Shiloh Rifle Forums

I found that pre-heating the bullets with a hair dryer or heat gun works the best.

Allow the bullets and lube to completely solidify and cool before attempting to punch them out of the lube cake.

Addendum to the above. Do not utilize the ice box or freezer to speed up the bullet and lube cooling and eventual solidifying. If you do, the lube may not adhere well in the grease grooves.

As for heating, place bullets in the lube tray, heat the bullets until they were warm to touch, but not uncomfortable to hold or touch, then pour in the lube and allow to solidify.

Yeah - that works. Pour in the melted lube, let the lube get completely cool back to room temp and punch out from the back. I have not tried warming the bullets first - I'll see if that helps in the next batch.

My mistake was not letting the lube cake cool down enough before removing the bullets.

I cut them out of the just solidified lube with a fired case. Primer hole drilled out and a nail inserted to help push them out.

Or that's what I did until I scored an old Lyman 45 off ebay, and now run them through a .460 die. The Cast Boolit forum has a great tutorial on these FWIW.

I use 45 and 450 Lyman lubrisizers for my greasers. But for bullets for the Sharps carts I take 5 seconds and patch them. I only use greasers in my 86, trapdoor, and roller which I don't load for very often because it makes me feel like a pervert. LOL there it is. Bobw

I use silicone rubber baking pans.
Set the bullets in place, about 1 inch center to center.
Melt the lube in a double boiler.
Warm the bullets with a heat gun. Get them pretty warm.
Pour the lube to just cover all the lube grooves.
I use SPG Tropic. After 45 to 60 minutes, I place the silicone rubber baking pan on a folded towel, and then push down on the bullet noses, one at a time, just hard enough for the bullet to shear the lube grooves from the cake. The silicone rubber pan and folded towel have enough give to accomplish this. Other lube may need a different time.
Then pull the cake from the pan, and push the bullet down thru the cake for a soft landing on the folded towel.
Wipe the lube from the bullet base by dragging it across a wipe saturated with alcohol.

I rarely have the lube pull out of the groove with this process.

I am sure that there are other processes which work well also.

Hey Aviator, you should try paper patching. No convoluted bullet prep and no wiping off gooey stuff from the bases. Just cut the patches and dry wrap. Easy peasy!

I use paper patch bullets in my long range muzzle loader, with pretty fair results.
I may get around to trying some in a breach loader some day.

I am suspicious that the often repeated negative aspects of both grease groove and paper patched bullets are exaggerated.

Both can give great results, and both can cause issues.

Yes I believe it comes down to what ever floats your boat lol

Based on the feedback I decided to warm up the 3D printer and have a go at making a bullet cookie-cutter-syringe thing-device-tool. I sanded the inside of a damaged 45-70 case, and fitted the components around it. Works well, and not messy!

Easy to make, once I figured it out... The main plastic pieces are hard ASA, and the pusher has a bullet nose shaped depression in the end and is printed in soft TPU. The rod is a spare #10 stainless machine screw.

That sure enough beats my roofing nail and foam ear plug.

I finally got to making up ammo from the new molded and lubed bullets - they don't fit in my rifle!

It's supposed to be the same 457-125 round nose as I have been buying from BACO. However, I just checked and the BACO bullets measure 0.447" at the shoulder of the nose and my Lyman mold bullets measure 0.454". My new rounds stick out about 0.3". I could probably jam them in using the loader tool, but I don't want to try that until I'm somewhere I can fire the rifle because I'm pretty sure that I won't be able to unload them without pounding them with a stick from the muzzle.

Is it normal for molds to be so different? Am I doing something wrong? In any case there's no way I can compress the powder another 0.3" and bury the bullet into a case more. Ideas?

Welcome to Lyman quality control. Sell that mold to someone with a trapdoor with a well oversized bore and find a Saeco 881, 645 or 745. Midway has a Sale on the 881 right now, if you want a proper government profile bullet. Its an excellent design.

Hmmmm - that's frustrating after making so many nice and shiny bullets, and spending a bunch of time lubing them. I guess it's one of those experience things - make a few bullets with a new mold, and check them, before investing a lot of time making a large number.

Do the Lyman handles fit the Saeco mold, or will I need to buy both?