stewart.leach
32 Cal.
- Joined
- Aug 1, 2007
- Messages
- 177
- Reaction score
- 124
At a recent event I drew a Lee Precision 12 cavity .490 ball mold from the prize table. Yes, 12 cavity! This item is not listed on the Lee website, I have never seen another like it, and have no idea who donated it.
The design is like the Lee buckshot molds, in that the two blocks have two levels of cavities, one above the other. The stacked cavities touch tangentially, so the resulting casting must be cut apart into two balls. The hardware on top is the same as Lee six cavity molds.
I couldn't wait to try this out, so I degreased it, lubed the pivot and alignment pins and smoked it with a long reach lighter. Thumb got tired, that's a lot of surfaces to smoke. Fired up the big pot, pre-heated the mold, discarded the first few castings, and started to work.
Work it was, that much metal puts a real load on old arthritic hands and wrists. Coming from a data-intensive work background I weighed the resulting individual balls. The balls from the lower cavities were pretty consistent, similar to what I get from a Lee two cavity mold. Balls from the upper cavities were less consistent, good enough for practice, but I would not use them for competition nor hunting. I put this down to upper cavity balls essentially having two sprues, one on top and one on the bottom.
One real complication reared its head- this gang mold must be closed with careful attention to alignment of the blocks. Unless the inner sides of the blocks were kept clean a slight misalignment occurred, resulting in balls with the halves very slightly offset. Firing these deformed balls resulted in a pattern, not a group. Firing at 100 yards from the bench a few of the bad balls did not hit a 12 by 12 target.
My guess is this mold was a test product. I know I will not purchase a similar mold.
SAL
The design is like the Lee buckshot molds, in that the two blocks have two levels of cavities, one above the other. The stacked cavities touch tangentially, so the resulting casting must be cut apart into two balls. The hardware on top is the same as Lee six cavity molds.
I couldn't wait to try this out, so I degreased it, lubed the pivot and alignment pins and smoked it with a long reach lighter. Thumb got tired, that's a lot of surfaces to smoke. Fired up the big pot, pre-heated the mold, discarded the first few castings, and started to work.
Work it was, that much metal puts a real load on old arthritic hands and wrists. Coming from a data-intensive work background I weighed the resulting individual balls. The balls from the lower cavities were pretty consistent, similar to what I get from a Lee two cavity mold. Balls from the upper cavities were less consistent, good enough for practice, but I would not use them for competition nor hunting. I put this down to upper cavity balls essentially having two sprues, one on top and one on the bottom.
One real complication reared its head- this gang mold must be closed with careful attention to alignment of the blocks. Unless the inner sides of the blocks were kept clean a slight misalignment occurred, resulting in balls with the halves very slightly offset. Firing these deformed balls resulted in a pattern, not a group. Firing at 100 yards from the bench a few of the bad balls did not hit a 12 by 12 target.
My guess is this mold was a test product. I know I will not purchase a similar mold.
SAL
