WidenersRepackboxTitan ReloadingReloading Everything
Inline FabricationRotoMetals2Lee PrecisionLoad Data
MidSouth Shooters Supply
Page 2 of 2 FirstFirst 12
Results 21 to 31 of 31

Thread: Where do people get the idea that micro groove boolits don't need sizing?

  1. #21
    Boolit Buddy maglvr's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jun 2011
    Posts
    307
    "Jes wondering, what's the point of this thread?"
    Nothing more than stating that LEE never claimed micro groove bullets don't need to be sized, as is so often claimed. And to fuel a little friendly discussion, that's all
    The .357 Magnum......
    1935
    Major Douglas Wesson, using factory loads, which were a 158 gr. soft lead bullet, traveling 1515 fps, from an 8 3/4" barreled S&W, producing 812 ft. lbs of muzzle energy.
    Antelope - 200 yards (2 shots)
    Elk - 130 yards (1 shot)
    Moose - 100 yards (1 shot)
    Grizzly Bear - 135 yards (1 shot).

    It kind of makes one wonder, why today, it will bounce off anything bigger than a rabbit

  2. #22
    Boolit Grand Master

    mdi's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jun 2008
    Location
    So. Orygun
    Posts
    7,239
    Maglvr, I never researched the topic much, but if Lee didn't say is it true? A lot of "info" on the web gets started with one comment. Possibly in a reloading/casting forum years ago someone may have said "Lee micro-groove bullets don't need to be sized", because his didn't need sizing, and it took off from there. When I started casting I wasn't real sure of myself so I measured everything, just to be sure/safe and if the bullets were "too big" I'd have to size them as I learned here bullets should be the same size as the cylinder throats (I had an old Lee Lube Kit with a cookie cutter, small pan of lube and a hammer through sizing die)...
    My Anchor is holding fast!

  3. #23
    Moderator Emeritus


    Join Date
    Mar 2005
    Location
    SW Montana
    Posts
    12,450
    Richard Lee comes close to stating it, but leaves it very much implied in Modern Reloading Edition 1 pages 125 and 126. He leaves us with his opinion that if a bullet needs sizing it is poorly manufactured and designed implying that his are not.
    [The Montana Gianni] Front sight and squeeze

  4. #24
    Boolit Grand Master Bazoo's Avatar
    Join Date
    Dec 2013
    Location
    Cecilia, Kentucky
    Posts
    6,715
    I have run some lee 358 140 swc without sizing. I had a few that were too fat and wouldnt chamber in my wifes 686, my buddies blackhawk didnt have a problem with them though. It was the traditional lube design but I tumble lubed them. I didnt have any problems, except that I'd got a few that were just a touch large to chamber. I prefer to size them though, as mould temperature affects the size of the bullet, and sometimes .001 is all it takes to make them not chamber.

  5. #25
    Boolit Master trixter's Avatar
    Join Date
    Mar 2011
    Location
    Where E. Pine crosses I-5
    Posts
    873
    Quote Originally Posted by WHITETAIL View Post
    I am from the Old School and size everything.
    That would be me too, I don't want any problems.

  6. #26
    DOR RED BEAR's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2011
    Location
    1 mile from chickahominy river ( swamp) central va
    Posts
    2,162
    i size everything needed or not just how i learned.

  7. #27
    Boolit Master
    Join Date
    Jan 2010
    Location
    Nampa , Idaho
    Posts
    736
    Only have two micro groove molds 158 gr. .358 and .45 200 hundred gr. swc I don't size them just lube and shoot both shoot so good the way they are. I would not want to even take the time to size them as it is unnecessary.

  8. #28
    Boolit Buddy
    Join Date
    Jan 2008
    Posts
    118

    Red face

    Quote Originally Posted by maglvr View Post
    Greetings brothers and sisters of the silver stream
    This is just a pet peeve of mine, I have held in way too many years. Now seems like a good time to share it, before I explode LOL.
    Just one of those little things that get under your skin like when someone says "nucular" instead of nuclear.
    If I have seen it once, I have seen (and heard) it a few hundred times, that LEE micro groove bullets do not need sizing! As if LEE had claimed that those thin little bands are some gift from God that will always be just the right size, or miraculously conform to fit our every reloading need, just because they are so thin. No such claim has been made that I have ever seen, especially not on the LEE site. What they do say is in fact quite different, they state... "MOST BULLETS FROM LEE MOLDS CAN BE USED, AS CAST WITHOUT SIZING" (I'm not yelling here, they had it all in caps, so I do too
    They in no way specify just the micro groove bullets. If someone told us "standard lube groove bullets from LEE molds don't need to be sized", we would likely give them the old stink eye! I have never heard that stated, nor seen it in print,
    but just mention micro grooves and get ready to hear "YEA, those don't need to be sized!" LEE does say the micro bands create less friction and higher velocities, given the same pressure.
    Thank you for your time, and please forgive me for going "nucUlar" on the subject
    Now perhaps I can get a decent night's sleep with that off my chest! LOL!
    Cheers!
    MagLvr
    Attachment 226999

    Years ago, when I was primarily a Bullseye shooter, I gave my buddy more than little grief about him loading unsized, Lee tumble lubes boolits. I thought I was a much more sophisticated caster. He shut me up one night at the indoor range. He finally convince me to just try some of his 32 S&W reloads with unsized Lee tumble lubed headquarters in my Hammerli 280.

