I have had my fill with Lee molds!

Lee moulds

I have been casting bullets for over 50yrs. My 1st was a old Ideal 25/20 hp, I
still have it. I have found Lees easy to pour, that's why people buy them. They
are not durable. They are also cheap, big plus I guess. The two reasons I don't
like them are: 1. They do not produce bullets with square edges, on grease
grooves.
2. On several ones I've used the mould blocks are not perfectly
indexed. Making bullets that are out of round.

When I get them on trades or in misc. boxes, I put them in gun show pile. When
your time is valuable, you don't wast it on second rate stuff. I feel the same way
about Lee loading tools. I have found the Lee melting pots to be dependable.
 
When your time is valuable, you don't wast it on second rate stuff. I feel the same way about Lee loading tools.
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Well said.

But, I fear salvadore is likely to label you as a snob now, like myself and JT-AR-MG42. ;)

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If you want quality, you won't find it in Lee tools. Sure, they might get the job done ... sort of, some of the time, with a lot of fiddling, after you fix them, until they break. But, my time (especially as of the last 2.5-3 years) is worth far more than saving $20 by buying a lump of crap masquerading as a reloading tool or bullet mold.

I showed a Lee bullet mold to a guy that runs a foundry and custom casting business in Salt Lake City, about 2 years ago. The look on his face was priceless, as he exclaimed, "That looks like the slag we scrape off before a pour!"



Edited to fix a typo. I can't spill spell.
 
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How are the Lyman Molds?

I guess my needs for casting may be different and some have a different experience with casting based on those different needs. When someone says I have had a mold for 10+ years and cast 10,000 bullets with it, that doesn't say much about my needs which is 6,000 now and another six withing a month to get my years supply of 9mm done. That's 12,000 on the first use and a lot of bullets over a short period of time. Then I still have to coat and size them.
 
Lyman Molds are pretty darn good. I have more than a few.
I usually get a LEE mold when I first start a new caliber. Because I am already broke buying the gun.
Then I upgrade as funds permit.
But I will say a 4 banger Lyman is a heavy cow after a hundred or so drops.
 
Thanks guys for all your help. I just got a phone call from NOE molds! What a stand up Guy! Learned more about molds in ten minutes than I have learned with a year + of study and a few month's of casting. Talk about honesty, he was not looking to make a dime by selling me something... Thanks again to NOE, your a dying breed!
 
Yep. Good molds. Good people.
I visited 'Swede' while he was still running everything from his home shop. He didn't really care about getting the money for the mold I was picking up. He just wanted to BS and talk about guns, casting, and hunting. ;)

And when I discovered minor damage to that mold, he sent me a replacement the next day. (It didn't hurt that we were both served by the same USPS sorting center.)
 
Mr. FrankenMauser, I have to say that I am in complete agreement with you.

I discovered lee's "quality" 40 years ago,and lee's career in my shop didn't last long. I absolutely HATE having to constantly fool with something to make it work right, or modify to make it fit right. It's kinda funny, lee makes "beginner level" tools, but one has to be "experienced" to make them work right, or figure out what the tool is doing wrong.

I have a friend that I am helping to learn how to load/cast, against my advice she bought a lee mold, I discovered that she knows more swear words than I do. I loaned her my brass mold from Accurate molds and 30 min. later she was on her computer ordering from Tom. Her lee went into her lake. This lady is perfectly at home with machine tools and works for me when I need an extra hand.

I too am a lifelong machinist/mechanic, and in semi retirement I still do prototypes and short runs.

For those that are satisfied with their lee products, I am happy for ya, but they are not for me.
 
It's kinda funny, lee makes "beginner level" tools, but one has to be "experienced" to make them work right, or figure out what the tool is doing wrong.
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Ha, that is a fact for sure..:)

Here is a great example of a LEEisim.

They had a good idea with the LEE Auto prime 2. But had to quit selling them because of Federal primer explosions. ( I suspect)

After I got mine I noticed that small pistol primers could get wedged between the shell holder and the ram. I smashed a few until I figured it out.

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Simple fix: Use the plastic inserts from a RCBS APS strip priming tool with the LEE tool.
Turns a good idea into the best priming tool I have ever used. Bar none!!

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But you have to have an idea whats going on to see whats not working right.

Man just think what a Load Master could be if quality materials and good manufacturing processes were used. It would be Top of the heap by a wide margin. It would cost $2500 but would be the best ever.
 
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Great Fix!

You are right, if it wasn't for the crummy choice of materials and crummy fit and finish and "afterthought" design priority, some of his stuff could be right up there with other manufacturers that are known for high quality tools, and it doesn't have to cost that much more.

And then there is his "copied" load manual...
 
I am not disagreeing with you guys. just saying that I have EVERYTHING lee and have zero problems with any of it. I have six molds and the bottom pour and all work really well. I load on a single stage, so I guess I don't see the issues others do sometimes with the progressive stuff. but other than having to scrap some lead here and there from the molds, they are all fine and cast good-looking bullets. I have no pricier molds though, so I guess I don't know what I am missing. I will probably always buy lee until they give me a reason to stop though

only gripe is the 356-120-tc, it casts just fine, but has proved to be an inaccurate bullet design with not enough bearing surface, but that's a little different than a QC issue

*my safety prime cracked on probably about 5k rounds, forgot about that
 
Hey skizzums, I have the Lee bottom pour and to avoid the troublesome
drip out the bottom...I took a 5/16 aluminum turnbuckle, removed both
eye-bolts and replaced just (1) with a 5/16 hex-head bolt that I had drilled
a pilot hole in the head and I snug this under the pour spout when I leave it
for just a short time...........works great, but paint the damned thing RED to
remember it's HOT ! when you get back. DAMN THAT WAS HOT !
 
