!@$#@% undersized mould

[brimic]

I bought a .324" Lee mould awhile back and its caused me more trouble than its worth. It was casting bullets from wheelweights at ~.3235" when .324" was about the smallest bullet I might be able to get away with.

I tried the 'Beagle tape' method and started casting nice bullets that were a bit over .325", and the bore riding nose engraved slightly in the bore of even my 'loose' mausers, at this point everything looked pretty swell. I had a Lee .323" sizer (which is just about useless as tits on a boar as-is) that I wanted to open up a bit. I rolled some boolits in valve grinding paste and made about 20 passes through the die using fresh boolits occasionally until it sized to .325." Ok, everything is good so far still.
I try seating my first gas check, and the bullet binds up in the sizing die and finally spits out a boolit with a 'heel' pressed into one sde of the gas check. I figure OK, so I opened up the dimension of the die a bit and the piston is not going to fit as tight anymore. I try 1/2 dozen more, and no matter how carefully I aligned everything, the boolit binds inside and distorts the gc.

To make things worse, the ram on my rockchucker started feeling a little gritty, some valve grinding paste inadvertantly worked itself into the ram. I disassembled the press, breaking the spring that holds the shellholder in place along the way, thoroughly scrub the press and all of its parts, grease everything, reassemble, and it still feels a bit gritty. Now I think I'll disassemble it again and pressure wash it and make a trip to the local gunshop to see if they have a spare spring that I broke.

It also took me a good 1/2 hour to get every little bit of grit off my reloading bench, that crap is really persistant and seems to get everywhere, even where I'm not working with it. :-|

[Buckshot]

..............Dang Brimic, sounds like you had a really fun and eventfull couple of days, didn'tcha ? :-) Kinda like dancing in peanut butter sometimes! Stuff like that begins to happen and you wonder if you might just be better of flaying in the hammock with a beer for a day or two to let the gremlins wander off.

If you only need to get a slug a thou larger, lapping the mould is pretty simple to do. It WILL have a tendancy to blur sharp edges and corners, but they'll be even all the way around, and it won't make the cavity smaller! Just don't go too far with it.

.............Buckshot

[w30wcf]

brimic,
Sorry to learn of your troubles. Like Buckshot indicated, "Kinda like dancing in peanut butter." Been there, done that.

With regards to the gas checks, sounds like the gas check shank is larger than the gas check i.d. You could:
1.) pre seat the gas checks - by locking the ejector pin in place using a Lyman gas check seater or making a pin that would fit between the bottom of the ejector pin in the die and the push pin in the lubrisizer.
2.) Make or have a punch made - to open the i.d. of the gas check to suit.
3.) Anneal the gas checks - This would be a good idea either way.

Good luck,
w30wcf

[brimic]

I think my next step will be to order a gas check seater for my Lyman 450 along with lubrisizer dies and finally put that piece of equipment to work instead of messing around with the lee sizer for this boolit. I guess I'll order one of those 8mm carabiner boolit moulds from midsouth right away too. :-)