One of my recent acquisitions was a Lee 150g round nose mould for .38 without handles. It wasn’t in the greatest condition, the mould handle screws are mostly stripped and the sprue plate flopped around like a dead fish. The worst part however was that the entire casting area was hosed down with either a graphite or mold release spray of some sort. It took several nights and lots of qtips and acetone and for the most part the stubborn mould release was cleaned from the mould. The cavities didn’t look too bad but rather than a machined aluminum look the cavities now seem to have an anodized appearance. A set of handles was eventually obtained, the sprue plate tightened up and after preheating the mould I cautiously cast a pile of bullets.
Being my first time with a 6 cav Lee I figured out the best approach for me to cut the sprues was to pour from the handle to the sprue pivot then quickly flip the mould up on its side and yank the bajeeebers out of the sprue plate handle and dump everything in the same catch tray until I got to about 100-125 or so bullets. It seemed to cast well with no finning or whiskers or overly apparent odd stuff. I separated out the sprues from the bullets and started the culling process. A bunch went directly back into the pot for real bad fill outs or severe wrinkling (my fault), the remainder seemed ok and on closer final inspection a couple of rounded base, and bands were tossed back. In the end I had about 60 or so bullets that filled out real nice but the noses looked more like a warty/speckled egg finish rather than a nice smooth bullet from all of the cavities. 50 of “the best” were picked from the pile. The bands all sized out and lubed real nice in the Lyman 45 .358 sizer and eventually loaded up with my selected load. Out on the range they performed awesome, they grouped real well (punched out the center of my target and were point of aim-point of impact with a stock S&W Model 10 at 10-12 yards.
So now for my quandary, do I try to lap and clean up the cavities to get nicer looking bullets or leave as is and accept the warty and freckled appearance and current performance. I didn’t pay much to start with and getting a set of handles more or less doubled my investment in the mould.
If my brain cells connect ill grab a pix pf the mould/bullets