Lube groove rant.

OK, so I've been casting for a year now on Lee molds. I've gotten good results. I can fix my allow, temp and procedures for good fill out, but good grief...

WHY CAN'T LEE MAKE MOLDS WITH DECENT LUBE GROOVES!!! When I look at Lyman molds, you can SEE the lube groove. It's square to the center core of the boolit and DEEEEEEEP packing in lots of lube. When I look at my lubed Lee boolits...I see I have 'some' lube in them, but even with perfect fillout, why do they chamfer the lube grooves allowing lube to pull out when pan lubing??

Sorry, had to rant.

I agree. While I have had reasonable results with Lee molds I sure wish they had deeper lube grooves. Just my opinion. Have not had massive failures I can attribute to the small grooves but I would feel better having a bit more lube.

Those angled grooves, they don't hold onto the mold near as badly neither.

With LEE quality in the two cavs especially, would you really want to pry your boolits out of the mold?

Yep. I agree.

If you're pan lubing, be sure to warm your boolits too. a cold boolit will not accept pan lube as well as a warm one.

Not sure just what boolits you are talking about but from your description of the lube grooves those sound like tumble lube grooves

If so then they are not designed for pan lubing they are specifically designed for using Lee Liquid Alox and tumble lubing.

If you want to pan lube, you might try a cookie cutter to remove the boolits from the lube. A piece of tubing the right size or an old cartridge can be used. Either cut off to allow the boolits to push through or use a nail or piece of rod through the drilled out flash hole to push them back out.

Also as thegreatdane points out, warming the boolits will help the lube stick better too.

Longbow

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Originally Posted by steve in kc

OK, so I've been casting for a year now on Lee molds. I've gotten good results. I can fix my allow, temp and procedures for good fill out, but good grief...

WHY CAN'T LEE MAKE MOLDS WITH DECENT LUBE GROOVES!!! When I look at Lyman molds, you can SEE the lube groove. It's square to the center core of the boolit and DEEEEEEEP packing in lots of lube. When I look at my lubed Lee boolits...I see I have 'some' lube in them, but even with perfect fillout, why do they chamfer the lube grooves allowing lube to pull out when pan lubing??

Sorry, had to rant.

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It's a $25 mold, what do you expect. I Imagine it's cheaper on the tooling to cut shallower grooves. 1,000,000 x anythign is a lot.

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Originally Posted by longbow

Not sure just what boolits you are talking about but from your description of the lube grooves those sound like tumble lube grooves

If so then they are not designed for pan lubing they are specifically designed for using Lee Liquid Alox and tumble lubing.

If you want to pan lube, you might try a cookie cutter to remove the boolits from the lube. A piece of tubing the right size or an old cartridge can be used. Either cut off to allow the boolits to push through or use a nail or piece of rod through the drilled out flash hole to push them back out.

Also as thegreatdane points out, warming the boolits will help the lube stick better too.

Longbow

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No, these aren't tumble lube gooves. I know the difference. :)

Steve, what's the number on your mold?

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Originally Posted by steve in kc

When I look at my lubed Lee boolits...I see I have 'some' lube in them, but even with perfect fillout, why do they chamfer the lube grooves allowing lube to pull out when pan lubing??

Sorry, had to rant.

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Oh this is an easy one. This has two reasons.

1. It makes the lube on the bullet easier to come out of the groove and reach the bore when the bullet accelerates making the design use it's lube more efficiently. Think of it as the Maxwell House of lube groove design, "good to that last drop" of lube.

2. It makes it easier, for the lower RPMS cast bullet is most likely to encounter, to fling the lube off the slug so that it isn't outta balance when it leaves the gun.

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Originally Posted by Jim

Steve, what's the number on your mold?

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Geeze..any of the LEE NON-TL molds I've seen or used.

I personally have:
452-230-1R
452-200-RFN
C309-150-F

Look at a pic between a lyman and lee in the same design. Lyman's lube groove are like the grand canyon compared to the lee.

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Originally Posted by Bass Ackward

Oh this is an easy one. This has two reasons.

1. It makes the lube on the bullet easier to come out of the groove and reach the bore when the bullet accelerates making the design use it's lube more efficiently. Think of it as the Maxwell House of lube groove design, "good to that last drop" of lube.

