Lee mold simply will not work

[indian joe]

Ok, I cleaned the mold up very well and I polished up a couple of burrs. Washed it again in hot soapy water and then again in acetone and tried casting. Forget it. Getting it super clean did nothing more than make the cavities that were releasing now become balky. So I smoked the mold with matches. Got the original cavities back but not the two bad ones. Still had major wrinkles. Lead at 800 degrees. This is way hotter that I have ever cast wheel weights in the past. So I smoked the mold with straight acetylene. At this point I really do not care. I am having to take full hammer swings at it to get those cavities to release. It is just a matter of time before the handles break. They are not going to replace the mold anyway so I don't care at this point. Came in and saw the thread about Leementing so cleaned everything up again and went about that. Only abrasive I have beside valve grinding compound is fast orange hand cleaner with pumice. Well, it cuts. Cleaned it all up again and tried it. Got one working a tiny bit but not number one. Broke it all down, cooled off and did those two again. No change. It will release but I have to beat on the mold arm opposite the bad cavity, and I mean I have to BEAT on it! Oh, still wrinkled and now at 900 degrees. I know this pot will hit 1,000 because I have seen it happen but I am done. Before anyone comments again about the hot plate, it is a piece of 3/16 steel plate on an old circular electric burner. I am checking the temp with the contact probe on my Fluke meter and also the laser temp gauge. They are within 50 degrees of each other. I even put a piece of lead on the plate next to the mold and it melted! Hot enough? Plate is reading 610 degrees. Mold is reading 530. Vent lines in mold are perfectly clear and I have not lubed the pins after all that washing so no oil contamination. That same alloy is working just fine in other molds at the very same time I am having trouble with this one. As far as a cold mold, the sprue is taking 10 plus seconds to cool.
I was going to call Lee but I don't think it is worth wasting any more time on this mold, they are not going to cover it anyway and telling them is is a *** is not going to bother them in the slightest bit. I don't even think the Lee family even has that business anymore, Like Midway I think it has probably been sold to a conglomerate. I may be wrong but the way they talk to customers leads me to believe that compared to how it was a few years ago.

hot mold + hot lead ......wrinkled boolits ??? = you either pouring too slow, or sprue plate holes are too small, or temperature aint what you tellin us

[1hole]

... Tomorrow I will call Lee Precision and I am sure I will be put through to Jerry so Jerry can tell me all the things I did wrong. I will simply refer him to this post.
So now you can all say I am a Lee basher because I am bashing their molds. In this case, yes I am.

Most people have no problems with Lee tools, a few do; wonder why?

I'll just say that learning to cast boolits well has a learning curve, it can't be learned by reading or hearing anyone's simplistic "instructions" or recalling distant memories.

[turtlezx]

amazing you have done all of the above and not got good results
you certainly tried

[Dusty Bannister]

In one of the threads, comments are made that suggest that getting a mold TOO hot will result in sticking bullets. Maybe you are preheating too hot and could consider starting with a warm mold and melt temp of about 720 or so and see what happens as you cast fast and dump without any significant delay.

Since you seem to be lapping a mold and then trying to cast with it, you are perhaps removing any patina and this compounds the issue since the mold is no longer considered broken in? Consider putting that mold in someone else's hands to see if they are doing something different and the mold works. Make sure the blocks are secure on the handles since if you have insecure mounted blocks, they will probably twist when opening and that might jam the soft alloy in the lube grooves. On a 6 cav mold, I hold the sprue cutter handle after cutting the sprue and while dropping the bullets, then lay the blocks on a flat surface as I close them and then position the sprue cutter in the closed position. I do not let the sprue plate flop around.

[Rickf1985]

It's funny this came back up. I was casting some bullets out of pure lead the other day for barrel slugging and that mold was laying there and I grabbed it and dumped a load of lead in it, stone cold. I mean 28 degrees cold! All the cavities dropped right out but the same two I have been having trouble with, had to beat them out. But the surprising part was the bullets. Pure lead with no tin and they did not look all that bad. The lands still looked terrible because that is just how the mold looks but I noticed that the wrinkles were consistent. The temp did not make any difference as I kept going and warming it up. Same exact wrinkle every time. So it has to be a venting issue although even looking at it with a 20X loupe I can see the vent lines are all perfectly clear end to end. That was not my job for the day so I left it at that but just thought I would mention that. A couple of the cavities dropped perfect bullets the first time on a stone cold mold and every time after that so the mold heat theory does not hold any water.

[Dusty Bannister]

Pure lead does not cast as large at alloys containing antimony (shrinks more). You might be missing the fact that mold heat does affect the casting from a mold. You say "lands" but I suspect you mean driving bands. Verify with a diameter reading to see if the casting is as large as the previous bullets cast from an alloy.

[Rickf1985]

Just grabbed one of pure and one of wheel weights and measured with micrometer. WW is .356-361 and pure is .357-362. One thousands difference larger for pure. and .005 out of round.

