bercov@bevsun.bev.lbl.gov (John Bercovitz) (05/25/91)
Warning! - you could be had by Lyman:
I'm a bit angry with Lyman right now. OK, I'm livid. A
few weeks ago I bought Lyman mold #401638 which casts a
175 gn truncated cone for the 10 mm auto. I also bought
the correct (.401) Lyman sizing die for my Lyman 450
sizer/lubricator. I cast up a batch of bullets using
Lyman #2 alloy which the Lyman book says is the alloy the
molds are designed around. The bullets cast out at .404.
Using 50-50 alox/beeswax, I tried to size and lubricate
the bullets. I could barely move the operating handle;
the press groaned and squawked. The bullets came out .402
diameter. So I called up Lyman (1-800-22 LYMAN). The
nice man on the other end of the line said that you can't
size a bullet of that diameter and alloy down more than
.002 so I had to either go to a soft (1Sn/40Pb) alloy (In
a 10 mm auto? You gotta be nuts!) or get a mold that
would cast .403 diameter. He said that if I continued to
size down those oversize bullets, I would permanently
damage my Lyman sizer/lubricator.
Then he went on to say that .404 was within Lyman's
tolerances for that mold!!! But he added that if I sent
the mold back to the factory with an explanation of the
problem, the factory would send me a new mold.
So I did just that - wrote them a nice letter telling them
that the mold cast .404 and about what the nice man on the
phone had said. I got my mold back last night; the only
paperwork with it was a computer print out with one
sentence on it:
"IN SPEC WITH #2 ALLOY -- .404" RETURN AS IS".
I could tell by looking at the mold that they had actually
taken the time to cast bullets in #2 alloy and measure
them! If they had that kind of money to waste, why not
send me a mold of the correct diameter? Because they
don't make the mold in the correct diameter, that's why!
It's a new mold design and the tooling hasn't worn in enough
yet to make a correctly-sized mold and it won't for sometime
to come. Apparently Lyman makes their tooling extra-large
so that it will last a long time. Consequently, first
they make a lot of molds that are much too large, then
they regrind the tooling, make a lot of molds that are a
little too big, then regrind again and make a lot of molds
which are just right.
So what's a mother to do? I don't know; you tell me.
It seemed the least I could do was warn you guys to buy
from a manufacturer other than Lyman.
John Bercovitz JHBercovitz@lbl.gov