bercov@bevsun.bev.lbl.gov (John Bercovitz) (06/18/91)
Many thanks to those of you who sent all of the suggestions about how to size bullets from my oversize Lyman mold. It was really heart-warming and beyond that, all of your suggestions worked. The suggestions fell into two basic categories: prelube the bullets before sizing and size down in steps. I tried both. I cast a bunch of bullets and ended up with 120 keepers which I split into 3 groups; control, presize, prelube. The alloy was again Lyman #2: 5-5-90. I treated the control bullets in the normal way - cast and then run through the Lyman 450 sizer/lubricator. Again the bullets came out .404 as cast and .402 as sized in the .401 sizer. To presize the bullets, I purchased a Lee reloading press bullet sizer which I polished out. I used the supplied liquid alox for the sizing lube. Bullets came out of this sizer at .4015. I then ran them thru the Lyman sizer/lubricator and they came out .4011 with a range of diameter readings on any given bullet of .0001. The sizer/lubricator was loaded with the usual 50-50 Alox beeswax. To prelube the bullets, I used the suggestion of employing liquid Alox. The bullets then went directly to the sizer/lubricator and came out .4013 diameter with a range of .0003. So it looks like the better results came from the presizing but that it would make no difference, from a practical standpoint, which method was used. But why did the pre-lubed-only bullets come out smaller than the bullets which were not prelubed? This doesn't compute for me. It occurs to me that the best method might be to run the bullets through the sizer/lubricator first, only with a large die in it; say .4025 diameter. _Then_ run it through the Lee sizer which gives a mirror finish and a rounder bullet probably because of its thicker die walls and lack of lube ports. Thanks again, guys! JHBercovitz@lbl.gov (John Bercovitz)