Here is the place to put your 6.5 Swede questions about the dimensional data or the molds themselves. I will swing by here every day or so to try to answer up all your questions.

And yes, this is one of those "left-overs" from Shooters, a 100 mold LEE order that is in the ship-it stage and folks will be discussing the "what I got" diametrical results.

To make it more fun, I am trying to cherry-pick from the distribution of molds to make 100 people happy for their actual intended uses.

Oldfeller

Oldfeller,

I've never been accused of being too bright so here goes...

What are you talking about? 6.5 molds, I would be interested in one, even a Lee.

?????????

Oldfeller, I am impressed with the amount of effort you're putting into this. I hope you don't burn out before it's over. BD

BD,

Actually, this feels a lot like a new product project at work where we are dealing with a sister company. I do this sort of stuff for a living, so I guess I am pretty much used to it.

The main challenge is always communications with any shop floor operating system. Like most skilled operators, LEE can do most anything you ask IF they understand clearly what it is you are trying to get them to do.

There are unexpected surprises, like them using a thousandth-range solid GO NO-GO plug gage set to monitor things and "adjusting" the size of the hard gage itself instead of simply punching in an programming change into their CNC controller like you thought you were asking them to do. You asked for a change in the center point of an aimed process, what you got was a perceptual shift in a "fuzzy" gaging system.

People and communications, it is the reason most manufacturing problems happen in the first place.

The goal now is to match the span of the product very selectively to the intended use you have in mind. Considering we are matching to the thousandths for some very disparate uses, this isn't too bad of a deal.

As far as trying to get one of these 6.5 molds, LEE did overproduce a handful of extra molds. Send me an e-mail to Oldfeller123@aol.com and I will send you the details.

Oldfeller

What will be your next mould-project???

By way of a distant suggestion, I've noticed a number of frustrated would-be casters seeking affordable moulds which drop .331" heavier bullets suitable for the 8x56Rmm Hungarian cartridge, so they can shoot their straight-pull Steyrs bought from Century.

I also suspect there are several other custom mould projects which, if handled the way you've handled this order with Lee, probably would make you a very popular man....

Paladin

Oldfeller,
If you ever decide on having a mould made for 8x56R I would suggest one that drops at .333-.334 and a SP kinda like a 311334. Needs to be around 200 grs. A FP at 200 grs would be OK also. Orygun

Paladin,

Your question deserves a cup of coffee's worth of time to answer.

I'll sit down and type until the cup of coffee is gone, then I will go back to lapping molds.

I have four mold projects started at this point in time, which is 3 more than any sane man should have ever cranked up at one time.

6.5 Swede you know about (data sent, molds being finished and sent), the two heavy-weight 8mms you know about (these two will be shipped directly by Midsouth), maybe/perhaps you know about the K-31 Swiss rifle mold project which is the newest project? Details on that project were posted on the Swiss Rifles Forum, not on this one.

In short, until I digest some of these current mold projects I will NOT be starting up another one. And when I do, I will be mindful of the neat things I learned in the first few projects.

Next, all future molds will be multi-cavity molds only. Lastly, no mold shipment will ever come to my house again -- LEE and Midsouth will make and ship all the stuff in the future and be responsible for it.

(I'd be tempted to try to fix it if it wasn't right)

BTW, if any of you guys want to crank up a mold project you can, I created the "system" to support these kind of projects for all of us to use, not just me.

You need (#1 a good design and you need (#2 a plan to prove out the design fits and works in the guns it is intended to fit. Then you need (#3 at least 25 people to agree with your design and your testing plan well enough to say they would plunk down their money.

Contact me when you have a good #1 & #2 lined out and I can help you get in a position to get #3 (Midsouth does maintain an advertized custom cut mold page that is mentioned in their catalog and on their web pages. They do all the work now to collect and ship the orders).

Coffee's gone, back to work ....

Oldfeller