Those Lousy Lee Molds

[Boomer Mikey]

I’ve been casting boolits for over 25 years and in that time frame I occasionally tried a few Lee 1 and 2 cavity molds with disastrous results leaving myself with the opinion that Lee molds were “crap”. Why was it so damn hard to get a decent boolit from these aluminum molds? I would work at it for hours and get so frustrated with them that I destroyed several with a big hammer just to get some satisfaction from them.

A couple of years ago I needed an oversize 44 boolit for a couple of LSI M92 Puma rifles with 0.433” bores and a gentleman over at the Beartooth Bullets forum suggested I go to the Group Buys forum at the Cast Boolits website to order a custom 6 cavity group buy mold for my rifles and that the Lee Custom 6 Cavity Molds were an improvement over the standard production 1 and 2 cavity molds.

I was very skeptical about Lee molds and I've been of the opinion that iron molds were superior to anything made by Lee. Now that I’ve used over a dozen custom group buy molds successfully I've learned better. I'm still not crazy about 1 or 2 cavity Lee molds; for me, they’re somewhat fragile… I keep loosing the horizontal (long) locating pins and their sloppy-floppy fitting handles are - evil - making it virtually impossible to align the mold blocks correctly without careful attention in closing them. One day... in a fit of frustration, instead of dragging out the big hammer I read the instruction sheet that came with the mold and immediately started producing good boolits.

Lee molds require a different approach than iron molds to achieve success in making quality boolits.

For those of you that are new to Lee 6 Cavity molds the following article is a good introduction to them and how to prepare them for use and for those of us with years of experience with iron molds that have issues getting Lee molds work as well.

http://www.surplusrifle.com/shooting2006/swwheelgun2/index.asp

Lee Custom 6 cavity molds are the way to go for volume casting. I actually prefer my Custom 6 Cavity Lee Mold versions of my favorite iron molds as they produce piles of boolits at warp speed without the routine maintenance iron molds require and provide a relatively low cost way to aquire truly "Custom" bullet designs.

Mikey likes them,

Boomer :Fire:

[jonk]

Good link. I find that to get quick results I heat mine on a propane stove for a few minutes at medium flame. Eliminates the first few rejects.

The single cavity molds (and double) have always worked for me, in terms of making a decent bullet but they often do require a bit of fiddling and possibly Leementing.

[kjg]

Yes i'm in agreement they are a serious pia, but after much fussin and cussin, and preheating and smoking the moulds wich helps a bunch,the breaking period is the worst, but they are the fracktion of the cost of good lyman or rcbs, I have them all.kjg

[jcwit]

Been using Lee molds for years with no adverse problems. As far as alignment when closing I've usually just VERY LIGHTLY taped the bottom of the mold when closing, usually use the hammer handle that I tap the sprue plate open with. I realeze they probably won't last as long as irom molds, but I'm 65 so they'll probably out last me, if not they are only $15/$20 and thats with handles so I don't have to keep changing molds around. Also when new I make sure the pin that holds the mold to the handle is peened good. BTY I've got 1 Lee mold that now has over 20,000 casts thru it.

[DLCTEX]

I have found that my older molds that don't want to close in alignment will close nicely when rested on a piece of hardwood I keep next to the melting pot. It takes about one second, and Lee molds aren't the only ones that benefit from the practice. DALE

[miestro_jerry]

Amazing information, I have been casting with Lee molds for a while now, as well as the Lyman and RCBS molds. I did use a old fashion smokey candle for the smoking process because that is what I was told to use many years ago. Of recent I have smoke mine with a BIC lighter.

