Holy Heck!!!

[jdgabbard]

Wow, check out what Erik over at Hollowpoint Molds has done!

http://www.hollowpointmold.com/forsale/sale-pictures/?item=179

[MakeMineA10mm]

WOW!

First thought: that man has TALENT!

Second thought: even with his magic applied, is a 2-cav Lee really worth that investment ($85)? (probably not for me)

[jdgabbard]

Hey, I agree. I would much rather buy a higher end mold any day. But for someone that wants to get into HPs, and doesn't have the cash for a nice Lyman/Ideal or other, this is a fairly cheap route for them to take.

If he had one or two of the .311 pistol molds on there, I'd probably buy one, as little as I shoot those, it'd last a lifetime.

[Walter Laich]

Got to admire his skill and talent, though

[runfiverun]

thats what i said when i saw he hollowpointed molds for the master caster.
i have some duplicate molds that are gonna be going his way.

[Jim Flinchbaugh]

Brilliant!

[Elkins45]

What would be really cool would be if Lee licensed his inset bar system and started producing them directly. Win/Win

[lead chucker]

I talked to Erik to night and he got my Lyman 311299 to day and is going to hp it this weekend and make three different pin profiles for it. Can't wait to get it. I have only heard good things about him. He is real easy to talk to and very informative.

[quasi]

modding a 2 cavity Lee mold like that is throwing good money after bad. A Lyman or Saeco or ... is worth the $85.00 , but a 2 cavity Lee?

[MikeS]

I have one of these moulds, and while it might have originally been a Lee 2 cavity mould, when Erik is done with it, it's a fine casting tool. I wrote a whole description of the mould, and casting with it, complete with pictures as well, so no need to duplicate that post here.

Remember folks, the $85.00 figure is delivered right to your door. If you have him HP a Lyman or SAECO mould, then you need to figure in the cost of the mould, along with his HP service. So with that in mind, lets do a Lyman mould. Mould: ~$60.00 Set of handles for the mould: ~35.00 cost of Erik HPing the mould: $100.00, so now cost of a Lyman 2 cavity HP mould = $195.00 Cost of buying a mould directly from Erik: $85.00 So there's no comparison between the 2. Of course the Lyman mould HPed will be a more durable mould, but with due care there's no reason his mould based on a Lee mould won't last a good long time, for a lot less money too.

But then there will always be people that can't see past the Lee name, and it's a shame, and their loss too.

[JeffinNZ]

Well I'll be damned. You can turn a sow's ear into a silk purse.

[zuke]

That's thinking outside the box

[Longwood]

If he would start from scratch or use a decent mold to begin with I may consider them.
It looks to me like it would have even MORE of the problems that the Lee molds have.
No thank, I would, have and will spend over twice the money for a trouble free mold over one I have to constantly deal with to get it to work well.

[pdawg_shooter]

The last 5 Lee molds I received I just washed and cast with. Worked Perfect. A few needed a little polishing or adjusting, but darn few. I now have over 30 of them. The one I use for my 45ACPs has somewhere north of 10,000 cast out of it and it still works just like the day I got it, that is to say near perfect. Guess you just have to be smarter than the mold!

[longbow]

Well said pdawg shooter. I agree wholeheartedly.

I only have 3 Lee moulds but have had others over the years and they all cast good boolits that shot as well as boolits cast in my other moulds. I wouldn't compare overall quality of the Lee moulds to Lyman (old Lyman anyway), RCBS, Ohaus, NOE, Mihec or Accurate Molds (I have moulds of all those brands too) but the Lee moulds I have bought had good cavities and cast good boolits.

Call it speculation on my part but I am sure Erik inspects the moulds before altering them and would not be selling them if he had any doubts as to the quality of boolits they cast.

RanchDog has also chosen Lee for his mould designs and seems to be doing well with them.

Point being is that in my view the Lee moulds I have bought work well and are good value for money as MikeS points out. Erik's conversion opens up some interesting possibilities. I know I am interested.

Just my thoughts.

Longbow

[quasi]

6 cavity Lee's are much better designed than the 2 cavitys (and the 1 cavitys that I also have). I was not refering to the 6 cavity Lee's, I have 12 that I can think of. I will admit I am not the smartest guy around, but spending $85.00 improving a $20.00 mold does not work for me.

[MtGun44]

I wonder at the folks that slam Lee molds so much. IME, Lee molds are bit more
fragile due to soft aluminum, so you can't be a ham fisted mold beater, and you
do have to scrub with Comet and a toothbrush to clean and deburr, and a thin
film of Bullplate lube helps them do well, like any mold. I think that some of
the Lee boolit DESIGNS are junk, but many are very good and have worked very well
for me. It would seem that a $25-30 retail mold modded into an easy casting
HP version for only $55-60 total, is a pretty good bargain.

A well cared for Lee mold can cast many,many thousands of boolits.

Bill

[quasi]

I must not be interpreting the website properly, I thought it was $85.00 to modify your Lee mold?

[BCall]

Nope, it's $85 for the modified mold including shipping, he provides the mold. Subtract $6 for shipping an it's $79 for the modified mold. He also drills and taps for set screws to hold the sprue plate screw and the handle pins when he modifies it.

