Lee TL309-230-5R for 300 blackout

[bigjake]

I bought the dumb thing hoping I could doctor them up to shoot well. I read the reviews that said it the mold drops way too small. Its true, I baked on 3 coats of powder coat and got a bit over 309.

Has anyone tried this? will the heavy PC help the boolit hit the bullseye?

Do you think Lee will fix this mold? they probably made thousands of these molds.

Is it possible to beagle it? I did a small pistol mold with limited success. trying to beagle the long holes might be tough to do.

[Drew P]

The problem I ran into was that coatings beef up the forward part of the bullet so much that it started to become an issue in the chamber. Beagling will also create this trouble. So, i tried to bore out the base a little and ended up kinda mangling it. Worked but I don’t use it much. I went with a mihec 150gr and have been happy with that. I would like a heavier bullet for subs though.

[Grmps]

You could try "leementing" polishing out the base. (search leementing)

Disclaimer -- I have not tried this yet but have been thinking about it:

Cast some boolits out of Linotype (or a hard alloy) then cut the nose off leaving only the base (bearing surface)
Use the base with a coarse then fine polishing compound to enlarge only the base.

[marek313]

I did little bit more research then you thats how I ended up with Lee 312-155-2R. There are posts of many .309 moulds running small especially if cast with anything softer then hardball 16bhn alloy. For my first mould for any caliber I try to find something already tried and tested so I have pretty good chance to succeed and then play with other moulds later as needed. For 300AAC this Lee 312-155-2R works great under 15gr of H110. If powder coating got you to .309 then I would shoot those and see how it goes. Might work just fine.

[Boolseye]

Sorry to hear you got a dud. I bought that mold when they first came out and mine drop at .310”, they shoot OK. Keep in mind stabilization is marginal with this boolit and a 1/8 twist-you’re not really missing much. You can see by the oblong holes that they’re just starting to yaw in flight. But you can definitely beagle it and get it up to size. Remember beagling is just using strips of aluminum AC tape on the mold faces. Would not recommend lapping that particular mold. You may also consider returning it, Lee guarantees
-.000”/+.001” for their molds. My experience with their QC has been positive, I even received a personal note from Andy Lee on one exchange.


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