Thanks for the link,

Jerry

[FieldShunt]

Back in '73 or so, as a poor young carpenter, I bought one of the new-fangled Lee one-hole .45 228 round-nose molds. That was okay but too slow so I got the two-holer. I had an excellent source of roofing lead and a fair supply of linotype.
There was no internet but there was Dean Grennell, and his funny, realistic reloading books, and that's where I learned what to do. (Besides Dick Lee's really excellent instruction sheets.)
I cast tens of thousands of 228s that I ran through my old Colt Combat Commander, then and now my "nightstand" gun, plus my milled Webley Mk VI.
Once I had a few extra bucks I began to actually buy bullets, and then, after a long layoff, discovered plated bullets. I swore I'd never cast again and tossed the Lee bottom-pour and the two-holer into a box in the attic with the last twenty pounds of lino.
Last winter, with the price of those plateds going far past the nickel I'd become acccustomed to, I drug the cobwebbed Lee stuff down to the bench and tried to remember what I had known thirty years previous.
The first evening I tossed about 600 228s. I couldn't hardly stop.
Since I'd long ago lost track of my old LubriSizer and didn't have the urge to buy a new one, I grabbed a bottle of Lee Liquid Alox and stunk the joint up good.
Since that night that battered old Lee has dropped another two or three thousand. It looks like hell, all smeared and wobbly. I stumbled into a good buy on factory-made slugs and put it aside while I started out with a new six-banger .38 round-noser.
When I ran out of the store-bought .45s, I smoked up the old double again and just last night ran out another 300 quick balls.
I have a new six-hole .45 Lee on the shelf, and I guess I'll start using it soon, but what the heck. I'm pretty beat up and smeared up myself and can't really be too critical.
Oh, yeah, that old Colt still loves those Lee punkin balls and eats them like happy candy.
Bill

[Christian for Israel]

i don't smoke my lee molds at all, instead i use midway's 'drop out' graphite spray and get perfect castings that drop free easily from the very start. other things i do differently are i dip my lee molds into the melted lead to heat them. in 20 years of doing this i have never had one warp, be it a one, two or six cavity mold. also i don't set the mold aside to cool as the casting solidifies quickly. instead, as soon as the sprue sets up (one - two seconds) i cut it and drop the castings into a bucket of water immediately, directly from the mold.

the boolits i make are uniform, well formed, hard and shoot great. the few times i've used iron molds i've found that traditional methods work best but we must remember that molds made from aluminum are different and require different casting methods to perform well.

[oldhickory]

Over the years I've tried many Lee, Lyman, RCBS. and Rapine molds, and found each of them to be of good quality. Proper cleaning, the application of drop-out or smoke, as well as preheating them goes a long way in making casting a pleasure or a chore. I think Lee molds are a real bargain and the only problem I've ever had with the genere itself is that they sometimes run a bit on the small side. Other than that, no worries with a Lee mold.

[Jim]

Jeeesh, I ms' be doin' sum'pm wrong. I got maybe 3 dozen or so Lee molds, been usin' 'em for years and never had no problem.

[jack19512]

I will never understand why some have so many problems and complaints with the Lee molds. Now, you can get a bad one but that goes with anything. I just purchased my 11th Lee mold and they all work fine and some even work great.

They may not last 100 years but so what! they don't cost much either. I am relatively new to casting and I am not the smartest person on the planet but whatever little problem I may have with the Lee molds I quickly figure it out. If I can do it anybody can. [smilie=1:

[725]

I've got Lyman's, NEI's, Lachmiller's, Ideal's, T/C's, Old West's, and probably some others, and some of the very best I've ever cast came out of a Lee 2 cavity yesterday. People like what they like for many reasons. I like the Lee's, (in addition to all the others), becasue they work so well.

[Boerrancher]

I bought my first Lee mold in 1991, after using Lyman molds for nearly 10 years. It worked fine and casted hundreds of thousands of boolits. I would still be using it but I left it at a friend of mines house and he passed away while I was over seas, and since he had no wife or children his extended family had a huge sale, and I lost my mold and 2k lbs of WW alloy ingots along with several 3lb coffee cans stacked full of lubed and sized boolits.

Best wishes from the Boer Ranch,

Joe

[kjg]

i just recieved my first ever lemon from lee, a 185grain.312 diam, bought it for me .303, I couldn't figuar out why the boolits wern't dropping out after smoking, sprying that grfite stuff and had the same problem, then after being completely p@## off, set the mold down burned a couple of smokes, noticed while mold was laying on it side, the sprue plate didn't look right, held it up to the light and low and behold, the sprew plate, is tight to the mold on one end and the other end were it get tapped with wood mallet is see the sky, well now wonder, well going to call lee about it they are real good to work with. kjg