Ya know Frank and Wreck not everything is about you. My statement about use to be an antiLee snob was just that. When I first took up casting in 1970 I wouldn't use anything but RCBS and Lyman moulds. A few years back I wanted a heavy RN bullet to duplicate the old factory 44 Spec. load So I bought Lee's RN .44 and am no longer an antiLee snob.
 
I didn't start with Lee. I started with NOE and MP. Then I got some Lymans and Ideals. Only fairly recently did somebody show me a .30 Lee that I liked and I bought the mold. Now I have 4 of them (two 30's and two 45's) and they do make a nice bullet. As long as I hold the mold on the edge of the table (I only have 2 cavs) when I close it, to assist in lining up the blocks and pins, it works very smoothly and makes really nice bullets. I don't have any idea of how long they'll last, but I'm already sure I'm going to get my $18 bucks out of them. :)
 
Ya know when I first started out down this dirty road to casting my own bullets, I didn't know squat about squat when it came to anything. I had purchased a 6C Lee 410215 a few years earlier that I hadn't even gotten out of the box yet and didn't even know I needed handles for it till I did after I bought the second one in 452300 RF.

All that and I have a drawer full of the 6C molds now in just about every flavor I could ever need. Add to that a half dozen or so of the 2C molds and well I have added them up for sure. Are they top notch, hell no, but they do serve a purpose in that I cannot afford to purchase a custom 6 cavity mold nor do many offer one. Heck even a good 4C is about $150 from just about anyone. So I use most of mine for the production runs, and yes they have their moments, but when they are running, gosh doggit you can empty a pot fast.

This said I have been using Lee products for nearly 30+ years now and while they DO serve a purpose I usually try to get other things instead. They just have a couple of things that work well for what I need and are at a price that works for me as well.

I do however like my Accurate, NOE, Lyman, NEI, H&G and especially my MP molds, but I even have issues with these as well. So I guess I if I put everything in perspective I would just need to sell them all and concentrate on some custom made NOE or Accurate and be done with it. Of course that ain't happening. I see folks griping about sizes being off, and out of round, and such with Lyman and RCBS, not so much with the others but when it happens they make it right ASAP, which is why they are top notch. Heck just look at Lyman, they change things up within the same design so you want one thing and get something else. There is issues with them all at some point in time, maybe not like with the Lee's but they also cost 4 times as much to start with so you would expect to NOT have issues in the first place.

But I will say a 4 banger Lyman is a heavy cow after a hundred or so drops
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You ain't done nothing till you run a 6C or 10C H&G through a couple of full pots of alloy, talk about getting noodle arm syndrome...:eek:
 
Some of the best molds I have are Lee. Some of the worse molds I have are Lee! I can say the same for Lyman molds, but the difference is with Lyman, you will get no satisfaction if you complain. You're stuck with it! Usually with Lyman, it's that they are always under size. (In the driving bands.)

As for loading tools, the best loader I have for under 200 bucks is the lee turret. It's fast enough to be compared to some progressives, and it has auto advance if you want it.

As for the Lee molds, the 2 cavity mold has been re-designed. Gone is the extruded shape and the sideways alignment pins. That made those hard to index/close-align properly. They are now made like any other mold, actual pins that align the mold halves. May I suggest those that had bad experience with the old design, try the new ones? There may be some of the old designs left in the pipeline at some suppliers so you may need to pay retail to get one direct from lee. Titan reloading is lee direct, just down the street from lee, he would have the new mold designs. A simple request to him would verify that. The only mold I have in the new design is a round ball mold for a 45 cal Hawken rifle. It's works much better than the old extruded design.

The new 2 cavity molds are made just like their 6 cavs.
 
IMO they traded one problem for another with the new design. With the old ones the cavities were lathe bored. The new ones are milled, so each half of the cavity is created separately. That makes it much more likely to get cavities that are misaligned or off-center with the mold parting line.

I have a couple of the old ones (20+ years old) that are still going strong. I also have a couple of the new ones with multiple problems. My general impression is that the older ones made better bullets.
 
I only used a Lee mold once and that was back in 1969. I loaned it to a guy and never got it back. Did not bother me the least.

I have RCBS, Lyman, Accurate, LBT and am fortunate enough to have H&G 68 and 503. All are cast iron as I prefer them over the brass and definitely no aluminum.

I have friends that have nothing but Lee molds and they swear by them. One shoots nothing but cast in calibers ranging from 223 Rem up to and including 458 Win Mag and 500S&W rifle and all with astounding success. Lee works for them, but I prefer the cast iron molds for myself.

I usually cast a coffee can full of each caliber at a sitting and spend most of my time loading and shooting, not casting, although I do enjoy every aspect of the game.
 
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