Leementing: Explain this to me please.

[Murphy]

While I have read this term 'Leementing' since joining the site, I have yet to find out what exactly is done while LEEMENTING.

How about several of you kicking in your experience with doing this and just HOW you did it.

The benefits?

The drawbacks?


Thanks,

Murphy

[nighthunter]

Murphy ... when I Leement a Lee mold I first cast with the mold till I get decent bullet. I then stop casting and let the mold become cold. I then take one of the good bullets the mold produced and drill a hole in the bottom of the bullet. The size of the hole is dependent on the size of the bullet diameter. I usually end up useing a 13/64 bit and drill about 3/8 to 1/2 inch deep. I then take a 1/4x20 bolt tap and thread it into the hole in the bullet. I then lightly coat the bullet with 1000 grit lapping compound then place the bullet into the cavities of the mold, close the mold lightly and turn the bullet in the cavity for 15 to 20 turns. I do this in each cavity of the mold. It removes any burrs or maching marks. Clean the mold thoroughly before useing it to cast again. Usually after Leementing a mold the bullets freely fall from all cavities upon opening the mold and very seldom does a person need to tap the handles to get the bullets to drop. I have also used this technique on other brands of molds and it works just as well on them. Unless you get very aggresive with the lapping compound you will not change the dimensions of the mold.
Nighthunter

[montana_charlie]

Murphy,
Have you read the 'sticky' thread at the top of the Moulds...Maintenance and Design section...the same section you posted this thread in?
http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?t=654
CM

[twoworms]

I"m going to have to try that with my Lee Molds.

Tim

[spottedpony]

after reading the above posts and associated link a thought came to mind, we're talking polishing with fine abrasives, either comet or fine grit polishing compound. what about tooth paste? its a fine abrasive also. anyone thought about this or tried it?

[redneckdan]

as definied by Jim bob cletus' dictionary-

a verb

the acting of apply all manner of purported treatments to a boolit mold with the intent of making it operate as the manufacure said it should. Usually resulting in a fit of rage and the application of an instrument knows as "two pound engineering hammer" to the offending $30 block of aluminum disguised as a boolit mold.

[Sundogg1911]

i've used toothpaste as a metal polish in the past. I don't see whay it wouldn't work. and it with give your moulds minty fresh breath!

[Buckshot]

i've used toothpaste as a metal polish in the past. I don't see whay it wouldn't work. and it with give your moulds minty fresh breath!

................Nothin' better then good smellin moulds !

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

[IcerUSA]

When I did the Leementing on my TL-452-230-RN mold, after Icast a few I had stickies and the lube groves looked a little washed out, ran them thru the sizeing die and didn't get hardly any sizeing done to the boolits, so I took an old dental hook pick that I had and did a little shapeing and sharpining to it and scraped the lube grooves a little deeper, mind you that the scrapings where very light and it took awhile to get them to touch in the sizeing die

Once I was satisfide with that I cast untill I had 3 sets of good cast bullets as they where still sticking in the mold, drilled the bases and used a sheet metal screw with the head cut of in a electric hand drill, veriable speed, and did the polishing with some 2000 grit diamond polish, boolits where marked with the cavity they came out of for the first poilsh, next set was passed thru the mold with each boolit going thru the other cavities but not the one it came out of, third set of boolits where ran thru starting with the cavity it came out of and all the rest, cleaning was done after each run thru, did the finale prep according to lee, lube points and smoked the mold, then ran a batch of 1200 boolits . Ran them all theu the sizeing die and had a nice light drag with all of them, all 4 lands on the lube grooves looked real close to the same width, didn't mike them , just looked good to me, so LLA'd a bunch and let them dry, loaded them up and they shoot better than I can place them on the target at the range

Still have to polish the TL-452-190-SWC and the TL-253-120-2R as both of them are acceptable as made, just a little sticky but make good boolits

[uscra112]

Toothpaste! When I were a wee sprat, about 1957 or so, I was shown how to lap model airplane engines with toothpaste. Whether any toothpastes still contain a suitable lapping compound I dunno. Haven't tried that trick since I dicovered real lapping compounds.

If you want finer lapping compound that what you can buy, here is how you get it:

Mix some of your compound into 2-3 ounces of 10-weight auto oil, in a glass jar, cover, and leave it for a while. Like a week. The bigger particles will settle out. When you pour off the oil, the big stuff stays in the bottom and what you poured out has the finer material still entrained in the oil. Let THAT settle in a new (and very clean) jar, pour off the oil, and use it. This is how the earliest opticians obtained compounds fine enough to polish mirrors and lenses to an optical grade finish.

I'm wondering if some of the compound stays in the aluminum, and that's what makes the boolit drop cleanly. HMmmm - worth more study, methinks.

[Bob Jones]

I recently started using a Lee 6-cavity 357-158-RF and found it was casting a little small. I had put a lot of smoke on it to start with and though maybe that was part of the problem, so tried this method. I used some green polishing compound that came with a Dremel kit, smeared it evenly as possible on a bullet then spun it in the cavities.

I was amazed at the difference in how easily the mold worked. The first casts with the mold I had to tap the handles to get the boolits to drop free, afterwards I just opened the mold and they nearly lept out of the mold.

That didn't do much about the diameter, so tried what you guys call "beagling". Bought some aluminum tape and put about 10 tiny pieces, some on either side of the mold and ran a couple hundred casts through it. They're nice and round and weight went from 160 grains to 163 grains, looks like they're about 1.5 thousandths bigger, worked perfectly.

Just wanted to say thanks for all the info, been lurking here for quite a while and finally decided to register.