Cast bullets in the Condor rd 2 Lee Precision/Ranchdog mold
I got the mold in from Ranchdog yesterday, he has designed an entire line of molds for auto pistols and lever guns.
The design resembles a LBT bullet, but has the tumble lube grooves and are 6 cavity molds. He has a .256 TL design that I have been looking at for months but it has been out of stock.
I wanted the .256 diameter because my bore is .2549 and I have ordered a .255 sizing die to be custom made by Lee.
I waited months for the mold, he has them made up in batches and had been out of stock for months.
I got the mold in yesterday, in the meantime I had Lee commercial handles waiting, I had odered 40 lbs of pure lead.
So I cleaned up the mold with soap and water and then alcohol. I assembled the handles, heated the mold and lubed it, the alignment pins and sprue plate screw/mold bearing surface, with 1/2 alox and beeswax Lee lube and began casting.
Within minutes I was knocking out perfect little 50 grain bullets 6 at a time, I as amased at how fast I got a pile of the little slugs.
Then disaster hit.
I measured the bullets only to find that casting from pure lead, which gives you the smallest daimeter bullet, they were .261 diameter which is completely unusable.
What a disappointment. I emailed Michael from Ranchdog, he answered on his phone that he was out guiding his dad to get the 82 year old gentleman a big buck. He said he would refund my money when he got in last night.
I responded that I wanted to try #2 which he also said that he used. So this morning I tried #2 alloy, it cast out at .263.
Shit!
When I size them to 253, they get deformed because that is way to far to size a bulet, even with Lee dies which are more gentle than others like RCBS and Lyman.
So the entire Ranchdog 25 caliber experiement is a bust.
Why, because Lee can not get their shit together to make a mold that is a quality product. No other excuse here folks, Lee dropped the ball, not Michael from Ranchdog outdoors, but Lee Precision. And this was with a custom order, not a production line product that can vary as equipment wears, but a custom run of molds.
So round 3 will be me designing a bullet with three narrow driving bands, and a short wide metplate at around 50 to 55 grains and have LBT make it exactly to my specs.
I ordered 13 tins of Kings from Pyramyd Air this weekend, I had to screw with their new website, but all in all it sure was easy. It takes a lot of work to be self sufficient know what I mean?
Regards,
Roachcreek
All Replies
JD,
He is going to shoot for .255 with pure lead, that will give me the option of going to .256 with 20-1 or #2 and size it down.
It should end up looking like this with thinner bands and if a two band bullet it will have a little different spacing of the bands but still a short flat nose.
Regards,
Roachcreek
RC,
Did Veral suggest a diameter based on your .2549 groove and .251 groove choke? Just wondering what he thought.
JD
A barrel liner can be used to line a existing barrel or as a basic barrel blank . The barrel on your Ranger came out of this mans shop . As well as the Corsair barrels . But Dan and Randy paid to have mandrels made to their specs and the only way you can get one of their barrels is through them . Jack Haley uses his barrels as well or did . I have two Corsairs a Gargoyle, JH 32, 909 32 caliber, and a 201 25 caliber with barrels out of his shop . All very accurate . They are not a match grade barrel which I have never bore scoped to compare to these . Perfect no are match grade ? I don’t know . Minor flaws yes . Are they causing me leading problems or accuracy problems once they are broken in no . Will I continue to buy his barrels yes .Marvin
I got a reply back from Veral Smith of LBT.
He will make a mold, guarrantee it to within .0015 of requested diameter.
He states he has made several airgun molds in the past and recommends his SFN to obtain my Meltplate of .180. He also recommends two bands and can make them pretty close to .050 to cut down on friction.
The cost is $125.00 for a 2 cavity and $175 for a 4 cavity, plus $25.00 shipping to the conus.
I had written to him that I may have 3 others interested in a molds. The cost break is only in the shipping, which does not work out being as were so scattered and all the molds would come to me. Not to mention all these LW barrels seem to be to different ID specs.
BTW, when informed of the choked barrel, his thoughts were that if he was going to build a airgun for cast bullets, it would be with a choked barrel and a mold that is firmly riding the lands and a tight fit at the choke.
This sounds to be a 50 grain version of the projectile in Marvin’s Avatar, which is 31 grain bullet in a LBT mold
I am going to order one this week and see how it works out.
Marvin, thanks for the link on the barrels, have you ever seen or inspected one from that company for interior finish?
I had mentioned that my barrels shoots Kings well. I just tried out my new brass breach and hammer made overseas. It gave me the tightest 80 yard group I have fired with a air rifle. Top hat at .090, pw @ 0, fill at 1900 PSI, veloctiy an almost regulated 915 FPS off my Explorer hood, put 5 into .63″ at a lasered 80 yards.
Regards,
Roachcreek
What exactly is a barrel linner do u send them your barrel and they improve the bore or do u get a new barrel from em
The LW barrel I have is pretty good with Kings.
I am beginning to doubt that I can get a mold done right.
Regards,
Roachcreek
hell, i think id sooner take a crosman barrel sourced from good steel(yes, some are…) and fire lap it for that “hammer forged taper” than dare buy a current lw barrel for slugs…if it gets any worse, i just may… 🙄
RC,
On top of trying to come up with a decent mold in .25, you’re trying to do it for what might be a one off barrel. Any barrel with a .004 choke ought to be shooting much bigger slugs than .25 caliber. I hope your new custom design works out but if it doesn’t, I’d recommend you switch barrels again before buying more molds that cost as much as barrels.
