1 Mold for 3 Calibers

[thatdogdonthunt]

I was considering buying a .324 mold from Lee, then buying sizers for .314,.312, and .308. Will this work?

[beagle]

No. Too much downsizing involved for it to work./beagle

[theperfessor]

Beagle is dead on. You might be able to get a .314 mold that could be sized to .311/.312 also, and if you filled the grooves with grease first you might get it down to .308 in a couple passes (use a .310 die first). But the more you size, generally the worse the results will be.

You probably need two molds.

[Le Loup Solitaire]

Hi and welcome o the forum. No....A long standing belief in the world of cast bullets is that sizing damages the bullet so the more the sizing...the more the damage. Ideal situation is to be able to shoot the bullet as cast. A reduction of .001-.003 is not a whole lot, but .324 down to .314 is definitely bad news and .308 is even worse. Even starting with a mold of .314 and going down to .308 would be quite a bit/excessive. I would suggest doing some reading in the bullet sizing information area before you make any decision/commitment. LLS

[462]

Also, lube grooves will have a tendency to become almost non-existent, or disappear entirely, especially with Lee moulds.

One mould, for all those sizes, won't work.

[nanuk]

I bought some .316 and some .314 NOE moulds that I will need to be trying this...

[JeffinNZ]

How about a .316 mould that you can size down to .312 or paper patch up to .324cal?

[youngda9]

We are a cheap bunch aren't we :)

[I'll Make Mine]

We are a cheap bunch aren't we :)

Well, not all of us got into shooting, casting, etc. because we had too much money burning holes in our pockets...

[mdevlin53]

I bought the Lee .324 mold with thoughts of sizing it down to .316-.318. I opened up a Lee .314 push thru for that purpose. It worked but there was one issue. The gas checks i had (.30 Cal) did not fit the .324 boolit so i had to get .32 checks. once that was solved it worked out well. While i was at it i tried to go one more size down toabout .314-.313, there were not much left to the lube grooves and the check started to look funky.
I have since orderd a .316 mold and will have to buy a new rifle if i want to use the .324 mold again.

[HangFireW8]

I was considering buying a .324 mold from Lee, then buying sizers for .314,.312, and .308. Will this work?

Besides buying a smaller mold and paper patching up, you could also buy one mold with three different caliber cavities in it. However that might defeat your purpose- which I'm guessing, is to save money.

HF

[jonk]

I'm presuming you want to shoot it in an 8mm too, or you would just talk about buying the Lee .312, yes? The Lee .312 beagled to .314 would be a fine choice, or a Lyman 314299. I've sized those to .309 without issue.

[Nobody at all]

Re: the OP

I recently picked up a LEE 90370 which is listed as .309 but drops dead on .312 with an alloy close to Lyman #2. The common wisdom that LEE drops a little large seems to hold true on everything I have from them.

Might not be too hard to make that work for you but it is something of a crapshoot. I was hoping for exactly what I got, as I needed .312 and it will work unsized across several calibers for me. You could, of course, have bad luck and get one that throws at the stated size.

[MT Chambers]

The problem with sizing down that much is not just wiping out the lube grooves but also the matter that it does that, you will wipe the grooves out more on one side then the other, making the bullet unbalanced and way out of alignment. Most of these ideas to save $ have been tried before, so you don't have to.