of bubbles (there were some sperical bubbles though) it could have been bad design.

Gippeto While minimally relevant I actually enjoyed reading that, went on into chapter 4 before I got tired. Over time technology and tactics change so much yet some things, the human parts of warfare, will never change.

Walt in Hawaii, that is exactly how he was doing it but don’t worry, your tools will never murder you in your sleep like his sorcery.