The JSBs and Kodiaks can tolerate a bigger variance in bore size than solids. With a slug style design, your design might be great but incompatible with a barrel that’s not right.
LW has screwed the pooch here lately. Lot’s of low level noise on the net about manufacturers having QC issues due to barrels from LW. I doubt blanks delivered direct to customers are any better than the ones hurting the manufacturers that order by the thousands. If LW doesn’t get their shit in one bag soon, people will be asking for Crosman barrels instead! (Yes, hyperbole, Crosman haters/sufferers stand down!)
.010 is too much almost always to size a bullet. .004 is too much as well considering that the sizing is happening at 900fps and at what everpoint in the vibration pattern the heretofore “loose” slug is…
Of course…for the Ranger.
I just took a look at the LBT site and it looks iffy. Please let me know if he will make this mould.
I just ordered a Accurate 3 cavity gang mould. I ordered a aluminum block to keep the price down (don’t care for alu blocks) and if I get good results from one bullet I may order a iron block mould in 2 cavity later.
Cavities are:
45-300B
46-240A
46-375B
All 0.452″dia. and cast weights for pure-lead
JD
JD,
You need the measurement from the center portion of your barrel.
Mine was .2549 and the choke was .251!
I guess LW has been making ST barrel for years. 😆
Remember we don’t have expandable skirts on these, so if you go with the coke diameter, it will rattle down the barrel beofre it gets to the choke.
Funny thing on that 25 ACP bullet, it would leave lead marks on the rifling but not in the bore portion on the choke, which is why it only shot well with #2, because that alloy was sturdy enough to hold the rifling with minimal contact.
Yeah your right about the lathe bored.
Regards,
Roachcreek
RC,
I’ve been watching your progress with the 25 and was hoping you would find something that would work before I dived into ordering another mould. In reference to Veral having a cherry, if I’m not mistaken he lathe bores his moulds with a lathe he designed just for this task. I sure as hell hope he will make this mould for you. By the way, the design you described with the narrow bands and the i think the 0.180″ meplat is just the ticket. If he make this mould he can just get ready to make another. I just need to slug my barrel. Do I need to use the groove dia. for the center or choke section?
JD
I sent him an email today, but I am not holding my breath.
AFC
About the Corbin swaging dies. I used Dave Corbins 22 rimfire jacket maker and swaging dies to make 223 Remington bullets and 45 lead swaged bullets for over 25 years. These dies used the inexpensive RCBS Rockchucker press. But in my opinion, I doubt if they would be all that good for air rifles.
I am after a heavy for airgun standards bullet that will ride on the bullets bands, and a bullet that the bands give resistance in a semi relieved lead at chambering. You can’t swage bands on bullets with dies designed for inexpensive reloading presses, you can only make them smooth sided. Smooth sided bullets would be difficult to chamber unless you have a generous lead cut.
Or you have put a hollow base on the bullet at same time you swage it, which is how the big boys do it at Crosman and JSB do it I would imagine.
Whether this can be acomplished with a set of dies made for a reloading press is the question. There are more powerful presses made, but by then you get to the realm of very expensive equipment.
Casting on the other hand is fairly inexpensive compared to swaging presses and dies, and this is why I am trying to accomplish this with casting rather than swaging.
I have tired 3 molds so far, the RCBS 25 acp which dropped bullets too small and gave flyers, I attempted to get it opened up but a mistake was made and the mold ruined. I may buy another RCBS mold and let the machinist have another try at it, but it is still not quite what I want. I also tried two other molds, but they drop bullets out that are as large as what the RCBS mold ended up being after being altered incorectly..
Another option would be a nose pour mold that has a pin system that casts a hollow base at the time of casting. Shotgun slug and Minnie ball molds do this and some shotgun slug molds even have the conventional Diablo shape, but the only nose pour molds I am aware of besides these unconventional shotgun slug molds is Hock molds. and the design of the Hock mold I used for Blackpowder cartridge would preclude adapting this system.
And then there are the Minnie ball molds with the base pin, but again I do not know of a custom mold maker that makes one.
Eric at Hollowpointmold company thinks he can do this with a mold blank and using his hp pin system to put the cavity in the base of the bullet.
So far I have attempted to get conventional molds to work, and they have not. Now there are custom mold makers who make airgun molds, Accurate molds does for the larger calibers, but not 25, and LBT made a mold for Marvin Mello for 25 that weighs 31 grains, so he should still have the cherry, but that is so close to a King or a Kodiak, that it just does not trip my trigger.
Jerry has a great desgin, I could buy bullets from him, it is just that like many others, I want to make them myself. And I want to make a solution for shooters like Markus who wants a 25 air rifle but finds it impossible to buy 25 caliber airgun ammo in the country where he lives. And as I write this I realize that for Markus the mold that LBT made for Marvin might in fact be the answer. I should have come with this solution sooner for Markus, but you have to remember I have to live far from neighbors because nobody loves me and I bought a woman from a third world country for a wife. 😛
The other option and one that may be far better is to simply install a powder burner barrel on the rifle that is the same bore size as the molds I have attempted to use. And really this is an attractive option, and it is what makes big bore air rifles work as well as they do, they use firearms barrels.
Problem is they still will subject to air gun dynamics, in that they do not bump the bullet up on firing and you still have to have a exact fit of bullet to bore to make it work.
Regards,
Roachcreek
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remember RC…persistence is key, but be prepared for anything once that mold arrives… 😉