lyman molds

[bustoff]

Ive only been casting about 2 years and I have molds from lyman, lee and rcbs. the lyman are the only ones to give me fits. bullets came out undersize and out of round, the alignment pins were adjusted correctly. the 44 cal swc were .428 with a alloy that measured 18 bhn using a lee hardness tester. I casted a few bullets and drilled and tapped a hole in the bases and coated the bullets with 800 grit lapping compound then cut the head off a screw and turned bullet with a drill inside the mold cavities. this pretty much fixed the out of round and the diameter is now .430. the other set is 45 cal for my trapdoor, also undersize and out of round I ended up chucking it in a lathe and recut all but the nose radius. is this normal for lyman? the molds from lee and rcbs gave me no such problems. im a little apprehensive about buying another lyman mold. the alloy in the 45 is 20/1. any thoughts on cast bullets in marlin 30/30 microgroove barrels? remember that these molds are 2 years old at most so any comparison to molds you may have had for years probably wont help much.

[Hawg]

I Have a couple of Lyman molds and they're fine. I do like Lee better tho.

[IllinoisCoyoteHunter]

My one lyman mold drops undersized boolits. This is indeed a problem with some lyman molds. Mines going back to Lyman, and if they don't wanna fix it they can keep it.

[bustoff]

at least im not alone with this problem. I dont mind tinkering with things to make them work a little smoother but for the cost of their product I was expecting a little better quality.

[kraigwy]

I have several Lyman molds and they work fine. In fact the only bad mold I have (and I have several, lyman, RCBS, Saco, Lee) was a lee mold. It was suppose to be .311 but turned out about 320 something. I thought about sending it back but relized it would be perfect for my 8X51 MS, with a barrel thats 323 instead of the 318 for the normal 8 mms.

I guess I've just been lucky.

[SteelyNirvana]

I've heard a few people over at castboolits complain about the Lyman molds, just FYI. Seems like there quality is going downhill.

[jimkim]

I think this may be a common problem with Lyman. I have several Lyman moulds. The one that gives me the most trouble is a two cavity 429421. One cavity is awesome. It drops .432" bullets. The other one drops .427-.428" bullets. I'm planning to lap my mould until the small cavity matches the large one.

[Edward429451]

I guess I've been lucky with the Lyman moulds. I've had the undersized issue with a Lee mould . Nice fix!

My experience with Marlin barrels and cast is that they like fat boolits.