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I just picked up several Lyman 4 cavity molds. One has the "nutcracker" style handles and the other has no handles. Having never used a mold with the nutcracker handles I thought I would get some opinions as to the pro and cons of nut cracker versus standard handles. Input would be appreciated.
The only Lyman four cavity handles I have are the nut cracker type and they work okay; but they do require a lot different handling motion than the more standard pliers type. I'm not bothered enough to buy a set of the new style handles, especially since I only have two Lyman four cavity molds.
On the other hand, I used to have a Hensley & Gibbs four cavity with the pliers type handle; it was a joy to use. It handled the same as most of my other molds, just a bit heavier.
Robert
I have never used the pliers type handles for Lyman 4 cavity molds, only the nutcracker type. I have used the Lee pliers type on some NOE 5 cavity molds and of course the Lee 6 cavity molds and don't see a great deal of handling difference. The mechanics of using the nutcracker type is slightly different but isn't a problem at all.
It's what you get used to. I prefer the pliers type personally.
I like what Al at NOE sells. Great handles at a fair price.
I have two pair of handles that had to be belt sanded on the inside of the handles to allow clearance to close the mould tightly.
Congrats on the new-to-you molds
Measure the boolits BEFORE you do any production with those molds. Lyman 4 cavity molds have a bad habit of having different/wrong sized cavities.
Hopefully, they are not so far off that you can't leement them to make them the same.
There can get practically new Lyman 4 cavities for very little $ due to this problem.
I will check that but I am sure these are quite old, though used extremely little. One I would term as new old stock. The fellow I bought them from was 79 and had not been reloading for some time. To give a time bench mark, all of the 12,000 primers were of the vintage where CCI's were in the tiny sleeves and bricks. Over 12,000 still in original packaging fit it a 50 caliber ammo can. With today's packaging you can only fit in 3 or maybe 4 bricks of a 1000!Quote:
Originally Posted by Grmps
I have both types of handles.I really don't have a preference.They both work well.
I use the plier type for all my molds. The nutcracker is properly named if are used to the other type.
Leadmelter
I have both types and they both work fine. I think I prefer the nut cracker a tad more but I have a lot more experience with them.
I ended up with two pair of the old nutcracker style handles - they work OK for the 4 cavity Lyman mold blocks that I have - but I will admit that if I'm going to have a 4 cavity mold, I much prefer the NOE aluminum with plier handles - but then I'm getting old too! :-)