I received the new Lee 459-500-3R mold on Friday, so on Sunday I melted some more wheelweights, and today I cast some bullets using this new 2-cavity mold.
The new 500g bullet is veyr similar to the older 485g bullet, but is a bit longer in OAL. In this photo, the newer bullet is the uncoated one on the right:
The new mold would not fit under the Lyman Mag 25 furnace spout, because there is a solid plate right behind the mold guidance rails that the mold ran into because it is deeper than the earlier Lee mold and also deeper than the Lyman mold I had tried. I had to lower the guide rails a LOT, cut a piece of 1/8" plywood to make a "platform" on the rails for the mold to sit on instead of hanging between them. I wish Lyman had equipped the Mag 25 with a more "generic" mold platform that would accept non-Lyman molds.
I also discovered that AFTER my casting session that there was a very small nick in the base of some of the bullets cast. I tHINK this was created by either one bullet from the 2-cavity mold sometimes hitting the other bullet after I opened the mold to let the 2 bullets fall out, or the bullet hitting an edge on the mold on its way out. I believe that part of this may be due to the way I hold the mold just before opening it: it's not level, but rather leaned downward, because that is more ergonomic for me. But with the 2-cavity mold, I believe I need to change my hold to keep the mold handles LEVEL when opening the mold, so that each bullet can fall clear of the other, and clear of the 2 mold halves, and so not get damaged! Lesson learned.
But the new mold itself performed GREAT. I had washed it thoroughly with Dawn dish detergent, rinsed it thoroughly, dried it, smoked it lightly with a butane lighter, and lubricated the 2 pins and the sprue plate pivot with Beeswax.
When it got to about 105 to 110C = 221 to 230F, it made very nice bullets and dropped them either with no striking of the handle hinge bolt, or with one light strike.
I did learn today how much better a deadblow hammer works versus a hardwood dowel for striking the sprue plate to open it:
The deadblow hammer needs only an easy light hit to do the job, and also does not spray little pieces of wood onto the cloth layer that the bullets will fall onto!
I am going to weigh a sampling of the new bullets tomorrow, but today I simply weighed 3 of them to find out how close they are to the 500g nominal weight when using my Wheelweight alloy, to which I added only 1% more Tin. It appears that the weight is about 497 grains with this alloy.
I am hoping of course that this bullet will behave better than the prior 2 bullets I have tried (The prior 485g Lee that didn't group after 100 yards, and the Lyman 457125 "Bulbuous" bullet whose fat ogive is TOO fat to work in my Pedersoli).
Jim G