[longbow]

If the mould is casting oval boolits that would explain why you are having to beat them out of the mould. If you are measuring beside the seam and at 90° to that and getting those dimensions the cavities are poorly machined. It is likely that the cavity in one mould half is deeper than the other and that is why you are having to beat on the mould to get boolits to drop out.

If the mould is supposed to cast at 0.358" the measurements you are getting are not even close. A thou or so larger or smaller than spec or a thou or two out of round maybe but not 0.005".

I'd be telling Lee and sending it back!

I have no issues with Lee products in general but do not have any Lee boolit moulds except for 7/8 oz. and 1 oz. slug moulds and their 00 and 000 buckshot moulds. The 1 oz. slug mould dropped slugs easily though they are slightly oval, the 7/8 oz. slug moiuld had some burrs I had to remove but now slugs drop easily. The 00 buckshot mould works very well, haven't tried the 000 buckshot mould yet but will soon. But I generally buy boolit moulds from Mihec, NOE or Accurate these days because they work and cast to the size I order.

I think you got a lemon from Lee.

Longbow

[GONRA]

GONRA accumulated a couple dozen Lyman-Ideal and
Lee SINGLE CAVITY moulds over ~60 years.
NEVER had any of these crazy mould problems.
MULTICAVITY moulds are much more susceptible
to sloppy fixturing in the cherry milling machine.

[GregLaROCHE]

I have quite a few Lee molds. Some drop boolits easier than others, but all work for me. When I get a new mold, I spray it down with break cleaner and then wash with dish detergent and warm water. I then start casting, nothing more. Sometimes I takes quite a few cycles to get a new mold functioning as I would like, but they all seem to come around. When I have finished casting, I let them cool and spray them with Ballistol. Before the next use, I clean them with break cleaner and dish detergent again as before. That’s what works for me with Lee and other molds.

[Larry Gibson]

I've never had such problems with any mould since I learned how to properly clean them. Once my Lee moulds (I've may in single, double and 6 cavity) have been cleaned I do not oil them again. Nor do I oil any other aluminum mould after cleaning and use.

"So, as usual with Lee molds I had wrinkles. 20 casts later it was exactly the same.". This tells me the mould is simply not completely clean. I use a bit different technique than is usually recommend. It is a very simple method. Some years back I posted the method and received such an uproar from the usual suspects I swore to never post it again. Too bad because it is simple and always works on aluminum, steel or brass moulds......

[Rickf1985]

Well Larry, If you are going to make a statement like it was not clean enough and your way works better but you will not post it then why do you say anything at all? I assure you I have used every method ever mentioned to clean that mold from brake cleaner with and without acetone to pure acetone to hot soapy water. I have documented everything I have done as I went but it seems a lot of people commenting apparently do not read the whole thread, and a lot of them do not read past the title!

[Larry Gibson]

I'll PM you.

[kevin c]

I’m curious too, Larry. I’ve learned that it’s very hard to argue with success, so I hope you won’t mind letting me know what you’ve found that works.

[Mike W1]

I'd also appreciate reading your results Larry. Never had any troubles myself but new info is good to have.

[Larry Gibson]

Well Larry, If you are going to make a statement like it was not clean enough and your way works better but you will not post it then why do you say anything at all? I assure you I have used every method ever mentioned to clean that mold from brake cleaner with and without acetone to pure acetone to hot soapy water. I have documented everything I have done as I went but it seems a lot of people commenting apparently do not read the whole thread, and a lot of them do not read past the title!

Assuming you got the PM? Have you tried it yet?

BTW, I did read the whole thread.

[Cast10]

If I had spent money on a product I was not pleased with, I’d call the folks back. Give them the benefit of the doubt.

Sorry for your troubles.

[Rickf1985]

I got the PM last night when I got home from the hospital. I broke a couple ribs working on my truck in the morning and had to get the job done before going to the hospital. Which took most of the day. They found a couple cracked ribs and told me there was nothing they can do and to just take it easy. Yup, Been there and done that. That is why I did not stop to go earlier. But needless to say I was not really up to reading computers all night. I read Larry's method and I have never tried it but I will. I have used this method many times over the years to remove oil from contaminated brake drums. I am not going to comment on here since apparently this has caused Larry some problems in the past, I will leave it up to him how he wants to handle that. I will say that in this case I do not think contamination is my problem, I think it is piss poor machining plain and simple. I will try to get some magnified pics when I get a chance. I have to take a trip for the next three days so when I get back I will do that.

[Larry Gibson]

First priority is getting yourself better. No problem on this end, can wait for further discussion.

[Rickf1985]

Sooner or later I have GOT to start realizing that at 70 I have got to stop doing heavy work on the vehicles. But when the truck needed ball joints the shop screwed that up so bad I ended up having to replace the complete upper control arms. And I was out of the truck for three weeks. There are no good mechanics out there anymore.