Lee .30 caliber 200gr rifle mould...

[Bad Karma]

I just bought a Lee moud that has given me a loading quirk. I am casting them in pure lynotype (got 600 pounds for free in type form) and they drop out very nice. The problem is this. This a bore ride design. Well, the body that's supposed to ride on top of the lands, it's too big. The shank measures .3045" and when bolted into my Weatherby 30-06 there is a stiff bolt. OK I can live with that. The problem is that the rifling engraves the body about 2/3s the way dowm. I bought this mould to shoot it out of my .308 M1 Garand.
I have the 180gr boolit mould and it's just fine. Is there a possibility that the cherries that were used were oversized? Lee said that I should add tin to the alloy. Well, if I do that the boolits will be like Elephant slaying solids, not to mention the weight will be on the light side. Any ideas on if I should return the mould for another?

Bad Karma

[Wicky]

Not helping your problem but you could just junk the mould - my way - and I'll use it in my 303 brit.

[dubber123]

Try some out os straight wheelweights. I have never worked with Lino, but I believe it is known to produce boolits that are on the large side. Wheelweights can be heat treated into the 30+ BHN range which should be plenty hard for most uses, and might produce a slightly smaller slug.

[Ricochet]

I got one recently that's similar. Bought it for my K-31 because some people on here had complained about undersized bore riders in the .298" range, which would be PERFECT for my K-31. Got what you got, and I have to keep them a bit soft and slam the bolt handle hard 2-3 times to get them seated in the K-31 (which is a lot tighter throated than the Weatherby.)

How are you getting engraving halfway down the boolit body in a Weatherby? Mine's got about 3/8" freebore with most factory jacketed bullets seated to maximum magazine feeding length.

[mto7464]

just starting to cast with lino too. They do drop out larger then with WW. I can hardly get the gas checks on one boolit design in lino that go on fine with ww's.

[garandsrus]

Bad Karma,

If you are using linotype, you already have way more tin than you need. I don't think that adding any more would help.

I would try mixing the linotype with WW to see size the boolits drop at. I shoot a lot of rifle boolits and more are just ACWW. I do have a couple hundred pounds of Linotype and FoundryType, but haven't used it much.

John

[Bad Karma]

As far as my Weatherby is concerned it shouldn't have any problem because they free bore it generously. I got in touch with Lee and they said to return the mould. So I did and they will replace it for nothing. My M1 has a Krieger barrel on it, so I expect it to be a bit tight. The 180gr version of the mould works fine. I love Lynotype, it casts a really hard boolit that sizes perfectly, especially out of my Lyman 429421 mould. I sent a pic to Lee and the bollit dimentions, they agreed that it was a the big side even for Lynotype. For the price they all can't be gems.