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Old 03-07-2010, 10:42 PM
Cloudpeak Cloudpeak is offline
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Location: Wyoming
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I've cast a lot (thousands) of 9mm/38, 40 and 45 bullets using a Lee pot and several Lee 6 cavity molds (and one Lyman 4 cavity-200gr SWC.) I've used the Lee push through sizers on all of them and it's very fast and the dies are around $14.00. The dies are easy to modify if Lee doesn't offer the exact diameter that's required. I used Lee Liquid Alox and now XLOX found here: White Label Lube which is cheaper and works the same (in fact, it seems exactly like LLA). LLA/XLOX works just as well on conventional bullets as it does the Lee tumble lube design.

For sizing, I spray a very light coat of Hornady "One Shot" case lube on the bullets (one can will do around 20,000 bullets. It doesn't take much), put them through the push through sizer and then place the bullets in a Coolwhip container. I put some XLOX thinned with low odor mineral spirits on the bullets, close the lid and tumble them and then roll them out on a table covered with wax paper to let them dry. It doesn't take much and I think there is a tendency for people to use too much.

The bullets will always be a bit tacky in my experience but, after they're loaded, I lay a line of loaded rounds on a bath towel, roll them and inspect for "rings of lead" at the case mouth, check the case mouth for cracks and the loaded round for overall condition and then place a folded, micro fiber towel over the row and, pressing down, roll them back and forth. This does a very good job of cleaning the XLOX off the brass and a bit off the bullets themselves. I then transfer them to cartridge boxes.

Forty years or so ago, I had a conventional lube/sizer (I think it was a Lyman) and had no interest in buying another one.
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