To size or not to size? That is the question

[superior]

I'm ordering a Lee tumble lube 40sw 175 wadcutter mould as soon as they are available again. Do I need to size them? Some guys say I do and some say they never do. I would rather not if i dont have to. Many years ago I bought a box of 500 hornady 180 grainers and I've just about shot them all. I dont know if they were sized at the factory but they shot perfectly through my Glock23. I have never slugged the barrel of the Glock but the mould is a .401 and I'll be using water quenched wheel weights for alloy. The hornady cast bullets are no longer available in 10mm 180 grain but I dont care because I'll be casting my own BOOLITS from now on. Glock does not recommend cast boolits in their guns but I have never had a problem with leading.:Fire:

[Ia.redneck]

I shoot that same boolit in my Glock 23, cast from WW and tumble lubed, not sized, they work great. If your in doubt, you can remove the barrel and trial fit a few loaded rounds in the chamber and check for fit. Hope this helps! Dale:o

[hedgehorn]

+1 for what la.redneck said. I shoot them unsized in my semi auto's as well.

[mooman76]

I shot the same one you are talking about unsized out of my Glock 22 with no problems and no leading either. I did have problems though trying to shoot them with a Wolf barrel in the glock 22 because it had a tighter chamber.

[Cloudpeak]

I'm going to suggest that you do size. You're shooting a 40 S&W and water dropping so I'm thinking you might be pushing your loads faster than some folks. If you're playing around in the upper range of pressures, you probably don't want to fire an oversize bullet as pressures can increase quickly.

I've noticed when casting from several different Lee 6 cavity molds (9, 40 & 45) that, every once-in-awhile, I'll drop a larger diameter bullet. Something between the mold halves? Relaxing grip on mold handles? I don't know what causes the problem but when I encounter these over-sized diameter bullets while sizing, I'm thinking, "man, that pushed through hard. Sure glad that one didn't go down the bore."

Cloudpeak

[superior]

Thanks guys. I use a starting load of bullseye (2.3 grains if I recall correctly) for about 800 fps.
I'll be water dropping just to make a harder boollit as I see them being better for engaging the hexagonal rifling and resisting deformation. I could be wrong about that though.

[flinchnjerk]

Cloudpeak - I had the same problem; Ricochet's post of a month or so back titled "Self-Beagling molds" clued me in as to what was causing it (and to be brutally honest, I wouldn't have figured out the cause in a thousand years). Wrapping one's fingers around the sprue cutter handle and squeezing it along with the mould handles levers the opposite end of the mold (sprue cutter pivot bolt end) open a few thousands.

[Cloudpeak]

Cloudpeak - I had the same problem; Ricochet's post of a month or so back titled "Self-Beagling molds" clued me in as to what was causing it (and to be brutally honest, I wouldn't have figured out the cause in a thousand years). Wrapping one's fingers around the sprue cutter handle and squeezing it along with the mould handles levers the opposite end of the mold (sprue cutter pivot bolt end) open a few thousands.

I saw that post. A good tip, for sure.

I don't grasp my molds that way so, in my case, that was not the cause of the problem. I think my problem is relaxing my grip or perhaps not lubing the alignment pins often enough. Once or twice I did find a little sliver of lead between the mold halves. (I have a clean brass brush on a pistol cleaning rod to run across the mold faces to clean any "crud" from the faces.)

A month or so ago, I cast 1,800 9mm bullets in 4 hours with my Lee 6 cavity. When I sized them the next day, I had probably 7 or 8 that went through the Lee sizer die with great effort. What causes that? I don't know. If it was one cavity that was larger than the rest, I would have had 300 bullets that were hard to push through. They pushed through hard enough I worried slightly if they would have chambered if loaded "as-is". One thing for sure, chamber pressures would certainly have been higher.

Anyway, back to to size or not, if nothing else, it adds a layer of "uniformity" to the reloading process.

Cloudpeak