Alacran, the same amount of pours from one of Marty's .440 molds would net you 1600 balls. Even I was able to consistently fill all the cavities once I was in the sweet spot for lead and mold temp, and I never cast roundball before, so I believe for an experienced caster approaching something near that number is a reasonable expectation. The problem with me giving a review of the product is I don't have any prior roundball casting experience which means I also don't have any experience casting with other brands. So I can't say if it's better or worse than other molds on the market and I can't determine how much of my results were based off of my inexperience.
In regards to cumbersome, the handles are short and you can't get anywhere near those screws, but I can assure you that you very quickly learn how to pick it up and use it without burning yourself. As far as the weight goes, I didn't notice it but I'm a bit cornfed. The nice thing is the length of the mold allows you to rest it completely across the top of your pot when preheating it. I think my biggest issue was that the combination of a bottom pour and multicavity mold is too high speed for a beginner. I think in hindsight I would have been happier filling a Tanner mold from a ladle. I also need to get a digital scale to check for weight consistency in my casting.
All of that being said, I am still very happy with the mold, it doesn't hide what it is and I think people looking at it can determine if it is right for them? I will post some data once I get some more experience under my belt.
Fleener, yes you are absolutely correct regarding the learning curve, I did learn quite a bit already in my first session. So I wanted to cast some roundball last night so I could shoot my snaphaunce this weekend. It was blistering hot and humid at midnight in my garage so I was wearing boxers, crocs, and a t-shirt wrapped around my forehead. The t-shirt is something I use to mitigate sweat droplets, something I learned the hard way from casting ingots. So I was trying to find the sweet spot on my bottom pour between as heavy of a pour as I could get without the pot dripping out the bottom uncontrollably and it starts dripping these tiny little drops that are hitting the base of the unit, splattering, and sending these tiny little hot darts of lead at me. Which was more irritating than anything else but they still hurt cause I'm in my boxers. So I'm dancing around trying to close the valve but all I have is the spine of the paring knife I use to cut wax with as I misplaced the screwdriver I keep on my casting bench. Anyways, that's the thing that kills me about casting is the splatters. This thing splatters everywhere and it drives me nuts. I'm not hypersensitive about things but I also don't want to cocoon the corner of my garage in lead which is what will happen over time if I'm not vigilant about cleaning up after use. So I always take my paring knife and go around and meticulously pick off every tiny little bit of lead like I'm some sort of forensics guy, and without question the pot will release some latent drip when I am completely done and the drip will explode into a million specks of lead that go everywhere.
Austin, thank you for the encouragement, I will be going at it again but this time with a ladle. Being that it is a such a large caliber, my mold only has four cavities, and I think I can control the mold temp while pouring from a ladle? If I ever decide to go back to bottom pouring then I think I am going to need to upgrade to a much better pot.
