Lee 459 405 SC HB for 45/70

[rbuck351]

Does anyone have experience with this mold. I recently bought an NEF 45/70 with a groove dia of .457 so I ordered this mold hoping it casts at least .458. I'm also hoping to be able to replace the HB plug with flat bottom plugs of different lengths so I can use this mold to test different weight boolits. Does that seem like that would be something that could be done with a little lathe work. Has anyone used this boolit rifle combo and give me an Idea of the accuracy and velocity. I won't be trying to make this a 458 Win but can this gun take 1800 fps with this boolit?

[Freightman]

Mine cast .4605 but YEMD

[rbuck351]

That's encouraging. What alloy are you using?

[waco]

I use WW plus a little tin and mine drop @ .460"

[Freightman]

Range scrap

[rbuck351]

Sounds like I may have a winner, thanks guys.

[rbuck351]

I got the mold and finally got a chance to cast a bunch. Although they filled out good and look pretty good, the dia ranges from .451 to .457 depending on where you measure it and the mold halves appear to be out of align by about .002. I have about 40 molds with about half being Lee. I have had very good luck with Lee pistol molds but of the 4 or 5 rifle molds I have by Lee, none pour very close to the size they are supposed to with this one being really bad. I tried both pure lead and 50/50 pure/coww and cast 50/60 of each, not one of which is worth wasting powder on trying to load. I beagled it with 3 strips of foil tape on each side of the cavity and got it up to about .457 except for one spot that was still about .455. Fortunately I have an old Swag-O-Matic so I made a .4585 die and lubed a bunch and then squished them into a 395gr swc at a nice round .4585. I tested some as cast ( wasn't any reason to size them as they were already to small) and some I swaged. The as cast shot 6" to 8" groups at 50yds. The swaged ones shot about .8" groups. If it didn't cast a chunk of lead that I can form into a decent boolit, this mold would be absolute junk. How is it even possible to cut a mold that out of round, tapered and crooked on a lathe? I have a lathe and I don't think I could cut one like this if I tried.

[Elkins45]

They aren't lathe cut anymore. The two blocks are milled separately and then stuck together. Frankly I'm surprised ANY of them are round.

[rbuck351]

Thank you. That explains a lot however I just picked up one of the Lee 358-200 6cav molds and it is the best Lee mold I have ever seen. All 6 cavs cast a round .358 bullet that weighs almost exactly 200 grs from ww and 5 of the 6 fall out when opening the mold and the 6th will fall if you shake the mold or barely tap it. I pre heated it smoked it and the third pour cast 6 perfect boolits. This mold is a thing of beauty the other is a toad.

[Larry Gibson]

rbuck351

I have used that mould for 20+ years and have cast a lot of bullets with it. One thing about it is I jiggle the handles a bit when closing the mould because if I don't the HB plug will not line up in the block halves correctly. Lubing the alignment groove/vees is very important also.

Larry Gibson

[rbuck351]

The HB plug is the least of it's problems, but yeah I always lube a new mold and use a needle file on the edges of the bottom of the sprue plate before even closing it for the first time. Mine is a new one that has the alignment pins and I lube those as well as lube the HB pin V and groove with Bull plate lube. It casts with good fill out except at the bottom edge and even that isn't too bad. Beageling it helped a lot on the out of round but it is still under size. I could go to the trouble to totally fix it but a quick pass through the Swag-O-Matic and they are round and even all over and shoot good. I have also been bumping some .452 boolits up to .4585 in the 200gr /260gr range with good results. I even bumped the Lee 44-312 to .4585 gas check and all with good results.

[historicfirearms]

That's too bad about your new mold. I have an older copy that casts a nearly round .461" boolit. It has been very accurate in my 45-70's.

[vzerone]

I have an RCBS 405 mold that drops bullets more like 420 grain and unfortunately undersized at .458. I made a die body, nose punch which pretty much duplicates the original nose, and ejector plunger that forms a hollow base that swages and sizes those RCBS slugs into something better for my 45-70.

