Leementing. What gives?

[jdgabbard]

Ok, So I bought a Lee TL356-124 RN mold a while back. Have cast with it a couple of times. And every time the darn thing just wouldn't drop the boolits from the mold. Sometimes I would actually have to take stick and pops the boolits out by pressing outwards on the base. The boolits always looked "ok" but I got tired of beating on my mold. So I decided to try to leement it.

So the other day I broke the mold out. Cut the sprue, marked the center of the bases to be drilled. neatly drilled a hole about a 1/4 inch into the bases, screwed a small screw into the whole and pulled the boolits out of the mold so I could use a little toothpaste. (Heard it was "mildly" abrasive, and don't want to open her up too much.)

Well, I put a small amount of toothpaste on one side of the mold and went to stick my boolits back in. YIKES! These things would have to be turned just right to go back in. Turns out the mold is slightly larger going back and forth across the molds then they are forward and back. So I went ahead and got the boolits indexed. Closed the molds, and to my surprise, once I started to turn the boolits with a rachet they the mold shaved them. Well, I cleaned the molds out and gave it another go, but it really only just "cleaned up" parts of the mold. Looks to have just taken the black from me smoking them off.

Whats up? Is this common? What should I do?

[Buckshot]

..................You want to make sure and put the same boolits back into the same holes. Just close the opposing block enough to 'touch' the boolit, then start spinning it while gently closing the blocks together. You want to make sure they're as aligned as possible when closing. Try cupping the blocks in one hand instead of holding the handle, then close gently on the spinning boolit.

..................Buckshot

[jdgabbard]

Thanks, I'll give that a try. I sure there is no pain in going back and giving it another try. Even if this ends up dropping boolits at .360 that would be fine by me. As I'll be loading some up for practice in my snubbies.

Btw Buckshot, have you ever HP'd one of these? If so, how well did they perform?