I recently bought what I thought was a Lee six cavity 125 grain 9mm round nose bullet mold.
I thought I'd gotten a smoking deal on it too but, it turns out I didn't read the item description close enough and it turned out to be the two-cavity version of this bullet design.
My mistake. I didn't return it so I decided to cast with it to see what kind of bullets it would give me. The bullets looked really good but the weights I was getting, no matter what alloy I cast with was 130-plus grains.
Originally I wanted to buy a 9mm bullet mold that dropped 115 grain cast bullets. That grain weight falls closer in line with the carry ammo I generally have in my magazines.
So, I decided to do the same thing with this mold that I had done with my recently sold Lyman 45 caliber Devastator single cavity mold. I fabricated some adjustable hollow pointing spuds and reamed out my little Lee Two cavity mold.
In theory, and in practice it allows me to adjust the weight and even to adjust the amount of expansion I can get from a given cast bullet.
Deeper hollow point cavities equal a lighter weight bullet and more expansion. This allows me to get those 115-grain cast hollow point bullets I was after in the first place; without paying an arm and a leg for a custom mold.
When I did my first casting session with this newly hollow pointed Lee 9mm two cavity mold, I was able to adjust the hollow pointing stem in and out to give me some hollow pointed bullets that weighed from 112 to 126 grains depending on how deeply I seated the hollow pointing stem. It took some trial and error to dial it in to the desired 115 grains.
The only down-side is that these Lee bullet molds are made of aluminum so, they seem weaker or not as sturdy as the 45-caliber cast-iron bullet mold that I'd done this too before. No matter. I generally only do one or two big casting session a year so it's not like this little Lee mold will be getting constant usage.
I made the adjustable hollow pointing spuds and a couple of round nose spuds so that I could still cast the round nose 9mm bullets at the 130-grain weight if I so desire.
I'm surprised that bullet mold manufactures don't offer adjustable hollow pointing spuds with their single or double cavity bullet molds. At least as an aftermarket option.
It would give the bullet caster some options as far as tuning our bullet to meet our shooting needs.