If you're an inexperienced caster, I would stay away from hp molds until you have really got conventional mold casting down pat. HP's are very critical for mold temp and cadence and they can drive you nuts until you figure out how the mold needs to be run. You can literally cast 100's and you'll be scrapping most of them for incomplete fillout. I also find that when you run the flatpoint pins they are difficult to cast as the bullets end up getting hung up and don't drop free. So the theory of having a mold that drops both hp's and fp's is great, in practice I find I only cast hp's from my hp molds and have dedicated fp molds when I want a fp.
Spot on. And a lot of where my comment of "adding time to the process" for me came from. Too cold--improper fill out, too hot--I get chunks of the HP cavity torn off because the lead hasn't frozen enough to support its self when falling from the pin. Takes a bit more practice to get the cadence right.
I ended up selling my 400 gr .476" hp mold because I simply couldn't get good bullets out of it. When I had it hot enough to get complete fill out a chunk of the nose would break off when I dropped the bullets and when I allowed additional time for the bullets to cool the mold got too cold and I got wrinkles in the nose.
Honestly I think for over 95% of the use of cast handgun bullets the hp is a fad and a fashion statement. Yeay they look cool and when you have a mold that will drop them out as fast as conventional mold that's pretty cool. But more often than not the hp just doesn't matter for most uses.
With a 45, just go with a WFN of reasonable weight and at a reasonable velocity and drill a hole clear through. The wound channel will be a couple inches in dia.
