Mold is bad

[birddseedd]

wife says i usually cast for about 5 hours

[DrCaveman]

Probably weight. Brass 4-cav are pretty heavy...6-cav might be out of reach for the average caster. No point in getting carpal tunnel from casting, eh?

Fwiw, the more molds i buy, the fewer cavities i seem to get... Two is about right for me these days, and that is simply for the sake of boolit consistency. With ALL the variables involved with casting and loading, adding extra cavities just to save 15-20 minutes per 50 boolits is not worth it for me. And the two cavity molds cost consistently less than larger ones, and if im getting a premium mold, i would rather pay $80-100 than $140-160

That being said, i paid about $160 for a 4-cavity brass mold from Accurate... By a long shot, it drops the best boolits, and drops em real good, of any i have. It is my only custom mold (so far...)

[birddseedd]

i usually make about 2k at a time

[DrCaveman]

Goodsteel, what do you think is weight diff between a lee aluminum 6-cav and a brass 4-cav?

Just judging by picking up each one just now, i think the brass 4-cav is about 4 times as heavy.

[MT Gianni]

I'll look for it, then post it. It'll give me something to do tonight. (Hope I can find it that fast.)

By the way, he made many disparaging remarks about another major company, though he didn't mention the name. I was in sales for most of my working career. Differences in product can be made without disparaging remarks. It's all about credibility.

IIRC, Lee was taken to court by a well known 4 initial company for making green boxes and selling their products in them. The suit was decided in Lee's favor but there were many ads in National Magazines in the 70's and 80's about poor little us and big ol' them, naming them by name.

[MBTcustom]

Goodsteel, what do you think is weight diff between a lee aluminum 6-cav and a brass 4-cav?

Just judging by picking up each one just now, i think the brass 4-cav is about 4 times as heavy.

My MP 30-SIL 4 bore weighs 1lb 14oz.
My Lee six barrel 45 TC mold weighs 1lb 9oz with the handles attached.

[MT Chambers]

Hasn't Lee made a big deal about Federal Primers? I don't use Lee products so I will stay out of this as much as I would like to help a new caster.

[mjwcaster]

Back to the original question about the mould-

Are the mould faces perfectly clean?
No spots of anything on there.
Anything you see on there can cause them to drop out of round boolits, even if you cannot feel it with your fingernail.
I'm learning this the hard way, one issue I keep having is keeping my mould faces clean, but I'm getting better.

Were you getting flashing on the boolit? (can you see or can you feel the parting line on the boolit where the mould halves meet)

Can you see light between the mould faces (close mould and hold up to a nice bright light)?

The mould may be out of round or it just may be dirty?

Which cavities were out of round, just one or all of them?

If all of them I would lean towards the mould not closing all the way.

And get a micrometer if you are going to be worrying about .001" (from the guy who doesn't own one yet, but knows better than to question things to the .001" with my measuring methods).

Matt

[birddseedd]

i got it as clean as i could. there did seem to be a couple spots on it, cleaned them best as i could. it did look as if it i was closing all the way. all of them seem to be out of round by several thousands or more

[DrCaveman]

My MP 30-SIL 4 bore weighs 1lb 14oz.
My Lee six barrel 45 TC mold weighs 1lb 9oz with the handles attached.

Hmm, that's no handles on the MP? I actually gauged mine the other way, had an AM 45-200H, with handles attached, vs a lee TL 452-230 rn without handles. I have a powder scale...a boolit scale... A bathroom scale, nothing in between. Sounds like my caveman estimation was off a bit

Still, i remember you mentioning in some thread right after i learned about this place a few years ago that a 4-cavity brass mold was much more taxing than other choices. Of course, you also said that anyone without injury or other disiability should be fine using them. On that, i surely agree. Pretty sure that was you...

[mjwcaster]

I can tell you from my limited experience if you can see anything on the mould faces then it is not clean enough.
Even something that I could not feel, but could see caused issues.

Remember that the thickness of a 20lb sheet of paper (normal printer paper) is .003"-.004" thick (I got that from a quick google search).

So it doesn't take much of anything on the mould face to throw a boolit out of round.

And the fact that your boolits were out of round across the mould openings would lead me to suspect the mould not closing properly.

[462]

WILCO,

Rather than add to the thread drift, I sent you a PM with some quotes for Mr. Lee.

[birddseedd]

I can tell you from my limited experience if you can see anything on the mould faces then it is not clean enough.
Even something that I could not feel, but could see caused issues.

Remember that the thickness of a 20lb sheet of paper (normal printer paper) is .003"-.004" thick (I got that from a quick google search).

So it doesn't take much of anything on the mould face to throw a boolit out of round.

And the fact that your boolits were out of round across the mould openings would lead me to suspect the mould not closing properly.

maybe ill get a good mold back and can just use it. then ill have to read up on care here. the lee instructions suck and ill never touch bees wax to my molds ever again.

[zippidydoodah]

That is why Lyman, lee and others sell sizing dies to bring them down to a concentric diameter. Go on ebay. Several sellers of multiple cavity dies available.

[imashooter2]

Hasn't Lee made a big deal about Federal Primers? I don't use Lee products so I will stay out of this as much as I would like to help a new caster.

Didn't bash them, simply recommends against their use in their equipment due to Federal's higher sensitivity.

[HangFireW8]

Didn't bash them, simply recommends against their use in their equipment due to Federal's higher sensitivity.

Right. It is a safety issue concerning chain detonation. Federal primers are more likely to chain detonate than others since they use a different isomer of lead styphnate than the rest of the industry. Lee hand primers didn't offer a metal shield for the users so the simplest thing to do was recommend not using Federals.

[Dan Cash]

I could go down 1 cav for a better mold at some point. Who makes them?

Accurate Molds, http://www.accuratemolds.com/ Supeer fast service and a mould that will stay in your posession.

[youngmman]

I started casting for revolvers; 44 & 38 to be used in 44mag/special and 357/38 special, in the mid 1980's and later for 45 ACP. Before actually buying any equipment I did considerable reading and consulting those I knew who had experience. The upshot was that in molds H&G were considered the best along with LBT so I bought the H&G's and LBT's for the bullet designs I wanted along with a Magma pot. I was never disappointed with any of them and a side benefit was I came to know Veral Smith from LBT and benefited from his years of experience.

One consistent thing I discovered in my search is that to have a properly performing Lee product is unusual and I see nothing to sway that observation in this thread. I should add that it extends to presses and many of their other products. This all just confirms the notion that if the budget won't allow the purchase of top grade tools then wait until it does.

I can't say anything about Accurate or HM molds because I have not used them but have used one Lyman and One Saeco and both were very good. I just ordered a #34 H&G clone from Hardline and sent a mold form Balisti-Cast to the land fill after two trips back to them with assurance the two blocks actually mated when they didn't and the bullets looked like ****.