Lube and other Questions

[tmas]

So i'm another Bullet casting newcomer.
I ordered my first bullet mold, i've casted lead sinkers and jigs for deep sea halibut fishing, but never any bullets
I am starting with my .380, and ordered the Lee 2-cavity 102 gr RN mold. This mold says it has 1 ogive radius. So, before i get casting, do I need to get a bullet "sizer" as well? I'm guessing these are used because they don't all come out at perfect diameter? If i'm just plinking with these loads will it be critical to size them all?

1 more question. I was told "tumble lube" was much easier to use. Can i tumble lube the bullets made in this mold, or is their certain molds made for tumble lubing and others made for other lubing. The 95gr lead bullets seem to just have lube in the groove near the base, or do they have it all over and I just can see them?

[Mike / Tx]

WEll to start off with I highly recommend downloading the following link and even printing it out to put in a small note book to have handy around the area your going to be casting, or at the very least the parts you might need quick refreshing on.

From Ingot to Target: A Cast Bullet Guide for Handgunners

While most of it revolves around bigger caliber, the basics are all the same, alloy, velocity, lubes, you have to match one with the other for the best results. The even bigger issue however is fit. I highly suggest you find one of your sinker molds which is somewhere in the neighborhood of .358 in diameter, and slug your barrel. Fit is your friend here, the better the fit the better your results will be altogether regardless of what type, weight, or alloy the bullet.

Yes you can tumble lube the bullets cast from the mold you ordered. Some think it is a bit messy, but I use it and it has served me well for my bigger revolvers from .357 - 454. I use one coat before sizing and another one after, and have experienced very little to no leading.

Another place of great information is over on Castboolits. There is hundreds of years worth of experience in and out there daily, and if it goes boom, there is probably someone there loading for it.

Good luck, hope this helps.

[TXGunNut]

Good tips above, short answer is LLA works fine for grease groove bullets in most cases. As you probably know Lee also makes TL moulds for bullets designed to be tumble lubed. I prefer to size my cast bullets but sometimes they work just fine as dropped from the mould. I haven't been that lucky. I'd buy the Lee sizer, comes with a free bottle of lube. Hard to beat a deal like that, works quite well for me in a few calibers. With LLA if you can barely see it you have enough lube, takes very little.
And yes, the folks over on CB forum have PhD's in boolitology and are second to none on the subject of cast bullets and most things that relate to them.

[mikld]

For a semi-auto, I'd say you may need to keep the bullets fairly close in diameter to avoid chambering issues, so sizing may be necessary. You'll need to know the groove diameter of your barrel too. Yep alox tumble lube works on standard lube groove bullets (don't try to fill the lube groove, just a light coat all over), just lube them the same way as T/L bullets. There is a whole forum section for bullet lube over at Cast Boolits... http://castboolits.gunloads.com/forumdisplay.php?f=58

[Unclenick]

With the exception of the tumble lube designs, you often get accuracy deterioration with bullet diameters more than about 0.002" over groove diameter. On the other hand, you often get better accuracy with 0.002" over groove diameter than you do from 0.001" over. Especially in revolvers and lever rifles for some reason, though not uncommonly even in self-loading pistols, too. The limitation is a thicker bullet means a thicker cartridge and if the chamber tolerances are tight enough or the brass is too thick, that can potentially cause interference. Even cartridges that fit, but too closely, can cause feed reliability issues in some self-loaders.

SAAMI spec typically allows for 0.001" over on bullets, so when in doubt fall back on that standard. But if you are in experimental mode and are trying to get best paper performance out of a gun, don't neglect to see if you can get a slightly bigger bullet in.

One advantage to not sizing bullets is that sizing softens the surface of the bullet. Apparently that corruption of the surface grain structure leads to further softening of the surface over time. For that reason, firing a bullet as-cast (no resizing) will often produce less leading than you get if the same bullet is sized first. So if you have a mold that throws an acceptable diameter bullet for loading and chambering in your gun, then go ahead and let the barrel size it at firing time.