Recent Lyman moulds....

[prs]

I have lots of moulds. RCBS, Lyman, Lee, Big Lube, my own. Some cast like a dream and some are frustrating. Some that dropped poor boolits are in the land fill. I just purchased a new 4 cavity Lyman 452460 200gr semi wad cutter. It looked great, it functioned flawlessly, it dropped boolits that are round and well filled, and the only culls were culls because I goofed. The weight and diameter are spot on with my 95:2:3 alloy, I won't even have to size them. I've seen some negative comments about Lyman quality control and maybe they got the message. This one is honey and I am not usually lucky. I have another new mould from them that I have tried yet, I will post the outcome there too.

prs

[Nocturnal Stumblebutt]

Good to know, I have been looking to buy that exact mold and its good to know that you got a good one.

[Jack Stanley]

I do hope they got the message , they are still on my "try it before you buy it" program for all new products .

Jack

[rodsvet]

I purchased the same mold about 6 months ago and it is spot on. Rod

[JeffinNZ]

Lyman still make good moulds however there are guys out there like Al from NOE and Jim at CBE who make BETTER moulds.

[prs]

Lyman still make good moulds however there are guys out there like Al from NOE and Jim at CBE who make BETTER moulds.

I understand that. Good, better, best......

prs

[prs]

I may buy a lottery ticket! I tried my other new Lyman 4 holer, a 452374 and it also dropped beautiful boolits that are round and right at .452" in my alloy. The mould was preheated and I only did three fast fills before keeping and NO culls in filling a 1# coffee can with nice boolits. I did run into one small problem in that the spru cutter pivot bolt was not captured by its allen screw. One pour the spru cutter would be too tight and hard to open and after other pours the cutter would be loose and floppy. I was in a well stocked tool building, but no Allen of the exact size needed. I just made due instead of stopping. At clean-up time I retuned that bolt and retainer Allen and coated the mould with Ballistol before placing back in box. So here I have two recent Lyman moulds that are very nice. Hope to get to see how these shoot over the Thanksgiving holiday.

prs

[mpmarty]

Great news as I just got a new 457122 that I hope will cast some good boolits.

[geargnasher]

Great news as I just got a new 457122 that I hope will cast some good boolits.

I have two of those, one from the 80s that casts .458" and round with 20:1 like it should, and one bought in 2009 that casts .455"x .4565" with same, the cavities aren't cut deeply enough and are very badly out of alignment with each other, though the blocks mate perfectly and the outside of the mould is seamless when closed.

I have a number of excellent Lyman moulds, but quality dropped off in 2007-8 with many of their designs (not all, by some reports, the 429421 seemed to still be a good one, among a few others), most having the same problem (for me) of casting under spec with even #2 alloy, and the boolits being elliptical either from cavities not being bored deep enough or not mating up right. I believe their boring vises got worn out and the operators weren't checking them. I suspect operators weren't clearing chips often enough and they get between the blocks. This cause the cavities to not be cut deeply enough, and the slop in the boring vises allows the blocks to shift left forward, right back under the torque of the cherry so the finished cavities don't mesh. I had an even dozen moulds like this from 2007-2011 when I quit buying them. The cherries are also very worn out on many designs, or have been sharpened too many times and are undersized.

If Lyman is addressing these issues, I'm glad to hear it. They used to make really good moulds that were a touch bigger than they needed to be, so you could use alloy like wheel weights and the boolits would still make the nominal size marked on the mould (or a thousandth more), but I'm not buying another one unless they send it to me on their nickel to test first.

Gear

[Jack Stanley]

I'm with you Gear ..... they ship it , ...... I'll try it , ...... then decide .

Jack

[enfield]

I have a question about the lyman moulds, the 38-55 moulds show them as .375 and the 45-70 show them as .457 , is this what I would expect them to drop at ? or is that just a reference type number. I wanted to upgrade from my Lee moulds but I'm afraid they would be too small.

[Le Loup Solitaire]

Enfield, Most folks around this forum are being wary/careful about considering Lyman molds for the reasons that Gearnasher wrote a couple of posts ago. Moreover Lyman has this delusional obsession that everyone is going to use their #2 alloy in order to get their molds to cast at a larger diameter...instead of them fixing the problems at their shop level. For 38-55 rifles, particularly the older Winchesters the diameter of .375" is a bit on the small side.....379-.380 " often does much better and some folks are paper-patching their bullets to compensate for the difference. So starting with a smaller mold/mold that is casting under-size may not be the best plan for accuracy. It is possible to get molds to cast bigger by using an alloy with more tin and antimony in it, but one can only go so far with that approach. "Beagling" a mold can often solve the problem, but the best solution is to start with a mold that is the right size to begin with. I would check out RCBS, Saeco, NOE and Accurate mold offerings to see what they offer for the 38-55 before making a choice. As for the 45-70 its pretty much the same story... .457-458" is "on the borderline" and I (with my own 45-70's) have a couple of molds that cast at .459-460" and they work well for me. Once you are upgrading from Lee, it is "playing the lottery" to take chances with Lyman when there are other good firms to work with that turn out better and more dependable molds. LLS

[mpmarty]

Agreed. I'll try this 457122 and if it doesn't prove out I'll send my RCBS 457405 out to be hollow pointed.

[prs]

Let us know how it goes.

prs

[leadman]

I have found that Lyman does not tap the hole for the sprue plate pivot bolt allen screw as far as they should. If you take the bolt out and run the allen screw in it will probably stop just after poking into the pivot bolt hole.
I used a bottom tap to finish out the threads in all of my Lyman molds and now my pivot bolts stay put. If you can't find a bottom tap just grind a tapered tap back so it cleans out the hole.
An unground taper tap hits the far side of the hole before the threads are properly cut.

Glad you got a couple of good molds.

[prs]

I have found that Lyman does not tap the hole for the sprue plate pivot bolt allen screw as far as they should. If you take the bolt out and run the allen screw in it will probably stop just after poking into the pivot bolt hole.
I used a bottom tap to finish out the threads in all of my Lyman molds and now my pivot bolts stay put. If you can't find a bottom tap just grind a tapered tap back so it cleans out the hole.
An unground taper tap hits the far side of the hole before the threads are properly cut.

Glad you got a couple of good molds.

Dang! It did not even occur to me to check that. Thanks, I will check and run a bottom/rethreading tap in if needed. When I checked the mould that came loose, I was looking to see if maybe a small ball bearing was supposed to be in there.

I shot the SWC design today at steel targets and my Ruger SR 1911 ate'm up and when she went bang I heard "ding".

prs

[captaint]

The maybe - maybe not, is what keeps me from buying new Lyman molds. I don't think I've even heard one story wherein the customer, not satisfied with the size of boolits, got any satisfaction from Lyman customer service. Hell, if they'd even fix some or replace with a good one, that would be different. They just never seem to fix the bummers. enjoy Mike

[Elkins45]

I bought a new 30 cal from Midsouth back in the spring. It needed leementing in order for one of the cavities to drop cleanly, but the boolets fall at an honest .311 with WW and are round and shoot well.

It's a 311291.

[BLTsandwedge]

To offset the loss of my H&G 6 cavity I purchased two-four cavity Lyman #358091s. I was surprised to see a slight modification- the driving band is thicker. Turns out the result is superior accuracy (I guess Elmer was right with his not liking the driving band Lyman settled on for 'his' 429421?). The moulds themselves are very good quality- consistent .361 from all cavities.