Lee 6-Cav Handles and Hot Spots

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Just a heads-up, some of my 5-cavity molds, the ones with longer nosed rifle bullets, suffered concave suck-in points along one side the two mold halves, at a point right along where the mold handle recess is milled..

I chased every combination of alloy-mix, alloy heat and mold temp.  But I still got the damned ruined bullets.

Then I noticed the Lee 6-cavity handles I had fitted, were very tight in the mold recess, so that they were shaving bits of aluminum from the mold halves.  The mold handles were tight against the whole length of the mold, making spots of different temperature on the mold along the contact point.

I ground the Lee mold handles thinner to where they are now a loose fit, not touching the mold halves anywhere but at the mold holding screws.  This means I have to support the two mold halves when I close the mold, but no big deal.

An instant and perfect fix.  No hot-spot suck-in with any of my 5-cav molds with any alloy or temp.

Not all Lee handles are this tight, I just had a thicker one and never noticed all this time…

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[amranch]

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Thanks very much for this info.. I noticed the slight bind on some of my handles also. I recognized that i was getting a fairly even percentage of rejects but just blamed myself, not the binding . Will definitely check out more closely now.

[Author]

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