What the ??? out of round mold ???

[10 Spot Terminator]

Assume nothing, question everything ,,,

I picked up a Lyman 6.5 cal mold not that long ago #266469 that casts a 140 gr gc boolit with a multitude of small driving bands and grease grooves down most the length of the boolit. I thought this will be just what I need for my long old barrel on my 96 Swede . Something that starts to dispense grease right away in the bore and maybe have a tad left near the end as well. I started casting with a mix of wheel weihgt lead and added 2% more tin to get a nice fill in those micro bands on the boolits. I pre heated the mold on my hot plate, got my alloy up to 775 degrees and began dropping nice sharp bullets right off the git . I took a quick measure with calipers on bullets cooled overnight and got .268... This was nice as I wanted to size to 0.266 for the Swede. What I didnt count on was when I was done casting nearly 500 boolits I picked one up and measred it at 0.271 and anothe at 0.264 and all points in between. I then measured several a full 360 degrees and found all of them to be the same... out of round with a low of 0.264 and a high of 0.271 and am totally perplexed... How do you fix this ??? The low side is the disheartening part as it is undersized. If Lee made a 0.266 push through die could these boolits be salvageable ??? ARRRRGH !!!

[Rangefinder]

The bullets? NO--probably not unless you size under another .012 or so and paper patch them up to size. .002 doesn't seem like much until you put 20,000 psi behind a bullet with a gap to not get a solid grab on the lands--ask me how I know. The first mold I used for my .32 Winchester was out of round by exactly that much---.321 across one measure, and .319 the other way. It leaded something terrible and started key-holing after about the 5th shot. The mold on the other hand can be. A good polish with lapping compound should true things up at least enough to size a true round at .266 as you wanted. Lapping out .003 to .004 on the small measurement wouldn't cause any problems. I lapped mine to .323, size to .321, and now it shoots like a dream.

[Bret4207]

First thing to check is to see if the pins are in far enough. Get the mould off he handles, swing the sprue plate out of the way and try to gently twist the mould halves. If you feel movement between the two halves you'll need to set the pins slightly deeper by driving them in from the back side of the pin with a punch. It doens't take much, so go slow. If you don't have any movement then check for burrs holding the blocks apart or even off center. If none of that is evident or you can fix it then make sure your handles allow the mould to close all the way. Seems silly, but sometimes handles don't work quite right with every mould. Once you're sure it's closing correctly, isn't loose, everything is lined up right then cast a few. If they are still off center or too small then you're stuck. If it's a new mould you can try returning it to Lyman. If it's used then paper patching, Beagling or lapping it out are you only options other than selling it.

[Linstrum]

All good suggestions.

Another alternative that in my book is a temporary fix is if you don't mind messing around a little, you could Beagle the mold with some aluminum foil to open it up.

rl879

[Linstrum]

If returning it is not an option, I'd bet that you can get that mould to work quite well by lapping it out. If you haven't already, slug the bore of your Swede and lap the mold out to 0.002" over the largest groove diameter. I have found that in a few of my rifles that the groove depths vary about thousandth of an inch in depth from each other in the same rifle. As you discovered, when measuring something take many measurements at many different points! I have worked off and on as a machinist since 1959 and I'll tell you, it is not a perfect world.

I have two m96 Swedes, an original with its long barrel, and a m96/38 that is a bit shorter and has the dial type rear sight.

I use the SAECO 0.264" dual cavity 140 grain mould. I had to lap the original 0.266" cavities out a few thousandths oversize, one cavity I lapped out to 0.267" and the other to 0.269". The design has a bore rider nose that is perfect for my two Swedes so I did not lap the noses by cutting the noses off of the two dozen boolits I cast in the mould to use as laps for the project. One Rifle takes 0.267" boolits and the other rifle 0.269" boolits. Both rifles shoot the SAECO 140 grain bore rider design quite well with 10 grains Red Dot or around 44 grains IMR5010 powder. IMR5010 is one of several powders used in the .50 Browning cartridge, and other Swede shooters have had similar success using IMR7828, which is another very slow powder suitable for large capacity high pressure magnums. For my IMR5010 load I say ABOUT 44 grains because it can be overloaded in the 6.5x55 Swede cartridge, so if you try IMR5010 be sure to work up your loads! I'm 1000 miles from home, otherwise I'd look up my IMR5010 load data because you can reach your maximum usable velocity with cast boolits with that powder using a good lube (I use Johnson's paste wax or Gulf boat trailer water proof wheel bearing grease), which I recall is somewhere around 2200 fps before they start to go flying all over the place. That velocity is not written in stone, however, and some Swede shooters have successfully gotten higher velocities with cast boolits without any problems.

Good luck with your mold, let us know what happens.

rl880

[JIMinPHX]

Can you post some close up pictures of the boolits? Showing the area near the parting line would be particularly useful. Also, when you take measurements, do you find the smallest measurement just on one side of the parting line & the largest just on the other side of the parting line? Or does the area perpendicular to the parting lines show up as something other than the middle size?

[canyon-ghost]

Brett is right, check the alignment of the mold halves first. I had a mold that was sizing hard down both sides at the seam, tapped the pins in, and voila! no more problem.

[Mal Paso]

+3 on pins and checking to see if closing the mold handles pushes the mold halves sideways. I had a Lyman that closing the sprue plate did that.

[georgewxxx]

With most Lovern style moulds, it has a lot of edges on it, and if your mould is extremely hot and you get in a hurry to drop the boolit, the lead bends on those edges and gives you a false idea of your diameter. Usually after sizing those are squared up back to the size what you want. In any case I wouldn't get too excited with oval boolits within reason, because on the start going down the bore, they'll be aligned ok. Test them out and see for yourself before you throw them back in the pot......Geo.