c1skout
01-08-2012, 12:19 PM
Santa brought me a Lee production pot and 3 lee molds. I made my head spin reading about everything here then decided yesterday to just have a go at it. I had some kind of lead scrap that may have been flashing here, about 1 foot of 1/4" thick solder, a handfull of wheelweights, and about 400 357 cast bullets that I had bought at a gunshow that were so poorly cast I wouldn't load them. That all went into the pot and I fluxed with some tongue depressors to stir.
http://i972.photobucket.com/albums/ae207/c1skout/100_2176.jpg
http://i972.photobucket.com/albums/ae207/c1skout/100_2178.jpg
http://i972.photobucket.com/albums/ae207/c1skout/100_2179.jpg
Those are some of the nicer ones. I did have some trouble getting the driving band on the 125gn boolet to fill completely, and had some nose wrinkling on all of them.
I cast slightly over 400 pcs total and had 48 rejects that I put back in the melt pile. Mostly from the 125 mold. I did not leement. I smoked the molds and lubed with 2-stroke oil that I had in the shed. I tried to keep the pot around 700deg. but it would range from 650-750ish by itself. I had no trouble dropping bullets but sometimes had to tap the sprueplate to get the sprue to fall off on the 158 mold. All in all I'm happy! I'm gonna go load some up now.
http://i972.photobucket.com/albums/ae207/c1skout/100_2176.jpg
http://i972.photobucket.com/albums/ae207/c1skout/100_2178.jpg
http://i972.photobucket.com/albums/ae207/c1skout/100_2179.jpg
Those are some of the nicer ones. I did have some trouble getting the driving band on the 125gn boolet to fill completely, and had some nose wrinkling on all of them.
I cast slightly over 400 pcs total and had 48 rejects that I put back in the melt pile. Mostly from the 125 mold. I did not leement. I smoked the molds and lubed with 2-stroke oil that I had in the shed. I tried to keep the pot around 700deg. but it would range from 650-750ish by itself. I had no trouble dropping bullets but sometimes had to tap the sprueplate to get the sprue to fall off on the 158 mold. All in all I'm happy! I'm gonna go load some up now.