Cast some .358 today, unimpressed with the mold

[trucker76]

Been so busy with stuff I hadn't got to cast since my last batch of .45s. After being banished to the garage with my casting equipment as no matter how much ventilation I had in the basement (4 windows and 4 fans, 2 sucking in and 2 blowing out) the better half said it made the house stink. I got a bench cleared off in the garage and decided to break in the Lee .358 140gr swc mold. Once I got it heated the boolits started dropping great. Then I noticed my sprue plate kept coming loose. I didn't have this problem with the .45 mold. I think the screw for the sprue plate on the .45 mold is reverse threaded. Then later after tapping out a couple boolits half the mold fell right off the handle. There's a weird set screw with very course threads that just kind of grinds itself into the aluminum mold block and it came out. Well the way it's designed it doesn't really make threads, it's more of a friction fit. So about every 10-15 casts I was retightening it with a hex wrench. Once again a problem I didn't have with the lee .45 mold. I will say though it did drop some pretty fine looking boolits.

[Jaybees]

1st post!

I drilled and tapped for a set screw in most of my lee molds.

[Wayne Smith]

Wow! I'd send that one back. They are too cheap to spend a lot of time rebuilding. If the next one is just as bad invest in a decent mold!

[Bullshop]

Stake the pins. It don't take much. Put the blocks in a vice, take a small punch, hold the tip of the punch just barely to the side of the pin hole and give the punch a tap. That will displace a tiny bit of the block metal and is enough to prevent the from coming out.
That will be a lot faster than sending the mold back and weighting for the return of another.
As was said the best fix for the sprue plate screw is to D&T and install a set screw.

[trucker76]

yeah I thought about sending it back to Lee. But te mold new was $20. By the time I pay to ship it back and wait for a new one it really isn't worth it. I'm probably just going to drill it out and put a bolt with a nut in or something. Some good molds are on my wish list but until I start getting some paychecks (transitioning jobs) I had to start casting on a budget. It just suprised me how well the .45 mold worked then the problems with this one.

[trucker76]

Stake the pins. It don't take much. Put the blocks in a vice, take a small punch, hold the tip of the punch just barely to the side of the pin hole and give the punch a tap. That will displace a tiny bit of the block metal and is enough to prevent the from coming out.
That will be a lot faster than sending the mold back and weighting for the return of another.

Or I could do that.

[osteodoc08]

1st post!

I drilled and tapped for a set screw in most of my lee molds.

Welcome from a NW GA

[Beerd]

1st post!

I drilled and tapped for a set screw in most of my lee molds.

First post and he is already telling us what to do. I'm going to like this guy!

WELCOME Jaybees!
..

[Recluse]

Stake the pins. It don't take much. Put the blocks in a vice, take a small punch, hold the tip of the punch just barely to the side of the pin hole and give the punch a tap. That will displace a tiny bit of the block metal and is enough to prevent the from coming out.
That will be a lot faster than sending the mold back and weighting for the return of another.
As was said the best fix for the sprue plate screw is to D&T and install a set screw.

yeah I thought about sending it back to Lee. But te mold new was $20. By the time I pay to ship it back and wait for a new one it really isn't worth it. I'm probably just going to drill it out and put a bolt with a nut in or something. Some good molds are on my wish list but until I start getting some paychecks (transitioning jobs) I had to start casting on a budget. It just suprised me how well the .45 mold worked then the problems with this one.

My problem is that I really, really like the bullets that come out of Lee molds. However, I get really, really tired of finishing Lee's job for them--and not just on molds, but on nearly everything it seems as of the past three or four years.

But as you said, for $20 I get a heckuva good boolit--I just have to Leement the hell out of every mold I get from them.

[Jagdhund]

Stake the pins. It don't take much. Put the blocks in a vice, take a small punch, hold the tip of the punch just barely to the side of the pin hole and give the punch a tap. That will displace a tiny bit of the block metal and is enough to prevent the from coming out.
That will be a lot faster than sending the mold back and weighting for the return of another.
As was said the best fix for the sprue plate screw is to D&T and install a set screw.

I did the same for my Lee .452 200 RFN. This "screw" system is maybe only marginally better than the old staked pins. I may follow Jaybee's lead and tap for screws sometime.

[DLCTEX]

#8X32 thread tap and #29 drill bit $4.69 and 8X32 socket head set screws @.23 ea. at Ace Hardware. Makes me a happy Lee mould owner in both two and six cavity mould.

[Shiloh]

That mold works VERY well for me. Get it running and you'll love how it shoots.
4.5-4-7 gr. Unique is my recipe.

Shiloh

[Recluse]

#8X32 thread tap and #25 drill bit $4.69 and 8X32 socket head set screws @.23 ea. at Ace Hardware. Makes me a happy Lee mould owner in both two and six cavity mould.

Yes, sir. That's a fact.

Among my absolute favorite boolits are the Lee TL158SWC, which I've found to be my number-one all time favorite cast boolit for .38 Special. The Lee 200SWC in .452 with the bevel base is a VERY close second in terms of favorite all-time boolits. And then there is the Lee 105SWC in .358 that is perhaps the most versatile of boolits I cast and is the hands-down favorite for my girls to shoot in the wheelguns.

Likewise, the Lee 120TC for 9mm is the first boolit design I've been able to have consistent accuracy with in all of my 9mm firearms. There are several long-gun boolits that come from Lee molds that I also like very well and have had stellar performance from.

I remember when the issue of "Lee-menting" was first discussed and put into practice and what a huge difference it made for a LOT of the folks here (even though there weren't nearly as many members or participants then) and I remember Buckshot's recommendation of putting a screw on the six-cavity molds where the cam hit on the sprue plate in order to not have the hard metal gouging the softer metal. Lapping the molds with toothpaste or Comet/Ajax, polishing them with Mother's Aluminum polish, xacto knives and/or scribes to open up the vent lines, etc etc.

I still contend that $20 for a boolit design you really like is hard to beat.

[trucker76]

how does that 200gr .452 swc feed on automatics? I was considering that for my xd.45 but all my reading told me xd's do not like to feed swc in any form.

[Recluse]

how does that 200gr .452 swc feed on automatics? I was considering that for my xd.45 but all my reading told me xd's do not like to feed swc in any form.

This is the only lead projectile that I run through a Lee FCD. It has not caused me any leading on any of my .45s with the exception of my shot-out Gov't model that leads up if you simply wave it in front of a bucket of wheel weights.

I size the rounds with a Lee push-through sizer lapped to .4525", run the finished rounds through a FCD, and load them with 4.7 grains of Bullseye and only have an occasional occurrence of failing to go completely into battery. In the past few months, I loaded up some rounds with Red Dot, making them only slightly hotter than the Bullseye loads and have had zero issues with feeding or going completely into battery. No change in accuracy, either.

[trucker76]

Bullets are working great backed by 4.6gr of true blue (I got a pound I need to use up).