Sizing resistance - advice needed

Boolit Mold Join DateJul 2012LocationTexasPosts13

Hey all

So I had my 2nd casting session recently, after Lee sent me back my 6-cavity 9mm 356 mold. It apparently had not been lubricated well enough, and had developed tiny lead burrs that kept it from closing properly. That was why I was having so many "connected" casting failures on my first round. I don't want my boolits to literally have wings - figurative ones are just fine.

Now that's fixed as I am now using Gulf wax to lube the mould, so I started round two. I re-smelted pretty much everything.

I came out with quite a few much better boolits. Water quenched just so I could handle them faster. I had a couple problems where the same cavity kept sticking - so clearly I need to look at what is causing that. But, overall I had a much better casting session. About 99% of the boolits looked usable to me. Although I think I am still cutting the sprue plate too early, as the sprue hole area seems to smear just a little bit from time to time.

Anyhoo - on to the next step, which is where I had some problems. I have a Lee sizing die of course, to match my 356 casts. While sizing most of the bullets went nice & smooth (properly lubed & dried with Liquid Alox) a handful of them were a REAL bear to get through the sizer. Maybe about 30-50 out of 1,000 took a LOT of force to go through the die. I'm a big guy - and I was surprised how hard those were to size.

I took a photo of the before & after. There were a bunch of bullets (not just 30-50) with a great deal of shiny lead exposed, as opposed to the duller/lubed surface visible. The bullets on the right are before (lubed) and on the left are immediately after sizing.

010 by ZombieApoc, on Flickr

Here's a photo of the punch. You can see a ring of lead around the base of the punch. I cleared that off maybe 10 times during the session. It had far more metal accumulating there than I anticipated.

008 by ZombieApoc, on Flickr

What am I doing wrong if these boolits took that much force to get through the sizer? Could I have damaged the die? The only way I can avoid putting too-big of boolits through there is to size every one with a caliper. That seems excessive. But, by the time I figure out if the boolit is "too big" - it's already stuck in the die, and it's easier to push it through than pull it out.

Love to have some advice here. I'll post more casting pics shortly.

ZAG

Last edited by zombieapocalypsegames; Today at 05:17 PM. Reason: forgot 2nd photo

The Zombies, They're Coming! And those boolits aren't gonna cast themselves!

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