blaster
11-12-2009, 09:23 PM
I perfected a method for making soft-nose boolits in the 6 banger lee mold. I know the soft-nose boolit has been gone over before with a 2 cavity but I have a new addition. Here’s what I did:
I made an adjustable dipper out of a 9mm case that was drilled out and threaded through the flash hole, then ran in a machine screw with a lock nut and made a wire handle.
Since the dip the mold in the pot doesn’t work with the big molds, I took a used up egg sticking 9” frying pan and cut 2 slits about 3” apart in the side about 2/3 down and rolled that flap down with a pair of pliers.
Then I threw 6lbs of pure lead in the pan and melted it on a one burner Coleman stove.
I melted clip on wheel weights plus tin in the lee drip-o-matic.
Down to business, after the mold was hot, I dippered enough pure lead (is a boolit armor piercing if you melt the lead in a Teflon coated pan?) into each open cavity to have them filled to the crimp groove. By the time they were all poured they were hard.
I then closed the sprue plate and filled the cavities the rest of the way with hard boolit metal, leaving plenty of extra alloy on the plate. I let the sprues harden then set the mold in the in the lead in the frying pan letting the handle stick out through the notch. Once the sprue melted again I took it out set it on a damp rag until everything hardened and water dropped 6 soft-nose boolits.
Overall it worked pretty well. While it was painfully slow, it was lightening fast compared to the 2 cavity mold since you get 6 boolits for about the same amount of time.
Out of 72 I had 13 rejects. 6 of those I can account to trying it without setting the mold in the frying pan.
Blaster
I made an adjustable dipper out of a 9mm case that was drilled out and threaded through the flash hole, then ran in a machine screw with a lock nut and made a wire handle.
Since the dip the mold in the pot doesn’t work with the big molds, I took a used up egg sticking 9” frying pan and cut 2 slits about 3” apart in the side about 2/3 down and rolled that flap down with a pair of pliers.
Then I threw 6lbs of pure lead in the pan and melted it on a one burner Coleman stove.
I melted clip on wheel weights plus tin in the lee drip-o-matic.
Down to business, after the mold was hot, I dippered enough pure lead (is a boolit armor piercing if you melt the lead in a Teflon coated pan?) into each open cavity to have them filled to the crimp groove. By the time they were all poured they were hard.
I then closed the sprue plate and filled the cavities the rest of the way with hard boolit metal, leaving plenty of extra alloy on the plate. I let the sprues harden then set the mold in the in the lead in the frying pan letting the handle stick out through the notch. Once the sprue melted again I took it out set it on a damp rag until everything hardened and water dropped 6 soft-nose boolits.
Overall it worked pretty well. While it was painfully slow, it was lightening fast compared to the 2 cavity mold since you get 6 boolits for about the same amount of time.
Out of 72 I had 13 rejects. 6 of those I can account to trying it without setting the mold in the frying pan.
Blaster