[canyon-ghost]

I have a Lyman hollowpointed mold of his right in front of me. I've bought and sold and traded at Erik's house. He is a good guy.

Ron

[warf73]

I've purchased good Lee 2 cavity molds and bought a few that needed work to work properly. I don't know Eric from Adam but would bet my coffee money he is working over these molds that he is selling for 85 clams. I mean wouldn't any of you do the same if you were putting your name on it so to speak?
Thanks for the link I never knew about this site.

[MikeS]

I would love some of these nay sayers to actually try one of the moulds once modified by Erik. It's real easy to sit at a keyboard and pronounce them junk, just because they started out as a Lee mould. Erik very carefully looks over the moulds before he wastes his time on one to make sure it's a good mould before he starts, and once he's done it's an excellent mould. While I do have limited experience with HP moulds, only owning 2 of them, a Mihec 4 cavity one, and one of Erik's modified Lee moulds, As I understand it, the Mihec HP moulds are considered by many folks to be some of the best casting HP moulds out there, and the Erik modified Lee mould I have casts as well as my Mihec mould, or maybe even better. I won't even mention my attempts to use the penta-pins in my Mihec mould, but using the round pins with a 4 cavity mould I was able to make 300 boolits in about an hour and a half. Using Erik's 2 cavity mould I also made about 300 boolits, but did it within an hour! Now do I think Erik's mould will outlast a Mihec mould? No. I don't, but given half decent care, it should last almost as long as a Mihec mould would. Only folks that seriously mistreat their moulds wouldn't get much use out of one of these, as they are still a fairly soft mould, Erik can't change what material they're made from!

And another thing, about the only cleaning I did to the mould when I got it was to spray it down with brake cleaner before lubing it with a mould lube.

[MakeMineA10mm]

I'm not a Lee nay-sayer. In fact, over half my moulds are Lees and all of the group buys I ran (pre-Miha and pre-NOE days) were ALL Lee. They also re-did (for free) one of the biggest group buys we did here (at least up to that time) for a couple hundred moulds they cut wrong. That's good customer service! I actually like their 6-cavity moulds, because, even though they need a little work, they're a great value for what they are, and they're built decent.

My problem is the 2-cav. Lee design. The handles are ****, the connection between the handles and the mould are ****, the alignment pins are ****. Need we go on?

I like the concept Erik came up with - he's putting out an inexpensive, multi-cavity HP mould. That's very attractive to someone who either: A) doesn't have much cash but wants to play with HPs, or B) someone who is skeptical about cast HPs who wants to test them out for themselves without putting much money into them. Other than that, I don't think there's much market in HPing those 2-cav Lee moulds.

The vast majority of people here, who are very into casting, will not be excited about or entertain these as something "serious" for their hobby. So, ultimately, I think what you're seeing here is that the typical CB member doesn't fit into category A or B above... That's why the luke-warm enthusiasm here. Doesn't mean Erik isn't smart and talented and doesn't mean these moulds fit a purpose, but here, they're not going to be fawned over too heavily...

[geargnasher]

Well I'll be damned. You can turn a sow's ear into a silk purse.

Well, HE can!

Gear

[Gunslinger1911]

The nich I see for these is time frame.

MP, NOE, etc make fantastic moulds, hence the year wait.

I haven't had much drama with Lee moulds - six 2 bangers, twelve 6 bangers.

Looks like Eric delivers in a week or so.

From the work he has done on a few of my moulds, I'd say he would do it right.

Screws replace the handle pins, the whole HP bar for alignment, looks good to me.

Once I get the two group buy moulds I'm waiting on paid for, and Eric has a mould design in a caliber I want to play with, I'm on it.

[warf73]

The nich I see for these is time frame.

MP, NOE, etc make fantastic moulds, hence the year wait.



Not saying they don't make fantastic molds (I love mine ) but in truth thats a false statement on the year wait. Lee made every GB I ran right on spec but the lead times got longer and we had to wait over a year.
The main reason MP, NOE and a few other mold makers have boomed in the past 2 years is because everyone was sick of the year plus wait Lee had.
Funny how times have changed, people would almost get offended if they had to pay over $60 for a GB mold (that included shipping).Now it seems no one cares about the wait or the cost.

[MikeS]

Warf73: I think the reason folks don't mind waiting for either a Mihec or NOE mould is because they KNOW when they get the mould, it's going to be right, and cast great boolits. Waiting a year for a Lee mould, and not knowing if it will be correct when finally it gets here would make me not want to be in a Lee mould GB.

MakeMineA10mm: Did you see the post where I mentioned how I fixed up 2 Lee 2 cavity moulds? Basically by taking them off their handles, and then peening down the opening in the handles for the mounting pins, then when remounting the mould blocks having to tap in the pins with a brass hammer & pin punch. After doing that the 2 moulds close perfectly every time. There's no need to close them while on a flat surface, etc. When I remounted the moulds, I also reversed them on the handles, as I like the sprue plate to point towards the handles, not stick out the other side, but that's really a personal preference thing, and doesn't have anything to do with making the moulds close in alignment.

