Lyman 450 Luber Sizer

[jednorris]

I have been using a Lyman 450 sizer for years to lube .40 cal . 400 gr. lead bullet. The overall length of the bullet is long but I always end up with a bunch of lube under the base as I resize. I have been told that that is just the nature of the beast, but it is irritating and I am wondering if there is an adjustment for it.

[metricmonkeywrench]

Sometimes tweaking the bullet depth up or down a bit to cover the offending ports with the rod or bullet may be enough. Or you may have to pull your die and clean it off real good insert a bullet to the desired depth and block off the unwanted ports with a bit of solid solder. There’s a post with pictures somewhere about. Think it on one of the Jon-b stickies

[marlin39a]

Is it a bevel base bullet? Those can give that problem.

[Bazoo]

I find, a clean top to the center pin helps reduce it. I have some bullets that it happens to, and some it never does. If a bullet has lots of grooves, you have to use more pressure to get a good one pass fill, and thus more chance of lubed bases. Also, the older sizing dies with 4 roes of 4 holes, with 2 roes offset to the others, offer more leakage than the newer Lyman dies with 4 roes of 2 non-offset holes.

I find gas checked bullets do it worse too.

Sometimes it can't be avoided and I deal with it by scraping the lube off the base and off the center punch top with a small screwdriver. It's deposited in a pill bottle for the next lube refill. If you take a cleaning patch and soak it with remoil or similar, then swab the top of the die punch clean, it will resist lubing bases longer.

[Wayne Smith]

If it is a bevel base boolit a small piece of a Styrofoam cup under the boolit will stop it, until the Styrofoam completely collapses.

[monadnock#5]

It's an equation for physicists. 1V=ambient air temp, 2V=unit temp with base heater, 3V=lube consistency (hard or soft), 4V=piston pressure on the lube column, and maybe some others I haven't thought of. I never figured it out. The frustration is something you learn to live with.

The suggestion for using the styrofoam gaskets is a good one. Fewer BP spikes.

[hiram]

I had this problem with a short bullet. What I did was take the die out and clean it--including the lube ports. If I remember correctly the ports are 1/8" holes. Get an o-ring that is 1/8' in diameter. Cut a few pieces to plug the lower port which is probably the the one giving the excess lube problem. Put the die in the 450 and go back to work.