Increase diameter?

[Lead melter]

I may be asking for advice on a topic that has been covered, so direct me if this is old hat.
Is there any simply way to increase the diameter of the actual cast boolit? I know that water quenching will harden the boolit a bit more than the alloy normally alows, but does the quick cooling help to stabilize the diameter more long the lines of the mold size, rather than allow shrinkage from air cooling?
Is there some form of compression act used to "swell" the boolit to larger size?
As an example, I have several Lee molds which measure full normal diameter...say .452" for a 45 Colt boolit. The cooled boolits are .450-.451" in diameter. Not the best situation. Beagling out the mold is the way most of you have overcome this problem, but my attempts at such are resulting in ruined molds.
I guess I'm trying to bring the mountain to Mohammed, but anyone got any ideas?
:confused:

[MT Gianni]

Beagleing the mold involves taking a foil tape of a .002-.003 thickness and placing small strips of it on your mold to prevent it from closing as tight as it formerly did. It increases the bullet diameter but can make a slightly out of round bullet which is corrected by a sizer. Use Beagleing in the search function and go back a couple of years to read all the comments.
I think you are trying to lap a mold and ruining it that way are you not? Soft alloys can be bumped some in a larger sizing die.
Go to a hardware store and get some metal tape for hot air flues and ducts, not duct tape, and try that. Gianni

[Lead melter]

Yeah, you are right. Lapping is what I have been trying to do. My brain doesn't work well from time to time. DUH!
By the term "bumped" do you mean to push the boolit through the larger sizer with force, causing it to bottom out and expand, or just to size it less and allow the odd diameter places to be sized larger?
I can see where the forceful compression would cause swelling while using a Lyman or similar sizer, but since I use Lee, that might require some innovation.

[sundog]

Beagling works fairly well as far as the finished product. Boolits slightly out of round, but larger. Remember that the barrel is also a swaging device, so by the time the boolit has traveled the barrel it has changed configuration to conform to the barrel. That said here's a tip on the process. Regular aluminium duct tape works, but it tends to smear glue around and into the cavities. As the glue retreat from under the tape, the tape migrates and even falls off the mould. An alternative is 'flue tape'. The brand I use was not on the shelf at my local hardware store, but they had it a couple days later - I had to ask for it. It's Ace brand (I'm sure there are others), and it's rated for 600dF. That's quite an improvement over the other stuff. It's a little more expensive, and less comes in a roll, but it's still plenty to last a long time. The short of it is that there is no longer any glue escaping and the tape strips stay in place. Much better.

Here's an example of what you get when you 'beagle'. I have a No 4 Mk I in which a 314299 will slip fit down to the driving band into the muzzle. The beagled boolits do not. They go no further than part way down the ogive. That's enough to actually shrink a hunert yard group. Much better boolit fit.

[Cloudpeak]

I glued some pop can shims (.004") with J-B weld to one of my Lee molds and it worked very well to increase diameter and they've stayed put. The bullets now size nicely in the Lee .452 push through sizer. (The black dot in the right cavity isn't J-B weld. Just a speck of something when I took the picture.)

Cloudpeak
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v620/WyoBob/Guns/DSCN1564.jpg

[dromia]

For bumping see the Swaging forum, you will need more than the Lee push through dies though.

[IcerUSA]

In your attempt to lap your mould out I think your over doing it with a power tool , had one myself that the drill grabbed in the lead and put a outtie on one cavity , worst part it was a shooting buddies mould , he now uses it as a 5 banger .

So back to lapping , I would try it by hand which is a little more time consuming but you would have less chance of ruining a mould that way , make 2 good sets of boolits and get some coarse and fine or extra fine lapping compound from an auto parts store , use 1 set of boolits , make sure to keep the sets separate and mark them as to which cavity they came out of , drill the boolits to get your screw, tap , easy out or what ever you are going to use to rotate the boolit in the cavity .

Get a couple pieces of plate , say some cold rolled about 3/8 X 3 X 5 and that would be large for what you will need it for , can be smaller or larger , just the size I picked . Now what you will be doing is putting some lapping compound on one of the plates and smearing it around with the other plate so both plates have a thin film of compound on both plates . Next take your first boolit and put it between the plates and roll it back and forth , might want to wipe out the lube grooves of extra compound as you don't need to make them bigger and more than enough will get in there anyway .

Now what you have is a light duty carbide grinding stone that looks like your cavities , this is where hand lapping is better that power tools , you can feel what is going on , put the newly made grinding boolit in the cavity it came out of and close up the mould and start to rotate the boolit , make a couple turns right and left ( clockwise and counter clockwise ) . open the mould and clean the faces , what you are doing is taking off the excess lapping compound , reinsert the boolit and repeat , do this for all the cavities with each boolit , you will get the hang of how much pressure to put on the handles as you go along . Clean the mould throughly .

Now repeat with the next set of boolits but use the finer compound as this is done to take off the high spots left from the coarser compound . You will have some time invested but it is our hobby . :) Cast up a couple new sets of boolits and check how much you gained and if need be repeat the above process . Understand it's a slow process but your chance of ruining a mould this way is alot slimmer than a power tool . once you get it to cast at a dia that your happy with , usually .001 to .002 this way I would use something like tooth paste to put a final polish on the cavities and you should be good to go , just remember that it will take an amount of time to do it right . Rushing is usually equal to ruining when it comes to lapping a mould.

As an extra when you get the dia to where you want it take that last set that you use with the final fine lapping compound on it and use each boolit in all the cavities as this will help to make sure all the cavities are of equal dia .

AND REMEMBER TO GO SLOW , did I say that before , hmmmm :)

When all is done you should have a mould that is good too go and should drop boolits as fast as the sprue will harden , unless you can do speed casting you will actually be waiting on the mould to cool as you will be going too fast . This is a nice benefit if you do the lapping slow and check the progress till you reach your goal with the dia. , I luv it when it gets to that point , I still have a couple moulds that need a tap on the handle with my gloved hand to get them to drop but that should get better with use , mostly it's the square lube groove moulds that hang a touch , all the tapered grooves just fall out .

I'll quit rambling for now and let others add to or not as they see fit. Also did you go to Cast Pics and look at lapping a mould and also reread the Leementing sticky here on Cast Boolits .

Keith

[Naphtali]

Will not changing casting alloy to a lighter, harder blend increase as-cast bullet size?