Also, while that procedure is something most any Lee 2 cavity mould would be improved by doing, I didn't need to do that to the mould modified by Erik, as it closed in perfect alignment each time without my modification due to how the inset bar acts as a much better alignment part than the little pins Lee uses!

Gunslinger1911: The screws on the bottom of the mould don't replace the pins. What the screws replace is the need to peen the holes closed after opening them to remove the handles. With the screws, if you take them out, the mounting pins will then fall out. If you need to take the handles off, with the screw system it's simply a matter of removing the screws, taking out the pins, and the mould is free of the handles. With the Lee method, you would have to drill out the peening, then re-peen the holes when you remounted the mould (basically making it something that wouldn't be done more than maybe once).

[StrawHat]

There is another thread about what Erik is doing to the Lee molds.

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?t=138848

What some may not realize is these molds are being guaranteed by Erik. If they are not correct he will repair or replace them. I have many molds and yes, the Lees are the least expensive but they still produce acceptable boolits for me. My two cavity molds are some of my most used ones because they were what I was able to afford when I started.

As for the wait times, when NOE started, Lee was long time and iffy QC, NOE was short. We have now flooded NOE with orders and the wait is long, go figure. I ownder if Lee's wait time has been reduced?

$85 for a two cavity HP mold is a bargain.

[Gunslinger1911]

Oops, I stand corrected on the mounting pins, I have done this on a couple of my 2 bangers to tighten them up.

Just my $0.02; a 2 banger hp, $85, in a week ; v/s 2-4 banger, $120, up to a year wait.

Eric's conversions won't keep me from group buys from MP, NOE, etc - too many innovative designs people come up with, but - I will get some of the converted Lee's to play with, can't have too many moukds !!!

[warf73]

Well I ran 6 GB's and none of them were out of spec from the drawling that I gave Lee. The volume of GB's going on now between Mihec and NOE was what Lee was taking on solo then.


Warf73: I think the reason folks don't mind waiting for either a Mihec or NOE mould is because they KNOW when they get the mould, it's going to be right, and cast great boolits. Waiting a year for a Lee mould, and not knowing if it will be correct when finally it gets here would make me not want to be in a Lee mould GB.

If it wasn't for Lee taking over a year to produce molds, Mihec or NOE wouldn't be around. They filled a gap that was needed to be filled. Now I see more people going to Tom because the lead time is shorter and the price is pretty close to the others.

Mihec and NOE make GREAT molds at a fair price but like Lee there success is there achilles heel.

[oldfart1956]

O.K.....I know this is gonna soundl like a horribly stoopid question but...does the hollow-point pin stay in the mold while casting or does it drop out when you dump the boolits? Audie...the baffled Oldfart...

[Gunslinger1911]

Oldfart - in the "Cramer" style moulds we see now, the pins stay attached to the mould.

The old single hole moulds had pins that were detached.

[oldfart1956]

Oldfart - in the "Cramer" style moulds we see now, the pins stay attached to the mould.

The old single hole moulds had pins that were detached.

Thanks Gunslinger! I'm familiar with the old Lyman style hollowpoint molds (45/70) that you pull the pin and dump the fresh boolits but looking at Erics I couldn't see how the pins would allow the boolit to drop. I also have a Lee 405 hollow-base that the pin is attached to an arm under the mold but don't see such an attachment on Erics. Don't suppose anyone has a video out on this yet...eh? I'm just having trouble wrapping my head around it. Again, many thanks. Audie...the Oldfart..

[StrawHat]

oldfart1956,

While this is NOT a Lee mold reworked by Erik, you can get the idea how the pins stay in place.

http://i214.photobucket.com/albums/cc194/StrawHat/NEI458-405-HB002.jpg

For a review of Eriks version of the Lee mold, go to the link I referenced in my earlier post and read the write up by MikeS.

[MakeMineA10mm]

Thanks Gunslinger! I'm familiar with the old Lyman style hollowpoint molds (45/70) that you pull the pin and dump the fresh boolits but looking at Erics I couldn't see how the pins would allow the boolit to drop. I also have a Lee 405 hollow-base that the pin is attached to an arm under the mold but don't see such an attachment on Erics. Don't suppose anyone has a video out on this yet...eh? I'm just having trouble wrapping my head around it. Again, many thanks. Audie...the Oldfart..

Audie,
Also, if you look at strawhat's picture he posted, you can see that the sliding bar on the HP pins also pull the boolits out of the cavities, so there's much less sticking-boolit-in-the-cavities problems. It just about makes HPs more efficient to cast with than standard moulds (if you have a "sticky" one). Of course, a sticky cavity in a mould can also be fixed with a little Lee-menting, even if it's not a Lee.

[oldfart1956]

AAAAHHHAAAA!!!!! Now I got it! I couldn't see that bar under the mold that the pins are mounted in! Now it makes perfect sense...just like the Lee 405 h.b. except the pins are in the nose of course. I need to git new glasses. Thanks guys. Audie...the blind Oldfart..