The Lee Mold That Shouldn't Exist

[rsterne]

I got in on a Group Buy for a .25 ACP bullet a few months ago, for a Lee 6-cavity mold.... Lee finally finished and shipped the molds a couple of weeks ago, but somebody misread a dimension and they made the mold at 0.225" instead of 0.255".... so I ended up with a "freebie" mold for a 40 gr. bullet, as Lee will be reshipping the correct molds and don't want the incorrectly made ones back.... I cast some today, and here is what I got....



I used 1% tin, and I had to cast at 850*F to prevent wrinkles, even with preheating the mold.... The holes in the Sprue-cutter are, IMO, quite a bit too large for a .22 cal bullet, and even though the bullet is a bevel-base design they had a slight flange/cutoff flash on one side.... I tumbled them for 5 minutes and it completely removed it, resulting in some pretty nice looking bullets that weigh 40.7 gr. and measure 0.225"-0.226" as cast.... I'm looking forward to trying them out in my Hayabusa barrel.... They measure 0.440" long, so won't function in a .22 cal MRod magazine, but can be used in a .25 cal fittted with the star wheel from a .22 mag....

Bob

[mudduck48]

Nice find.

[Ribbonstone]

That would have saved me a whole lot of mold modification work.  Look like they should work out.

[SeanMP]

Sweet! Ya gotta like it when an unexpected gift horse shows up.

[45Bravo]

I would like to buy say 100 from you to see how they shoot from my various .22 air guns

[rsterne]

Sorry, I'm not in the business of making bullets.... and besides, .22 cal airgun barrels are typically 0.217" bore, so these bullets would be wayyyyyyyy too tight and that is too far to size them.... They would work in a .224 cal Hornet barrel with a 14" twist, which is what I have on my Hayabusa....

Bob

[45Bravo]

Thank you for the reply.

Just for grins a few weeks ago, my brother used his lathe at work and turned down a marlin model 60 micro groove barrel to fit a beeman dual caliber springer.

He has been shooting .33 gr Remington projectiles pulled from .22 rimfire yellow jacket rounds..

He says his velocity not worthy, but it shows promise he says..

[rsterne]

Yeah, that would be waaayyyyyyyyyyy too heavy for a Springer, I'm guessing you can see them in flight.... You "might" be able to size these bullets to 0.222" to work in a .22LR barrel.... certainly nothing smaller.... You can get 30 gr. swaged bullets from NAA for their Cap & Ball Revolvers, I'd try those in a rimfire barrel....

Bob

[cwlongshot]

If soft enough maybe you could swadge them down to 22 diameter...

[K.O.]

Hey how did things end up with this mold/Boolit..?