[MtGun44]

Diameter of this particular boolit is essentially irrelevant, due to the HB which expands
to fit the barrel. One of my TDs would not shoot straight, threw 500 gr RN sideways, made
2" slots in the target. With this mold, it shoots 4" groups at 100 yds over 12 gr of Unique.

[Larry Gibson]

How are you casting?

If with a bottom pour you probably aren't getting the alloy into the mould fast enough, thus the smaller diameter. I use a Lyman dipper to cast my 405HBs. With it, using the technique shown in Lyman's manuals, I get very good fully filled out bullets of .464+ diameter with harder alloys. With 20-1 and 16-1 they drop right at .462.

Larry Gibson

BTW; the Lee mould was designed by Spence Wolf to be a replica of the M1873 bullet. Other than the very slight FN from the sprue cut off it follows the original design of the M1873 bullet very closely. The "HB" of that bullet is actually referred to as a "dish" by the arsenals and is meant to regulate the weight of the bullet given fixed external dimensions. It is not intended to act as a HB as in Minie bullets. Unless you are using a very heavy load under very soft alloy there will be little or no expansion of "bump up" from the HB, not even with a full 70 gr BP load. That's why the Arsenals went to the 500 gr M1882 bullet because the extra weight (enertia) allowed obturation of the .459 sized bullets in the slightly larger .460+ barrels. "Bumping up" was what was needed in those days with BP.....or at least that was what they thought.

Larry Gibson

[rbuck351]

I am using bottom pour with 50/50 ww/pure and that may be the issue. I did try pressure pouring with the mold against the bottom pour spout left there for 2 or 3 seconds then pulling away with the spout still open. Makes a mess but i think I'm getting full fill out. Even with pressure fill, it's still way under size, out of round and tapered smaller on top and the cavity halves are offset about .002 and it patterns about 6" at 50 yds. Swaged to .4585 it shoots under 1" at 50yds. I have tried ladle casting several times with different molds and the results have been dismal. Obviously I don't know the secrets to ladle casting. I believe I got one of the molds that missed quality control as happens with all brands now and then. I have quite a few Lee molds that work very well. This just isn't one of them. Swaging the boolits fixes them a lot easier than trying to fix the mold. And it does a very good job of fixing them.
Also, I don't think the small HB in this mold would make much difference bumping up as it doesn't go near deep enough to bump the front driving band which measures about .455 before swaging. Also I don't think my powder charge bumps well either. My load is 8grs of Unique under 36grs of 5010. My thought here is to not hit the rifling too hard at the start then keep pressure building slowly. What ever it's actually doing is working good. It's been too cold to set up the chrony so I don't know the vel yet.
I will try the ladle casting again but I have my doubts about my ability to ladle cast.

[dualsport]

That Lee 405 HB was designed for pure lead. Maybe try that. Accuracy might improve. It did for me. I use it in a Trapdoor. I shoot a RD 350 gr. in my H&R 45-70. Very accurate at low or high velocity.

[rbuck351]

I tried the pure lead first and it cast slightly larger but not nearly large enough to fill the bore. Swaging works very well and it's easy and fast so I no longer worry much about what size a mold casts or out of round or much of anything.

[Oklahoma Rebel]

I have a .457-405-rf lee 2 cavity mold and loved it, I tried to open it up a little, I think you guys call it beagling? or something, lol and I screwed it up, but before that it cast great bullets very quickly. I have the 459 hb and I have hade some problems with filling, but I have a ghetto setup, my propane was low, so I think, know it was a temp thing, because when I dropped the bullets they had all those creases in them. the ones that looked strong enough though shot well, but I had to use me lee loader as a sizer( hammered through the same direction that you size the brass with in it) so I think they are dropping at least at .460-.461. after that they shot to point of aim

[Motard]

157011Mine drops consistency 461 with my alloy: shotgun discarded lead plus some tin. never had leading issue on my SBL. The boolits in the pics where made befire discarding but ususally the molds need only e few cicles befire dropping keepers. The lower comes from a Lyman and fits a little tighter: .460