Problem Sizing 310 gr 44 Mag Bullets

[Viper225]

Just fired up my new Lee 6 cavity 310 grain 44 mag mould today.

My RCBS Sizer Die is a .429
Front of chambers mic .429 on Super Red Hawk This should be ok.

It is sizing quite a bit all the way around the bullets. Bullets seemed to be mostly .430 - .432, as cast, and cast pretty hard. The water quinched ones went through the sizer REAL HARD. I only water quinched a few.

The RCBS 421 Top punch is way to small for the .366 Meplate. Looks like the 421 is set up for a maximum of about .300.

Wondering if the machine shop can recut the factory one to almost a Flat End profile to get it to work with the big flat point bullets? Out side diameter is .423, not much to work with tapering a new profile.

I just installed the heater, and was using Blue Angle for the first time. It took longer than I would have thought to warm up the lube to get it flowing. I did a complete clean up of my lubricator sizer, so it probably took a little effort to get the new hard lube flowing in a completely empty lubricator/sizer. The non water quinched bullets sized a lot easier after I finally got lube to flowing.

Decided to quit until I got the top punch issue taken care of so it is not putting a ring around the bullet noses.

Sugestions

[rickt]

How I take care of the ring around the bullet noses. Chuck the top punch up in my lathe, put a dab of valve lapping compound in it, use a boolit that it is ringing and push it in and hold it there. The lapping compound impregnates the lead and makes a custom lap. The rest is trial soon the ring will be gone.

[Dale53]

Viper225;
Your mould is casting near perfectly. Hard bullets are hard to size. Water dropped are even harder. As you have found, lubed bullets size easier.

I would suggest using a lathe to remove the ring around the nose punch leaving a flat punch. With that large flat, you won't need anything other than a flat punch for proper alignment in the sizer.

I have a Lyman heater on my lube/sizer. I find that I have to wait as much as thirty minutes before the sizer is properly heated so hard lubes flow well. You can speed this up with the use of a heat gun. However, it is easy to overheat with a heat gun. I have decided to just wait the thirty minutes. I use a Dremel tool speed control as a rheostat to control the heat. You can make one (a rheostat) out of a light dimmer switch.

FWIW
Dale53

[454PB]

Your problem verifies the fact that quenched or heat treated boolits need to be either pre-sized or sized immediately after casting.

[GP100man]

I took a 1/4 inch bolt sanded the head flat & use a nut to adjust height, put lube on it stuck it in the ram & let it "float".

I did sand the head to size though it`ll never get close to the die with the lee 310 boolit.

Later I made me a flat 358 dia top punch .500 long & it fits the nose of the 310 perfect!!

`bout everything I cast has a flat nose to it so the 358 dia. top punch sees action!

[Casting Timmy]

I talked to the Lyman tech once and he made an extension for his handle to give him an extra 6" worth of leverage. He said he did get in the way for easily sized bullets so he woudl take it off then if he had to lube a lot.

[454PB]

Be really careful with handle extensions.........from a guy that has broken them on 3 occasions.

[Heavy lead]

I use a 424 top punch for that boolit, it fits nearly perfect. I used to use a plain flat top punch and had alignment issues. The 424 fixed that. I size to .430 right after casting, they grow to .431 within a couple of days, I use air cooled ww/pure with added tin, don't seem to need the hard boolit to run them hot out of any of my .44's.