    I eventually gave in after much lighthearted complaining they would blow up my etc, etc. Well, after shooting 5 shots deadcenter into the 10 ring, in a hole no bigger than a 3 shot group, I forever shut up about it.

  9. #29
    Boolit Man
    Join Date
    Apr 2015
    Posts
    80
    Had to pull two of my lubrisizers off to mount another Square Deal B till get entire reloading room rearranged so can fit another progressive press bench in the room. My single stage press bench has lost two single stage presses to fit a 550 with all the bells. Had to stick a turret press on corner of my case prep bench and move a lead pot off my casting bench to mount a shotshell press. I dislike swapping machines over to another anything so tend to add machines. Why my seven well spaced lubrisizers are now two well spaced, three crowded and a progressive plopped down in the middle. Life just sucks.



    I size my bullets though I only have one Lee mold that I still use but have a pile left from when I was a kid in the 1970's. Was tough on a 13 to 15 year old kid casting out of a cast iron pot on his mom's stove with a dipper to justify big Ideal/Lyman or RCBS mold blocks. By age 16 had better jobs, more money, better range as was not allowed to drive anywhere except on dirt roads with short hops on pavement. That got me to Bargain Barn (first mega outdoor store I ever saw) in Jasper GA, Dawsonville Hardware (great gun counter at time) and a couple mom & pop hardware/dry goods/gun shops in Ellijay. Had to sneak to Atlanta at age 13 in my trusty Beetle to buy first press and full reasonably complete reloading kit as the guy who mentored me the previous 18 months lived on a state highway, knew my parents rule of no driving on pavement and worked in law enforcement but having to get mom to take me to the press plus he had no casting equipment was making a young kid crazy.

    If I cast it I size it. Have to lube it and most rifle boolits and big magnum handgun boolits get gas checks. Since need to lube and often seat checks may as well size while doing it. I even run my top quality match bullets through a pointing die and taken to running a few odd bags of pulls through swaging dies because some were not 100% or even 99% round and like round bullets that weigh the same. Maybe I read too much Elmer Keith, Ross Syfried and company articles as a kid but they all were pushing limits thus seemed to do all the steps plus the odd ones. Every round gets wiped down and dropped in 7 hole EGW chamber checkers as wife and I box them up and all precision ammo has so many steps from weighing every projectile, measuring internal volume of every case, setting up rifles favorite distance of ogive to lands to measuring bullet run out on every finished round. Wife does all the mundane light chores such as keeping piles of primer tubes loaded, weighing projectiles and pointing match bullets so gives me more time to be anal about sizing my boolits. And the one Lee mold we still run... is a 160 grain six cavity use to load 7.62×39 "commie bullets" as my wife calls them as she loves shooting her massaged 20 round box mag preban SKS's more than her AR 15's, Mini 14's or AUG. Only rifles she shoots almost as much are a pair of massaged 30 Carbines that I built for her. At least half dozen wives of friends are running my modified 30 Carbines.

    Forgot there is a lubrisizer stuck on corner of casting bench. Changing sizing die in a machine with warm or cold lube in it drives me nuts so top punch and tweaking adjustment is all I like doing as swapping parts is time not making boolits or dropping ammo.

    For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions. 2 Timothy 4:3

  10. #30
    Boolit Master trapper9260's Avatar
    Join Date
    Feb 2010
    Location
    Iowa
    Posts
    3,402
    For me I do not have a TL mold. I size and lube all my boolits. I use a Lyman lube sizer and works for me all the years I been at this and also I know what size of the boolit I use. Because on some of the boolits I use is used for other rounds with the same cast boolit and need to be different size.
    Life Member of NRA,NTA,DAV ,ITA. Also member of FTA,CBA

  11. #31
    Boolit Buddy watkibe's Avatar
    Join Date
    Nov 2008
    Location
    The Great Pacific Northwest
    Posts
    281
    I tumble lube, size, tumble lube again, and load.
    Casting just isn't as much fun any more...
    "A society that values equality above liberty will have neither. A society that values liberty above equality will have plenty of both " - Milton Friedman

Page 2 of 2 FirstFirst 12

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •  
Abbreviations used in Reloading

BP Bronze Point IMR Improved Military Rifle PTD Pointed
BR Bench Rest M Magnum RN Round Nose
BT Boat Tail PL Power-Lokt SP Soft Point
C Compressed Charge PR Primer SPCL Soft Point "Core-Lokt"
HP Hollow Point PSPCL Pointed Soft Point "Core Lokt" C.O.L. Cartridge Overall Length
PSP Pointed Soft Point Spz Spitzer Point SBT Spitzer Boat Tail
LRN Lead Round Nose LWC Lead Wad Cutter LSWC Lead Semi Wad Cutter
GC Gas Check