2. It makes it easier, for the lower RPMS cast bullet is most likely to encounter, to fling the lube off the slug so that it isn't outta balance when it leaves the gun.

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I've heard and read both of these arguments before. While I'm not necessarily saying that they are not true, I'm not sure it always works this way in practice. Seems to me that (especially on big bore cartridges) the Lee designs frequently do not hold enough lube.

Only way to know for sure is to try the boolit and see how she flies. Some of the Lee designs are fantastic (I really like their 309-113-f and a few of their 45/70 molds), some of them aren't great. I think its hit or miss with any mold, but you have a higher strikeout percentage with the Lee.

To me, large lube grooves certainly can't hurt anything. Small, narrow lube grooves may work great...but there is always the possibility that they will not. Given the option, I will usually side for conventional lube grooves or Lees narrow chamfered grooves or TL gooves.

Yep, agree I would like them a little deeper. They work fine for mule snot lube, but!
Have found from experiance that the best way to use the lee shallow grooves is to check and size them for as cast size w/reg lube. Most of my 30 lees seem to run around .311/312. Also agree with having the blts warm, or at least warm temp assuming that the room is at least 70 degrees. (or a bit better). I also like my cast a bit frostly as I think they hold lube better. And----I use Lars Canuba Red that has been warmed with a hair drier exclusively. As long as they seat and chamber in my 30's, I am happy.
1Shirt!:coffeecom

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Originally Posted by kir_kenix

Seems to me that (especially on big bore cartridges) the Lee designs frequently do not hold enough lube.

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Please read my post again. I never made a commend on the quantity held. Only on the shape and why.

You will very seldom find lube in the grooves of a recovered LEE slug unless it is ran amazingly slow. The same can not be said of other brands. Often when you weight them you can see just how much weight is lube. If that gets outta balance, then you might as well shoot crappy bullets. What's the difference between 5 grains of lube or 5 grains of lead?

What you say about quantity can be true. But you have a total sum package that must be considered. "IF" you use a poor quality lube you either need a harder bullet or a larger quantity of the lube to do the same thing. Many of the older Lyman / Ideal designs were made when softer lead / tin mixes and generally poorer quality lubes were the norm.

They even had to worry about lube groove shape because the soft bullet might be expected to compress as a soft slug was accelerated. Thus the old round or square argument.

Lee's philosophy today is to ALWAYS use a harder bullet than the pressure applied requires so that compression and lube demand are lowered. Are they ideal for pan lubing? Probably not.

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Originally Posted by Bass Ackward

Please read my post again. I never made a commend on the quantity held. Only on the shape and why.

You will very seldom find lube in the grooves of a recovered LEE slug unless it is ran amazingly slow. The same can not be said of other brands. Often when you weight them you can see just how much weight is lube. If that gets outta balance, then you might as well shoot crappy bullets. What's the difference between 5 grains of lube or 5 grains of lead?

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I agree with you entirely. Perhaps Lee designed them this way so that they sling lube as the go down the bore. I'm just saying that in practice they really don't always work that way. I believe they are just not deep enough (at least in some of the big bore cartridges) to do the job at hand.

Some lube designs are excessive (at least for smokeless). Many of the Ideal 458-460 molds will hold several grains of lube (more lube then is ever needed if you are shooting smokeless. All recovered slugs still have lube in the grooves).

I think they need to be somewhere in-between. The Lee lube grooves, no matter what they are designed to do, are just inadiquate sometimes. These designs also do not lend themselves to pan lubing.

I must be doing something wrong. The lee molds that I have in .45 and .45-70 have never run out of lube before they got out of the barrel. I guess they hold just the right amount of lube for my guns

if you look at the t/l designs.
your rifling is displacing enough metal there [along with the oversize] to make the whole lube groove a contact point along the bbl.
i don't think the lube needs to seal any gaps as the lead is doing it. [hopefully] [and i doubt it]
i have never talked to anybody using a lee design [sept maybe the bator] for any type of high vel shooting.

the old 1422 x bhn thing come from lee and i think part of the reason is the lube and the alloy has to do more of the work.
one slip on the rifling and you are done with a t/l design.
if you look at the number one complaint here it's the t/l design and the 9mm or 40 s&w.
and it's always i'm leading. they mean skidding slightly [from overcoming the alloys ability to hold] and then the lube fails to do anything.
like seal the breach, and the leading just goes on down the bbl.