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Old December 9, 2012, 07:35 PM   #1
m&p45acp10+1
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Just ordered the Lee .459 405 grain HB Mold need some info

Ok I picked up a Marlin 1895 on Friday. Bought some Lazer cast 350 grain LFP bevel based to try it out with. They shot great with a load of Trail Boss, and shot very clean except for the burned lube. A couple of wet patches cleaned it up like a charm.

Ok now I just placed an order to midway for the Lee single cavity Hollow base 405 grain bullet mold. They claim it will drop them at .459 which would be ideal.

I have never cast for hollow anything so any advice for that would be welcomed.

I plan on casting with straight wheel weight alloy, and shooting them with Trail Boss in the area of 1000 FPS or there about. I also plan on using the LLA lube that works so well with my hand gun bullets. I was just wondering if it realy will drop them at .459 or will they be larger requiring me to need a sizer?
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Old December 9, 2012, 08:46 PM   #2
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I don't know, but if it drops larger than you want, Lee has push through sizers available that work well and they are only $20.

I have a couple of Lee molds and they drop + or - .001" from the size they state depending on the alloy used. I used wheel weights with mine and they varied from right on the size stated or .001 smaller.
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Old December 10, 2012, 12:15 AM   #3
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405 HB

It is a nose pour mold.It has a plate coming off the mold handles bolt with a plug on it.The mold halves close around this plug to give you the hollowbase.I only have 4 casts on hand as I have recently loaded most of what I had.They measure .4565 to .457 on the upper bands and .458 on the base.This is with a soft wheelweight blend.My mold drops light at 400 to 401 grs.I have since blended monotype lead in my mix to get it as hard as hardball so it may drop even lighter.The length is 1.080 inches.Hope this helps.Russ
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Old December 10, 2012, 02:24 PM   #4
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Clean the mold really well before using it to get their water soluble cutting lube off of it. Be sure the mold comes fully up to casting temperature before you start judging the size of the bullets coming out of it. For best accuracy, I find my 1895 likes bullets cast about 0.002" over groove diameter rather than the traditional 0.001" over groove.

You can, to a small degree, adjust the size of the bullets by "beagling" the mold. This is putting shims between the blocks to loosen the fit. The slight oval shape that results goes back to round when pushed through a Lee sizing die. The only issue with this is Lee makes only a 0.457" sizer in this size range. I had to saw a slit into a 3/8" dowel and put some oily 400 grit wet/dry paper in the split and wrap it around until it touched the sides of the Lee die. I then used my drill press with low speed belts to spin the paper until I started pushing out .4595's. I then switched to 600 grit paper followed by some polishing compound on a felt bob so I landed on about .460". It's a bother, but it can be done.

There is more on beagling not too far down the page in this article.
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Old December 10, 2012, 04:04 PM   #5
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The 405 HB bullet is supposed to duplicate the load issued with the original springfield rifles. On top of 70 grains of 2F black in the balloon head cases it worked just fine. At least when they put it in brass cases!

The idea of the hollow base is to have the pressure of the burning powder to "inflate" the base outward to grip the rifling to seal the bore/bullet interface. It also resulted an better accuracy.

For that reason, you MAY be able to get away with smaller boolits, still getting good accuracy.IF you use a soft alloy. 20-1 lead/tin is what's used most of the time. Keeping the velocity down allows the soft lead to work without leading. Stay around or under 1600 fps will work well.
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Old December 10, 2012, 04:24 PM   #6
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Thanks for the info guys. I am no novice at casting. Just to the hollow base single cavity. All of my molds are Lee. I may end up with an old Lyman mold for .308 bullets of one weight or other. A guy at work has a relative that is talking of selling it for a cheap price. I will talk to him on that when he gets back from vacation.

I know to remove the oil from the mold before casting with it. I use brake parts cleaner. Then brush it with Dawn, and dunk into boiling water. Then rinse. I lube all the areas needed with Mobil 1 it works, and I have 10 quarts of it on hand for changing oil in my truck.

I always preheat my molds on a gas stove on low as the lead heats up. I have about 40 or so pounds of melted ingots of stick on wheel weights. About 150 or so of the clamp on ones. If I need harder then I use some plumber's silver solder.

Oh and the rifle shot well with .459 sized bullets, with no lead at all. Only carbon from the lube.
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Old December 11, 2012, 06:33 PM   #7
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I got the Email from Midway. It will be here on Monday. I screwed up when I ordered. I thought I selected UPS second day air. (Was willing to pay the extra $10 to have it in less than 3 days.) Some how that did not work out. Though I was not charged for the more expensive one.

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Old December 11, 2012, 10:05 PM   #8
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Something else

As was touched on by another poster temperature can play a big part in the size as well as hardness of your mix.
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Old December 12, 2012, 08:46 PM   #9
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I will keep my temps up to about 780 to 800 for the stick on type wheel weight alloy. For the clamp on type I keep temps around 700 to 725. Either way I always preheat the mold. I pay attention to fill out more than anything.
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Old December 12, 2012, 08:49 PM   #10
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This is my favorite .45/70 mold. Mine casts at a bit over .460/1" and I had a custom Lee sizer made at .460". I usually shoot WW lead Trap Door loads with IMR 4198 in my Pedersoli rolling blocks, using Lee Alox lube or my home made beeswax/lard based BP lube.
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Old December 13, 2012, 07:37 PM   #11
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Midway came through

Ok I thought that the stuff would be in on Monday. The email from Midway said it would be here Monday. They charged me for the cheapest delivery method of snail mail. It arrived today. Thank you MidwayUSA.

Cleaned up the mold cast a few. Still playing with temps though these came out pretty well with preheated mold, and lead at about 675 degrees to 700 degrees.

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Old December 14, 2012, 05:13 PM   #12
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What were your as-cast diameter and weight. What alloy did you use?
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Old December 14, 2012, 05:25 PM   #13
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Unclenick the alloy used is plain clamp on wheel weight. As far as diameter goes I will find out in the morning. I do not have a micro meter.

My dial caliper says .460
Average weight is 395 grains give or take a couple of tenths. All were between 394, and 396 grains. Most were 395 and some change.

I will load some up and shoot them tomorrow. I am going shopping with my wife tonight so I will not be able to do any work on the bench.
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Old December 14, 2012, 05:55 PM   #14
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Thanks. If you have a jacketed .458 bullet, its diameter is likely pretty close and you could check the caliper against it.

Meanwhile, the inexpensive Chinese OD thimble micrometer, like the $21 unit here are perfectly good for this kind of measurement as long as you check where they zero to subtract that value from the final measurement (mind your signs here). Even if one were off a quarter thousandth, that's still better resolution than the caliper.
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Old December 14, 2012, 08:32 PM   #15
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I have a friend that works down the street a machine shop. They have great measuring tools there. He will mic a few for me. As well as a pure lead round ball that I used to slug the barrel with today. I checked the caliper against 10 Laser Cast 350 grain sized at .459 all of those were .459 on my caliper.

Oh and for the micro grove rifling. I am looking down the barrel, and the rifling does not look shallow at all. It is deeper than most of my hand guns, and several of my good shooting rifles.
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Old December 16, 2012, 02:11 PM   #16
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Initial testing yesterday was good. Loaded a generic general purpouse load to check to see if there was any lead depositing in the barrel. There was no lead in the barrel at all. So today I am going to try some loads and see if I can find a sweet spot with Trail Boss.
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