Surprise, . . . Surprise

[TCLouis]

I recently purchased a 4 cavity 358421 Lyman mold.

It cast beautifully and I ran about 20 pounds of boolits.

Whe i wen to size and lube I had a lot of resistance.

Boolits are beautiful, Bhn 14.5 or so and 0.368" in diameter.

Does that correspond to anything folks shoot a 175 grain SWC out of?

[williamwaco]

Nope.

That needs to go back.

Next time measure sooner.


.

[462]

Are the mould halves free of lead debris or any other type of crud? When installed on the handles, do the mould halves close so that no light is visible between them?

[HangFireW8]

What 462 describes, I call "unintentional beagling". Beagling is where you (intentionally) shim the mold to make larger boolits. As 462 says, flakes of lead, dross, dirt, etc. can do it as well.

The result is usually oval boolits. Find the mold seam. Measure the boolit diameter 90 degrees opposite. Then measure right alongside the seem on either side, for a total of 3 measurements. This should be part of an acceptance test for any mold. It can tell you one of 3 things:

If the mold halves are shifted in relation to each other.
If the mold is Beagled.
If the mold is oval or round.

HF

[MikeS]

One thing it tells ME is that I have to pay more attention when reading messages. I read the OP, and thought, 14.5BHN, that's ok, .358, that's good, what am I missing here? So I go back, and reread it, and THEN finally see that it's .368, not .358! It's amazing how we see what we think we see sometimes, not what we really see!

[462]

"It's amazing how we see what we think we see sometimes, not what we really see!"

Yep, happens to me all the time. Don't know how many posts I've mis-read, then replied to with the wrong information.

[mdi]

.010" seems a lot to size down. If the mating halfs of the mold are clean, and it drops .368" bullets, then yep it's oversize and should go back to the maker...

[stubshaft]

Either send it back to Lyman or find someone that shoots a 9.3. It'd be just right for them.

[DLCTEX]

Sell it as a custom mould on Ebay and get rich.[smilie=l: