thinking about a new mold

[mike_kaleigh]

i have a lee 7/8 oz mold, and it is starting to wear out, so i was thinking about the lyman 520. i have a rem 870 tactical smothbore, and get 5in at 50 yards, how well does the lyman do? is it worth getting or buy a new lee for 20 bucks?

[jmort]

I assume you read the dedicated Lyman 525 thread. Here is link to owner reviews/ratings from Midway USA - they seem to like it.
http://www.midwayusa.com/product/778...n#ReviewHeader

[SuperBlazingSabots]

Hello Mike, the Lyman 525 slug in wad will do slightly better with some practice and home work.


This is what you are up grading to and still have to do your homework first for safety:

Whats so good about the Lyman, it punches a clean cut hole:


Here are your choices of wads:

You do need to check the fit with your slug and wad combo in your gun as not all guns are the same and while you are at it do measure your barrel OD at the muzzle and report back.



Hoping it helps.

Best regards,
Ajay
Blazing Sabots

[longbow]

While a new mould is always a good thing, it worries me to hear you say your Lee mould is wearing out. If you are treating it well it should last for many thousands of slugs.

Lee moulds are not as robust as some but still, it should not be wearing out on you.

Are you using sprue plate lube on it?

Are you beating it with a dowel to get slugs out? If so then try deburring it (Leementing ~ there is a sticky about Leementing). My 1 oz. mould was a bit stubborn when I got it but a quick deburring and it casts well now.

Not trying to put you off buying a new mould but take care of your old one and it should last along time.

Longbow

[turbo1889]

The Lee slug mold wears out quicker then other Lee molds because of the wear on the hollow base pin alignment ring and groove that are both soft aluminum. The wear can be reduced by using 2-cycle or bull-plate lube on that alignment ring/groove junction and/or treating the mold very carefully while closing it but even then because of the stresses involved and both groove and ring being of soft aluminum that likes to stick to each other rather then slip in nice and easily into alignment when the blocks are closed around the pin the Lee slug molds and other hollow base molds that use the same kind of alignment set-up from Lee still wear out faster then any of their other molds. At least that has been my experience and at this point I treat the Lee slug molds as disposable items with a known limited lifetime and I've purchased and worn out literally more then half a dozen of them.

The weak point on the Lyman mold on the other hand is the fact that it doesn't use good male/female paired alignment pins but rather only male side pins that simply slip into raw holes in the blocks on the other side. They don't wear out near as quickly of course since soft steel wears much better then soft aluminum and using TLC has much more effect on extending the life time of the Lyman then the Lee but the Lyman can be worn out too. The Lyman mold costs about 4 times as much as the Lee mold but lasts about 10 times as long in my approximation. I've worn out two Lymans so far (still have them because they might be able to be fixed by replacing the pins with genuine quality male/female matched pin sets) and am on my third along with a Mi-Hec clone of that design which is a superior mold to the genuine Lyman but has its own issues as well. I do cast a lot more volume of the Lyman slugs then I do of the Lee slugs.

All this of course should be taken with a grain of salt since I cast way more slugs then most people and I cast hard, fast, and ragged trying to get maximum production for the time I spend while still maintaining quality and trying not to beat the molds to death. And that is just the hand casting and isn't even counting the molds I rig up to run in an auto-casting machine and machine casting is harder on molds then hand casting assuming the hand caster isn't a complete moron and beating the living daylights out of their molds.

[JIMinPHX]

The Lee slug mold wears out quicker then other Lee molds

+1 on that. The difference is very noticeable.

The slug mold is also the most difficult to use of all the Lee molds that I have tried.